John Turco, a University of Wisconsin student-athlete on the rowing team better known as “The Butter Dawg” on TikTok @_butter_dawg_, seems like your average college athlete. He goes to practice, goes to class, does everything he has to do, and repeats. However, he has an interesting quality about him that sets him apart from others: he eats an unconventional animal-based diet, which includes eating entire sticks of butter and other non-traditional foods like raw bull testicle, raw animal hearts, and raw bone marrow.
Butter Dawg started his TikTok recently, posting his first video in September, 2022. As such, he started off as someone who just posted about his interesting lifestyle but quickly turned into a “nimcel,” or a “niche internet micro celebrity.” Nimcels are individuals with small followings that like to post about what they do or enjoy who randomly go viral on social media (Lorenz, 2022). For Butter Dawg, his theme was and still is nutrition and fitness as he simply wanted to show people his unconventional diet and provide an insight on how that affects him as a student athlete and as a person, making it clear that he intended for an audience of individuals who were considering a diet like his. However, he eventually blew up on TikTok after posting a video eating raw bull testicles wrapped around a stick of butter which he referred to as a “Testicle Butter Dog,” garnering over 1.8 million views and earning him the title of “The Butter Dog.” As such, this turned him into a nimcel as his lifestyle has morphed him into a micro celebrity with a small, niche community of individuals intrigued by his diet (Lorenz, 2022).
Of course, nimcels are typically people who do not monetize from their random success and do not intend to do as such. They simply want to do things “for the fun of it” (Lorenz, 2022). However, some nimcels will use the random fame as an opportunity to try to become a legitimate influencer (Lorenz, 2022), or a typical internet user who gains a mass online following through sharing their lives with others (Abidin, 2015). Such an action pushes them away from being a nimcel since being a nimcel means not trying to go mainstream (Lorenz, 2022). In Butter Dawg’s case, he is losing his nimcel title by doing as such. Butter Dawg started off by eating butter and regular meats, but his diet seems to grow more obscure with the more popularity he gains. In addition to this, he has even started promoting animal-based diet products from companies that decide to sponsor him.
On December 1, 2022, Butter Dawg posted a video on TikTok about his “go to snack for the office.” This snack was a stick of butter between two pieces of dried brisket chips and was set up as a typical video of his. He talks about the food, mentions the nutritional value, and eats the food on camera. However, this video differs from others as it clearly advertises a product called “Carnivore Crisps” in the form of an advertorial, "highly personalised, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee" (Abidin, 2015).
However, though the video contains a promo code, states the name of the product, and mentions that the link to the product is in his bio, his fans do not seem to mind. This is because they have developed such a large level of perceived interconnectedness, or one-sided relationships that give viewers the false sense that an influencer is intimately sharing aspects of their lives (Abidin, 2015), from his videos that they ignore that the overall message of the video is that the viewers should buy the product he is advertising.
Butter Dawg constantly responds to comments, takes food recommendations from viewers, and posts “Day in the Life” videos. In doing so, he appears as someone who just wants to share his life with everyone; ultimately, causing followers to think they have intimacy with him since they feel close to him (Abidin, 2015). This perceived interconnectedness / this mirage of intimacy his followers have ultimately allows for videos like the one he posted on December 1st as they essentially give him the opportunity to profit from his following (Abidin, 2015).
With this being the case, it can be said that Butter Dawg is camp. Even if he may deliberately eat wild things for views or monetization, he still presents an unconventional and non-traditional style of eating that is playful in a way where it is serious but not serious, living up to several ideas of camp from Susan Sontag (1964).
In the December 1st video, for example, he ate a stick of butter with two dried pieces of beef while referring to it as a “snack,” which is ironic since that is not what most would consider to be a snack. This “snack” of his creates a playful environment where one can laugh and feel all sorts of emotions while viewing it, resulting in a “seriousness that fails” (Sontag, 1964, pp. 7) since the irony of his “snack” makes it something that one would pay attention to for the fact that it is unusual (Sontag, 1964). As such, it can be said that the perceived interconnectedness his followers have comes from this campiness of his “snacks” and “diet” as “it’s good… because it’s awful” (Sontag, 1964, pp.13), causing people to want to interact with him and build an intimate relationship with him. Of course, the more people interact with his content, the more of an opportunity he has to interact with them, creating more and more of this perceived interconnectedness at every turn (Abidin, 2015).
In all, this once turned nimcel is branching into a world of being an influencer and is growing as each day goes on. Even as he begins to monetize from his successes, for as long as he produces false intimacy with his viewers through his campiness, he will continue to grow and monetize from it.
References
Abidin, C. (2018, February 28). Communicative ❤ intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness - ada: A journal of gender, new media, and Technology. Ada. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/
Butter Dawg. [@_butter_dawg_]. (2022, December 1) Healthy snack idea for work #fyp #trending #viral #carnivorediet #carnivore #snack #nutritiontips #healthyeating #fitnesstips #collegelife #healthyeating #tips [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@_butter_dawg_/video/7172210319589264683?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7173135130134316587
Butter Dawg. [@_butter_dawg_]. (n.d.). [TikTok profile]. TikTok. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.tiktok.com/@_butter_dawg_?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Lorenz, T. (2022, September 2). Niche internet micro celebrities are taking over the internet. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/24/nimcel-influencers-tiktok-youtube/
Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on "Camp"
This TikTok account seems almost comedic but reminds me a lot of other creators like Liver King who was recently outed as a steroid user instead of a meat-only consumer. Butter Dawg capitalizes off of the same sensationalism and flurry of viewer excitement that plagues much of the app nowadays. After briefly scrolling through his account, I appreciate your breakdown of the profile page, and I think a lot of this content can even be connected to Drenten’s article, “West Elm Caleb and the rise of the TikTok tabloid.”
ReplyDeleteEven though this page is not rooted in the new media tabloid, a lot of the stitches and reactions to Butter Dawg’s videos are essentially tabloids. Other users try to piggyback off of Butter Dawg’s eye-catching content by simply gagging or disapproving. Butter Dawg’s unoriginal yet still shocking content is best captured by Drenten: “The emergent TikTok tabloid relies on dynamics of social surveillance, or “the many watching the many” – a network of everyday people watching and being watched.” (Drenten 2022) The stitches that populate Butter Dawg’s page are indistinguishable.
Every response video reads as a form of gossip about someone as niche as everyone else. Your labeling of him as a nimcel is spot on, and I would even say that his newfound fame — stemming from many of the tabloid stitches to his videos — explains his transition to advertorials. A taste of his potential fame from various user’s coverage has encouraged Butter Dawg to expand his scope in his videos. Increasingly popular users all have the same arc thanks to TikTok’s enabling coverage of new pop culture content.
Commenter: C.H. Henry