There's this thing that happens on the internet, maybe you've seen it...
Someone makes a short video, an explainer with quick, punchy sentences, or maybe remixes a meme with big, expressive hand movements, and, just like that, something with nuance, history, and purpose becomes more accessible to a mass audience.
The most obvious version of this phenomenon can be seen in those short sidewalk or living room dance videos aimed at going viral on TikTok, with lots of cultural appropriation involved (if you need a reference, Khalil Greene breaks it down with examples).
As an art form, dancing has a whole history, context, and set of perspectives, and street dance is a subset that tends to be more improvisational. In a lot of ways, it creates culture which more formal dance than responds to.
There is something that stands out: when you look at these clips, particularly the ones that go viral, a big part of the job of these dancers is to fit their moves into a 9:16 frame, which is the standard vertical video size for TikTok and other mobile-focused video apps.
Whatever their research, practice, personal experiences, or other settings a dancer may be familiar with, if they want to be successful on TikTok as a medium, everything is shaped by that 9:16 frame.
And that impact goes beyond the app – because what's required for "going viral with a dance video" is now being translated to other spaces, to the point where the hand and body movements of dancers in competitions, at performances, and on the sidewalk are created with that vertical video format in mind.
In other words, TikTok as a platform is now shaping "what dance is" and spurring new kinds of knowledge (culture) about what it is, why it matters, and who is defining and pushing on those definitions.
But it also creates a limitation: in this context, dance becomes overly oriented toward the performance...if it can't fit into that 9:16 frame, is it even worth doing?
And this problem isn't limited only to dance...
Snappy videos (photos, blogs, news briefs, tweets, THREADS 🫠 ) about workplace culture – specifically, how to do it efficiently, ethically, and intentionally – are consistently optimized for performance, and that, in turn, is impacting the design of our teams, tools, and workflows.
Creating, practicing, and performing knowledge each has value, but it's important to be transparent about the how, why, and when… and not to over-focus on performance because it can have devastating impacts on trust and, ironically, work performance and retention over time.
Hiring/interview example:
Candidate is tested in an interview to see if they can show how they solve problems and judged based on how well they package the answer (performance of knowledge)
Candidate works on a paid project with a current problem or opportunity from the organization and is given extra context and access to people involved in it, and judged based on the actionability of the solution (practice of knowledge)
Candidate is hired as a short-term consultant to develop documentation on how to operationalize and describe roles, tools, and processes for a problem or opportunity (creation of knowledge)
Workplace example:
Team member is asked to create a quick graphic with findings from a customer survey (performance of knowledge)
Team member develops questions and structure for a customer survey using a data collection tool (practice of knowledge)
Team member creates a guide for how, why, and when to gather customer data at the organization, including key product/service decisions driven by data in the last 2 years (creation of knowledge)
Is there an overlap between some of these things? Yes, without question.
But, understanding when each comes into play not only surfaces hidden tasks (which increase frustration, distrust, and chaos in workplaces), it also makes it easier for anyone on a team and anyone leading a team to identify who is best placed to work on which element of a project or operational model
As AI tools, platforms, and databases are connected to our existing workplaces, talking openly about the differences between creating, practicing, and performing knowledge is only going to become more important.