TikTok influencers are reshaping how we think about life behind bars...
TikTok influencers are reshaping how we think about life behind bars...
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My favorite TikTok video starts with a clean-cut man in a baseball cap walking down a snowy street. “I'm going to my favorite teacher’s house from when I did my 21-year prison bid,” he tells the camera. “She is the BOMB. She doesn’t know I’m coming. Here we go, let’s surprise her!”He knocks, then turns back to the camera.
“I’m So Nervous Right Now,” the caption reads. Seconds later, the door swings open. “Mr. Lacey? Oh my God! How are you?” his former teacher cries, dissolving into laughter and then tears before inviting him inside. The 54-second video went viral last year with more than 2.7 million views. Michael Lacey — who did 21 years in Indiana prisons and now posts under the username Comrade Sinque — went on to become one of the top creators in the niche realm of prison TikTok, where people who did time tell the rest of the world what it’s like and put faces to the concept of mass incarceration.
“People are just giving you a real example about what that life looks like,” he told me. And the community of formerly incarcerated creators and their followers have been overwhelmingly supportive, he said. “It’s kind of ironic,” he added, “but prison TikTok is one of the most positive places on the app.” There is, of course, another variety of prison TikTok — videos by currently incarcerated people with contraband phones who show the world the abysmal conditions they live in and the variety of . The latter was a 59-second video showing the 24-year-old in her living room staring straight at the camera spitting out rapid-fire facts. It racked up more than 11 million views.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2...fe-behind-bars
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