TikTok ‘dogshows’ and the amplification of online incivility among Gen Z influencers in the Philippines

Summary

This paper analyzes “dogshows” — a culturally specific Filipino TikTok phenomenon in which Gen Z influencers and their audiences collaboratively perform humor that hovers at the edge of cyberbullying and hate speech. Cabbuag and Abidin argue that dogshows exemplify how online incivility gets normalized, accepted, and negotiated within influencer cultures, and how TikTok’s affordances amplify legal-but-harmful humor. The contribution is both empirical (documenting a localized practice in the Philippines) and conceptual (extending work on legal-but-harmful humor into a non-Western Gen Z influencer context).

Key Contributions

• Names and theorizes “dogshows” as a distinctive Filipino TikTok genre of humor-mediated incivility.
• Extends Matamoros-Fernández et al.’s (2023) “legal-but-harmful humor” framework into Gen Z influencer culture in the Philippines.
• Centers non-Western platform cultures in scholarship on TikTok, incivility, and influencer practice.
• Links platform affordances to the amplification dynamics of humor-based harm.

Methods

Qualitative, case-based study of Filipino TikTok influencer practices and audience interactions, combined with an analysis of TikTok’s affordances as they shape the “dogshow” phenomenon.

Findings

• Dogshows operate as a socially accepted practice in which influencers and audiences co-produce incivility under the cover of humor.
• The line between entertainment, cyberbullying, and hate speech is routinely blurred and renegotiated by participants.
• TikTok’s affordances (duets, stitches, virality mechanics, comment cultures) facilitate the spread and intensification of this humor-based incivility.
• Incivility is not an aberration but a normalized mode of participation among Gen Z influencer communities studied.

Connections

This paper sits alongside other work theorizing TikTok-specific cultural and political dynamics shaped by platform affordances, such as Gerbaudo2026-fo and Hollingshead2026-vx; together they suggest that TikTok’s affordance structure produces distinctive, regionally inflected genres of public discourse — whether political, civic, or, as here, incivil-humorous. Cabbuag and Abidin’s contribution is to ground this affordance-driven amplification in a non-Western Gen Z influencer context that is often missing from anglophone platform studies.

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