TikTok Users Recast 1 Term, Turning POV Into a Broader Cue
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 1
TikTok Users Recast 1 Term, Turning POV Into a Broader Cue
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 1
Two months after linguist Griffin Bassett highlighted the shift, TikTok users are increasingly using “POV” not as a literal camera angle but as shorthand for “imagine this is you” or “this is what it’s like when.”
Videos tagged “POV: You’re too short to reach the top shelf” now often show the person in frame, suggesting the label has moved from point-of-view description to a discourse marker that tells viewers how to read the scene.
Bassett argues linguistics does not treat such usage as simply “wrong,” framing it instead as evidence of how online communities reshape language through repeated social use.
Some commenters offered a less creative explanation: users may have inferred a new meaning from context after seeing genuine point-of-view clips, then spread that interpretation across meme-style posts.