<user name> mentioned you.
At the time of writing this article, there are probably a couple 100s or maybe even 1000s of live streams on TikTok that are broadcasting a similar activity: writing the names of people that watch that stream. #nameart has over 600K posts, #comment_your_name 3.3 million.
Drop your name in the chat, and the live creator might pick you and replicate it. You can donate a gift to heighten the chances of being picked. The interaction that follows can range from elegant calligraphy with rainbow coloured gel pens, soft-lighted ASMR name writing (and whispering) on a cute tabletop sandbox or your name translated into Japanese or Arabic, to sloppily slapping names on exposed skin with a heavy black marker, scribbling names on a calendar next to your birth date, or just plain typing.
I once even came across someone tattooing the names of the people that donated a gift. Here’s another one of those. An excellent and quite disturbing scroll stopper. Add the title of this article as the caption of the live stream, and clicks are almost guaranteed.
Interaction = validation
Seeing the sheer amount of live streams and their interactions, there is a clear appeal to seeing your own name appear broadcasted. But what about that exactly makes the dopamine flow? Is it the fact that someone is acknowledging you, ‘seeing’ you on the other side of the screen? The feeling that you contribute to the live stream? Purely seeing your name in aesthetic lettering? Or - quite literally - leaving your mark?
Since these kinds of live streams are often flooding with people spamming their name in the chat, the interaction itself is very fleeting. Yet there is seemingly value enough to keep trying to get your name in. Spam it in the chat or comments, beg a little to be picked. Which is great for the content creator of course, because - in a nutshell - engagement means money. But what’s so desirable about seeing your name appear on screen for around 1 or 2 seconds?
‘Elijah was here’ - or how to capture an experience, forever
This name writing trend reminds me about a course on tourism I once took. In this course, we dove into various social-economic aspects of tourism. One topic that we talked about, is people often feeling the need to leave a mark at a place they visit. They write their name (or Instagram handle nowadays - but that is another discussion) on the staircase wall in an old castle, or carve it into the wooden handrail at a scenic viewpoint.
Buying a Hawaii-branded keychain with your name in the souvenir shop and the picture that you take in front of the tower of Pisa are other (more well-behaved) versions of this phenomenon: an act to claim a place a little bit as yours. Putting your personal stamp on it, as an attempt to transfer your experience at that moment in time into something tangible & durable. So that you can feel like you can take it home with you and make it yours there too, forever.*
I need to feel something…like I belong.
When you get home after the holiday, you can’t wait to show your holiday snapshots and souvenirs to your friends and family. But have you ever wondered why people get tired of watching someone else’s holiday pictures? Because showing these to someone else who was not there, is like asking them to try and help you relive your holiday: “please help me feel like I felt there”.
Your portrait at the famous landmark or your name tag on the castle wall is proof that you were there. So that you can be seen by others, at home and/or back in that place. Literally (‘I was there’) and figuratively (‘the qualities of this place are also qualities of me’). And to be seen, is to feel like you belong.
Seeing your name being written by someone else might be so enticing exactly because of that reason: it makes you feel like you belong, there and then. The live streamer acknowledges you, and your mark is created. In aesthetic lettering, because you have a sense for aesthetics, too.
You were seen. It made you feel alive, at least a little. You passed by the souvenir shop, sent a gift, received your name in a cool design.
You screenshot it. And probably never look at it again.
*While doing a little Google deep dive on name writing on monuments, I came across this video which is actually quite intriguing. However, today we have many other methods of letting a story live on through generations other than by carving it into a wall.