London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Aug 30, 2025

The Cartel has taken over TikTok...

Guns, Drugs and Viral Content: Welcome to Cartel TikTok. Mexico is set to shatter another murder record, but that grim reality is nowhere to be seen on the TikTok videos that go viral by showcasing drug cartel culture.
Tiger cubs and semiautomatic weapons. Piles of cash and armored cars. Fields of poppies watered to the sound of ballads glorifying Mexican drug cartel culture.

This is the world of Cartel TikTok, a genre of videos depicting drug trafficking groups and their activities that is racking up hundreds of thousands of views on the popular social media platform.

But behind the narco bling and dancing gang members lies an ominous reality: With Mexico set to again shatter murder records this year, experts on organized crime say Cartel TikTok is just the latest propaganda campaign designed to mask the blood bath and use the promise of infinite wealth to attract expendable young recruits.

“It’s narco-marketing,” said Alejandra León Olvera, an anthropologist at Spain’s University of Murcia who studies the presence of Mexican organized crime groups on social media. The cartels “use these kinds of platforms for publicity, but of course it’s hedonistic publicity.”

Circulating on Mexican social media for years, cartel content began flooding TikTok feeds in the United States this month after a clip of a high-speed boat chase went viral on the video-sharing platform.

American teens were served the boat chase video on their For You page, which recommends engaging videos to users. Millions liked and shared the clip. Their clicks boosted the video in the For You page algorithm, which meant more people viewed it.

And once they viewed the boat chase video, the algorithm began to offer them a trickle, then a flood of clips that appeared to come from drug trafficking groups in Mexico.

“As soon as I started liking that boat video, then there’s videos of exotic pets, videos of cars,” said Ricardo Angeles, 18, a California TikToker interested in cartel culture.

“It’s fascinating,” he said, “kind of like watching a movie.”

Others began noticing the surge of cartel videos as well, and posting reactions to the deluge of guns and luxury cars filling their feeds.

“Did the cartels just roll out their TikTok marketing strategy?” asked one flummoxed user in a video viewed some 490,000 times. “Is the coronavirus affecting y’all’s sales?”

Asked about their policy regarding the videos, a TikTok spokeswoman said that the company was “committed to working with law enforcement to combat organized criminal activity,” and that it removed “content and accounts that promote illegal activity.” Examples of cartel videos that were sent to TikTok for comment were soon removed from the platform.

While cartel content might be new for most teen TikTokers, according to Ioan Grillo, author of “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” online portrayals of narco culture go back more than a decade, when Mexico began ramping up its bloody war against the cartels.

At first, the videos were crude and violent — images of beheadings and torture that were posted on YouTube, designed to strike fear in rival gangs and show government forces the ruthlessness they were up against.

But as social platforms evolved and cartels became more digitally savvy, the content became more sophisticated.

In July, a video that circulated widely on social media showed members of the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel in fatigues, holding high-caliber weapons and cheering their leader next to dozens of armored cars branded with the cartel’s Spanish initials, C.J.N.G.

The show of force appeared online at the same time President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was visiting the states that make up the cartel’s stronghold.

“That is kind of a kick, a punch in the stomach to the government’s security strategy,” Mr. Grillo said.

Mr. López Obrador, who campaigned on a promise of confronting crime with “hugs not bullets,” has so far been unable to make a significant dent in the country’s soaring violence, with a record 34,582 murders registered last year alone.

But while some videos are still made to strike terror, others are created to show young men in rural Mexico the potential benefits of joining the drug trade: endless cash, expensive cars, beautiful women, exotic pets.

“It’s all about the dream, it’s all about the hustle,” said Ed Calderon, a security consultant and former member of Mexican law enforcement. “That’s what they sell.”

According to Falko Ernst, senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, a global think tank, some of the TikTok videos may be produced by cartel members themselves, especially young hit men or “sicarios” keen to show off the spoils of war.

Still, he said, most are probably filmed by young, lower-level operators in the gangs, then shared widely on the web by their friends or those longing for the lifestyle.

But whether they are made and shared by cartels or simply produced by aspiring gangsters, the ultimate goal is the same: drawing in an army of young men willing to give their lives for a chance at glory.

The gangs, Mr. Ernst said, depend on this “sea of youngsters.”

And while videos of bejeweled guns and decked-out cars have been circulating on Instagram and Facebook for years, TikTok has brought a new dimension to the cartel genre.

“The message has to be quick, it has to be engaging, and it has to be viral,” said Ms. León, the anthropologist. “Violence becomes fun, or even put to music.”

One video, which attracted more than 500,000 likes before it was removed, shows a farmer slicing unripe seed pods in a field of poppies, presumably to harvest the resin for heroin production.

“Here in the mountains, there are only hard workers,” says a voice-over. “Just good people.”

In another video, from a now-disabled account called “The clown of the CJNG,” in reference to the Jalisco cartel, a figure dressed in black with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15 rifle does a dance move known as the Floss.

Such videos may be intended for a Mexican audience, but for users in the United States who help promote them, they tap into an increasingly popular fascination with the cartel world, one propagated by shows like “Narcos” on Netflix.

That was in part the allure for Mr. Angeles, the California teenager, whose parents emigrated from Mexico before he was born.

Even as he acknowledged the real-world violence behind the videos, Cartel TikTok has become a way of connecting with Mexican popular culture from a safe distance.

“There’s a difference between watching ‘Narcos’ and getting kidnapped by one,” Mr. Angeles said.

The videos also provide a stark reminder of what life may have looked like had his parents not sought better opportunities north of the border.

“I could’ve been in that lifestyle,” Mr. Angeles said. But “I would much rather be broke and nameless than rich and famous.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
A new faith called Robotheism claims artificial intelligence isn’t just smart but actually God itself
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner Purchases Third Property Amid Housing Tax Reforms Debate
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Italian Facebook Group Sharing Intimate Images Without Consent Shut Down Amid Police Investigation
Dutch Foreign Minister Resigns Amid Deadlock Over Israel Sanctions
Trump and Allies Send Messages of Support to Ukraine on Independence Day Amid Ongoing Conflict
China Reels as Telegram Chat Group Shares Hidden-Camera Footage of Women and Children
Sam Nicoresti becomes first transgender comedian to win Edinburgh Comedy Award
Builders uncover historic human remains in Lancashire house renovation
Australia Wants to Tax Your Empty Bedrooms
MotoGP Cameraman Narrowly Avoids Pedro Acosta Crash at Hungarian Grand Prix
FBI Investigates John Bolton Over Classified Documents in High-Profile Raids
Report reveals OpenAI pitched national ChatGPT Plus subscription to UK ministers
×