Crusaderpilled: Masculinity, Muslims, and Medieval Knights on Tiktok

This paper examines Crusader imagery on social media to show how creators are deploying the Crusader knight in new ways. By drawing on a shared image of traditional masculinity, the Crusader knight draws affinities between users from a variety of religious and national backgrounds. After a brief look at the history of the internet cultures that inform it, the second half of this paper analyzes widely viewed knight edits on TikTok, taking into account the captions, tags, and comments to get a better sense of how the Crusades have been memeified, communicating affect and vibe more than alignment with a particular religious historical narrative. Ultimately, I show that Crusader content is shaped just as much by internet culture as by the religio-political groups that deploy it.