Cute Winter Boots: Explaining TikTok’s Latest Viral Trend

Over the weekend, another algospeak term has gone viral on TikTok. Though ostensibly referring to footwear, videos labelled “cute winter boots” are fuelling controversy with right-leaning users who claim it’s actually a call to leftist violence.

The videos come after the first week of Trump’s presidency, which brought a slew of alarming executive orders that seemed straight out of Project 2025 (which the president claimed to know nothing about on the campaign trail). 

Axios published a handy executive order tracker, which includes orders calling for mass deportations of immigrants, erasure of trans rights and trans individuals from public life and a severe roll-back of Civil Rights worker protections. It’s easy to see why many netizens are preparing for the worst.

Combined with the widespread perception that social media companies are bending over backwards to get on the new government’s good side – as we’ve seen from Meta’s regressive rebrand and TikTok’s peek-a-boo ban and return under Trump – many find themselves in an online environment rife with mistrust and division.

And nowhere is that mistrust more apparent than in the use of algospeak. The portmanteau refers to language meant to bypass content moderation algorithms on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube and prevent videos from getting taken down or demonetised. 

If you’ve ever scratched your head at phrases like “unalive”, “corn” or “kermit sewer slide” (meaning “kill”, “porn” and “commit suicide” respectively), then you’ve been exposed to algospeak. Its main point is to enable content creators to discuss topics flagged as socially or politically sensitive without getting penalised, as is the case for “cute winter boots”.

It Probably Comes from A Poem about War

“Cute winter boots” is likely inspired by a poem titled Boots, by Rudyard Kipling, written in 1903 about the Second Boer War in South Africa. A reading by actor Taylor Holmes from 1915 re-entered public consciousness last year after it was used to promote Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies map Terminus and later in the trailer for zombie horror film 28 Years Later. 

Given how emotionally electrifying the 1915 recording is, it could have moved young netizens to co-opt the poem’s repetitive chorus (“Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!”) into their message of resistance. The stirring audio can be heard in the background of some of these videos.

So, What Does ‘Cute Winter Boots’ Mean?

Most of the posts labelled “cute winter boots” contain a mix of advice about staying safe from “ice cream trucks”, which is algospeak for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or preparing for potential civil unrest. “You're going to memorize your first amendment rights, because those are the rights you're exercising when you're out in your cute winter boots," one video instructs. 

Another post explained the words might mean “different things for different people” and encouraged those using it to join existing communities of like-minded folk instead of trying to create their own from scratch.

“Some people are talking about safety and self-protection, some…are talking about finding and developing community…using your voice and staying informed.” They add that some Conservative TikTokers believe “cute winter boots” is a covert call to violence – a narrative that isn’t “going to serve us.”

Other videos share tips on evading facial recognition software and staying safe at protests, and even advise about preparing “bug out bags” for everyone in their families in case of an emergency.

The Backlash

Meanwhile, Conservative users think the “code word…cute winter boots” refers to “pew pews” (algospeak meaning “guns”) and that “Liberals may be insisting (sic!) an Illegal Immigrant Revolution” (capitalisation not mine). 

In response, some are making their own videos in which they threaten violence against leftist content creators. The comments under many of these videos are filled with death threats and hate speech targeting immigrants and anyone they consider to be “woke”. 

Content labelled this way takes advantage of TikTok’s algorithmic preference for product-focussed videos by using a fashion-related tag. Other obfuscating tags include “Taylor Swift”, “Wicked” and other currently trending topics. Many of the videos also link to TikTok Shop pages where, instead of cute boots, users can buy “Night” by Elie Wiesel, a book about the Holocaust, or protective gear to be worn at protests.

Many “cute winter boots” videos also bypass censure by having two or more different types of content nested into each other: the audio talks footwear trends while the video shows emergency supplies and pen-and-paper hand-written notes on resisting ICE officials. Sometimes letters are capitalised at random to spell out a hidden message, like the word “revolution” hidden inside a debate on velvet vs. corduroy shoes. 

Some videos hint at protests happening on 29 January, but, as expected with a trend that relies on distrust of mainstream channels, information on that is scant.