It’s a new era in Asian America, and the TikTok generation is running it. 

Scroll a few times on your For You page and you’ll easily come across several Asian “It Girls” bringing in millions of views showing off ancient beauty rituals. A few more swipes up and you might find home cooks packing bento boxes or musicians mixing ’70s Bollywood songs with viral pop hits.

The panic of opening an ethnic lunchbox in a crowded cafeteria is dead to them. It has been traded in for videos of their moms’ recipes narrated by artificial intelligence. The teasing endured for expressive classical dances is in the rearview mirror. They’re now making money doing the same dances on the internet. 

What was once a burning thirst for representation has been satiated, even drowned, on the internet, young people said. And for a generation of Asian Americans raised on social media, whose culture has always been ill-defined, stereotyped, asterisked, relegated to the sidelines and viewed in the shadow of whiteness, coming into their own means putting a heritage they once tried to bury on full display.