#DeathTok is Actually Full of Life

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It’s late at night and the moon is sending a slice of silver through the window where—contrary to my sleep specialist’s recommendations—I am using my phone in bed. On the screen, a young white woman with short, messy brown hair and a hoodie dances laconically to DJ Casper’s “Funky (Cha Cha Slide Sped Up).” A text overlay reads: “Never had the s3x talk but did recently have a talk about where my money will go when I die (25 w/ stage IV cancer).” The pairing of peppy music with a serious topic is jarring. It’s also classic TikTok, marrying the tragic and the absurd to the meme of the moment. 

It’s even more jarring when you know this: The video popped up on my For You Page (FYP)—an infamously algorithmically-driven recommended firehose of content on TikTok that greets users upon opening the app—in March of 2025. But the creator, Kasey Altman, died in 2022, just five months after she posted that video. I didn’t have to search for Altman: TikTok knew that I wanted to see her. 

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