When the music and dance app Musical.ly rebranded into TikTok seven years ago, no one could have foreseen the massive impact it would have on the world of social media and popular culture. With its characteristic rapid-fire videos and infamous algorithm that tailors content based on previous user activity, it completely changed the social media landscape.
The concept of constant dopamine kicks and rabbit hole-like personalization of clips glued an entire generation, an entire society, to their phones. “Going viral” – becoming famous overnight – is now a legitimate way of gaining a massive platform of followers for aspiring content creators and musicians alike. However, it also did not take long for politicians to discover, and start to chase, the riches that could be gained.
A country where TikTok has already shown its problematic side, and caused an entire constitutional crisis, is Romania. The country held presidential elections on November 24th, 2024, and the results were shocking. Everyone had expected Ion-Marcel Ciolacu of the Social Democratic Party to come out on top, and the polls only a month before pointed towards a victory of his with 24% of the votes.
Meanwhile, the independent candidate Calin Georgescu, who is the main character of this story, was only projected by the polls to gain 8% of the votes, placing him fifth in the presidential race. However, it became clear during the election night that this was not going to be the case. In a complete upset, Georgescu won the election with 23% of the votes, and advanced to the second and final round.
Who, then, is Calin Georgescu, the partyless and inexperienced politician who swept the floor with his competition out of seemingly nowhere? Most commonly, he is described as a far-right conspiracy theorist. He has praised Ion Antonescu, Romania’s fascist prime minister who collaborated with Nazi Germany and facilitated the Holocaust, as a hero. Furthermore, he has praised Putin’s leadership of Russia and promised to completely end aid to Ukraine. Most shockingly, he has denied the existence of Covid-19 with the argument that “no one has ever seen the virus”, and claimed that humankind has never landed on the moon.
This seems like an unsuccessful recipe for a politician, so how did he actually manage to win? The answer is that he went viral on TikTok. Georgescu has 300 000 followers on TikTok and it is not uncommon for his videos to get millions of views. Taking inspiration from “alpha-male”-influencers by the likes of Andrew Tate, he often makes so-called “edits” of himself where he makes a one-liner or catchy argument together with special effects and hyped-up music. He also posts himself doing activities like martial arts and horseback riding, reminiscent of how Putin has sometimes been portrayed in Russian media.
His campaign has been fueled not by oligarch money or high-quality campaigning, in fact he has not even participated in the main presidential debates. Rather he has made a name for himself on the app that has caught everyone’s attention. This, in combination with an all-time high distrust in the mainstream Romanian political parties paved the way for success.
However the legitimacy of this TikTok campaign has now come into question. Declassified intelligence documents have shown that 800 TikTok accounts that were created by a “foreign state” many years ago were activated to full capacity just before the election, as reported by the BBC. Furthermore, over 25 000 Romanian TikTok accounts were created just two weeks before the election. Many of them have interacted with bot-like comments on Georgescu’s posts and attacked rival candidates on other posts.
Romanian intelligence connected these accounts to Russia, also noting Russian interference through other forms of cyber sabotage. Due to this enormous level of election interference, the Constitutional Court of Romania made the controversial decision to annul the results of the election and announce that a re-election is to be held in order to ensure a free and fair process.
Although this whole situation of the Romanian TikTok president might seem somewhat silly, there are two pressing issues that this case sheds light on. Firstly, the ever-increasing vulnerabilities of mass digitization. It is well-known that Russia is actively aiming to maximize influence in the former Eastern Bloc countries especially, to which Romania belongs, and also destabilize rivalling nations and alliances.
In a world where almost every country relies more and more heavily on digital systems, the vulnerability towards cyber sabotage massively increases. If our society is completely digitized and the digital world comes under attack, then society as a whole is attacked. Even the fundamental pillars of society such as democracy are no longer safe. In Romania, organized cyber sabotage caused a democratic crisis and a re-election; and it is far from the only example where actors such as Russia are suspected to have intervened in the democratic process.
The second issue is the effect of social media on conventional politics. When political dialogue and successful election campaigning is defined by taking flashy quotes and one-liners out of context with the aim of going viral, the whole concept of politics begins to crumble. Because what is the point of having ideological values and thorough policies when quick and flashy content is more successful? If social media becomes an even more integrated part of conventional politics, which is not a wild guess, we could see a substantial increase of populist, “quick-fix” politicians, who appeal to the people with rhetorical tricks rather than good policies.
There is already a wave of populism, especially right-wing authoritarianism, in the Western world today, that has caused immense polarization and a crack in the liberal values and institutions that define it. With this new style of “TikTok politics” like Calin Georgescu has utilized, it would come as no surprise if even more populists pop up with this exact strategy in the future, causing even greater polarization and cracks in Western societies than what we have already witnessed.
↓ Image Attributions
“Georgescu & Simion, BEC 2025” by AUR Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor // Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
