The terrifying world of the 'TikTok Farlands'

There's a hidden corner of TikTok the algorithm won't show you, full of weird, creepy and downright disturbing videos. It could all be a myth – or it may be a preview of the internet's future.

TikTok has a reputation for serving up an endless stream of videos that are, in general, fairly positive. Some detractors even call it sanitised. But beneath the surface are billions of videos TikTok normally won't show you. Some are boring. Some are bizarre. Some of them are truly unsettling.

Rumour has it if you stay up too late, scrolling for hours until you exhaust TikTok's normal recommendations, you might get a momentary glimpse. But users of the platform say they've found a way to go deeper.

With the right tricks, you can reach this uncanny digital space, that's weirder, darker and more grotesque than the happy path the algorithm typically steers you along. It's known as the "TikTok Farlands".

The best way to reach it, apparently, is to plug in a string of random numbers and letters that another user has posted in the comments of a video.

"You can't get there through algorithmic recommendation alone – you need a human to invite you in," says Aidan Walker, an internet culture reporter and meme researcher, in a post on the subject.

Conversations about TikTok's Farlands erupted over the last few months, blending conspiracy theories and urban legends with earnest discussion about the power of social media companies.

Users have figured out ways to hijack the TikTok algorithm to make it surface videos they believe the app doesn't want you to see. It is a social movement as well as a meme trend. People are pushing up against the walls of the machine.

And in a world of AI slop and mindless scrolling, it's left me more optimistic about the future of the internet than I've felt in a long time.

The name "Farlands" comes from a famous, ancient glitch in the game Minecraft. In early versions of the game, if you walked far enough, it caused an error that generated distorted and chaotic landscapes full of tunnels and weird structures.

"The Minecraft Farlands were the edge of the game. You would literally reach the end of the world, and you could not go further," says Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Georgia in the US, who focuses on social media.

The TikTok Farlands are the same idea. "It's the end of the internet where things get weird. You've left the mainstream and taken a wrong turn."

With the help of comments left under Walker's video post, I was able to follow some random strings of characters into the void. I plugged a code into the search bar, and what I found was nothing like my usual experience on TikTok.

Nightmarish, AI-generated figures paraded across the screen. Faces contorted in a haze of pixelated distortion. Some kind of alien creature with his veins plugged into the wires of a TV screamed in agony, as a teenager looked on with a videogame controller.

A lot of it was too disturbing for the BBC to link to. (And I'd offer a little caution before you go looking yourself.)

Even the strings of random letters and numbers that people share like passwords to the Farlands are a mystery. Sometimes, users tag their own videos with these codes and share them to promote their work. But I spoke to a few people who swore they found Farlands codes through guesswork by mashing the keyboard.

Some of the codes seem to bring up truly random results. It's hard to parse what's really going on, as TikTok's search function gives different results to different users.

The whole idea is deliberately subverting TikTok for your own purposes, says Walker. "That's part of the thrill. You're using the platform in a way it's not built to be used," he tells me. "You're past the limits of the normal TikTok, out at the frontier where nobody really knows what's going on."

In the comments of these strange videos you'll also see people writing "I WANT TO STAY IN THE FARLANDS" over and over in large blocks. Some travellers seem to believe posting a 500-word-long comment triggers the algorithm to show you similar content. Is that true? Impossible to say. Social media algorithms are a black box.

I contacted TikTok but they didn't respond.

"People are trying to take control back of their feeds and their online experiences," says Maddox. "It speaks to being fed up with algorithmic feeds, and our anxieties about the force they play in our lives, dictating what we see.

"The internet is so overwhelming. In a way, the Farlands represents hope that you've actually found the end and you've reached a place where you could actually stop."

The whole "edge of the internet" conversation is a bit of a paradox.

The goal of "entering" the Farlands is uncovering hard-to-find videos. Some are genuinely weird, made by people who don't understand or care about the norms of social media. Other videos are intentionally artistic or edgy.

But some of these supposedly "obscure" Farlands posts have millions of views. And as its popularity has increased, so some users have made new videos to fit the trend. Finding this stuff is easier – just type in "Farlands".

But users say this isn't the real deal. Real Farlands videos have no tags or titles, and "certainly not the Farlands hashtag", one user commented in a popular video.

A true Farlands video, some will tell you, will only have 30 views and be from an account with no followers, reachable only for those determined enough to find it.

The TikTok Farlands are relatively new, but a lot of the ideas, memes, aesthetics and videos themselves are old. Some of it resurfaces tropes from the era of creepypasta, a genre of online ghost stories from the early modern internet.

Many videos share the deep fried meme aesthetic, where images are passed through numerous filters until they're pixelated and washed out – a trend at least as old as 2015. And people discussed the hidden side of TikTok in 2019 and 2020 as users explored "Deeptok".

"It really feels like this hodgepodge of a bunch of different stuff from all over the internet's history," says Walker. "Niche, kind of spooky, kind of bizarre."

Still, there's also something new here. For one, a lot of popular content that people describe as Farlands feels like commentary on technology and social media itself.

Shane Moore, better known as @smoorel8r, makes posts that begin as stereotypical TikTok food reviews, before the image degrades in the style of a corrupted video file, with horror-movie-style scenes that glitch in and out.

Others, such as @realityisoptional.net and Lucas Wilm make videos that look less like social media and more like the video art you find in museums. A number of creators told me they've been making this style of content before anyone started talking about the Farlands.

I asked Walker if covering the Farlands in a mainstream media outlet like the BBC might make the whole thing uncool. "It's already mainstream," he says. "It's a big part of some people's media diets." In other words, the cool kids have probably moved on by now. 

But there's feeling in the Farlands discourse that something subversive is going on – especially when people are finding methods to manipulate the algorithms.

"It defies the logic of what should make good content," Maddox says. "TikTok has stuff it likes. Instagram has stuff it likes. The Farlands goes against that."

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Though it's worth remembering that if it all makes you spend more time on TikTok, that's exactly what the company wants.

However you spin it, the Farlands is part of a larger trend. People have been switching to "dumb phones" for years. Analogue cameras and wired headphones have made a comeback. AI backlash has grown so popular the Pope is talking about it. There is, in general, a feeling of tech rebellion rumbling across our society.

Maybe it's just an interesting historical blip. Or it could be a sign of things to come.

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