The video begins with a close-up of toes wrapped around a ping pong ball. “What’s that?” sounds the trending TikTok soundbite. Then the camera pans to a full-body shot of the athlete, armless. With the ping pong bat in his mouth, he smacks the ball up from the ground and smacks it cleanly over the net. “OK, I like that, Picasso,” sounds from the audio as the rally continues.

The clip has already garnered more than 10 million views and it is easy to interpret it as a mockery of the athlete. Many people do. But the team behind the official The Paralympic TikTok account wants you to think differently.

“It’s OK to laugh with a person with a disability,” says Craig Spence, Chief Brand and Communications Officer of the International Paralympic Committee Front Office Sports“Now we laugh with them; we don’t laugh at them. There is a really important difference.”

The IPC’s official TikTok account has over 4.5 million followers, more than major sports leagues, including the NHL and WNBA, viral 76ers rookie Jared McCain, and every major professional U.S. sports team except the Kansas City Chiefs and Golden State Warriors.

@paralympics/TikTok

The Paris Olympics were a huge success, with rising viewership on NBC, a strong lineup on Peacock and constant viral moments on social media. The Paralympics, which begin on August 29, will get a boost from being broadcast in full on Peacock; they will get their own Goldzone and Multiview, both of which made a splash at this year’s Olympics and drove up ratings; and will be broadcast in a record number of countries, with all 22 sports shown live in some form for the first time. But TikTok will also be a major contributor to raising awareness of the Paralympics.

Social media has been a major driver of Olympic hype, allowing it to reach a wider audience than just cable viewers. Now the Paralympics and individual athletes are poised to take the Games in a new direction with an army of younger, internet-savvy fans.

The IPC is active on all social media platforms, but TikTok is by far the most successful. Aimed at appealing to a younger generation of sports fans, TikTok is “more entertaining, informative, fun, quirky and engaging” than the other platforms, says Spence, who oversees the organization’s social media channels. (The wizard behind the account is a Paralympic competitor whom Spence refers to only as “TikTokTony.”)

“I think our recipe for success has been that in all of our posts we want to show great sport. … You’ll see things or incidents that only happen in Paralympic sport that you don’t see in disability sport,” Spence continues. “And then, like in any other sport, we’ll show when something goes wrong.”

His team’s strategy is working, as the account regularly collects videos with millions of likes. The most successful clips often show mishaps or pick up on popular trends, often audio clips that circulate in the app. Short highlights take up most of the space in the feed, which is also peppered with informative explanations about Paralympic sport.

Spence says he is already seeing signs that the IPC’s strategy is sparking a new kind of fan base. “What has really pleased me over the last few weeks is the number of people who have made comments … saying, ‘I didn’t know that about the Paralympics. This time I’m going to watch the Paralympics.'”

The relationship is mutually beneficial. The social platform announced a partnership with the IPC on Thursday that will use TikTok Live for Paralympics content at the opening and closing ceremonies, tours of the venues and interviews with athletes, their loved ones and fans. There is also a financial component where viewers can pay for “exclusive gifts” while watching the official account’s or other creators’ livestreams. For every “Phryge gift” (named after the French hat that inspired the red mascot of the Paris Games) that fans send, TikTok says it will donate to the IPC’s sport development programs.

@paralympics/TikTok

The opportunity is more perfect than ever, as audiences are hungry to absorb everything on the Internet. Internet culture writer Kate Lindsay tells FOS She followed the Olympics mainly through social media and the first content she saw in the run-up to Paris came from the Paralympics account.

She credits both Olympic athletes and official accounts like Peacock with being “more social” (think Norwegian swimmer “Muffin Man,” gymnast Suni Lee parodying the “Unfortunately I didn’t get selected for the Olympics” trend, athletes’ comments about dating in the Olympic Village, and pretty much anything from rugby player Ilona Maher).

Lindsay says the Paralympics TikTok is already attracting attention with its fun, internet-savvy tone – a tone that Peacock’s own account adopted during the Olympics. “I think (the strategy) was a good idea because it would be really bizarre in another way if Peacock’s account was so cheeky and funny about the able-bodied athletes, but then the Paralympics weren’t having as much fun,” she says. “But it’s all a party – we’re all having fun.” Lindsay says excluding the Paralympics from the online hilarity is another form of “othering.”

The Paralympics TikTok came under heavy criticism in April 2023, especially from people without disabilities, who claimed the account was disrespectful and made fun of the athletes. Many took offense at the tone, especially in funnier videos featuring viral silly noises. One of the videos that became the target of backlash showed blind triathlete Brad Snyder fumbling for his bike while classical music played and he compared his movement to playing an air piano. Snyder reposted the videos on his channel and publicly praised the account’s approach.

“The overwhelming feedback from Paralympians is that they love this account, they find it exciting and our athletes have a great sense of humor,” says Spence, who admits the posts have to strike a balance but will never please everyone. “I listen to our athletes more, whether they’re offended or not, than people anywhere else.”

Hunter Woodhall, a Paralympic 100m and 400m sprinter, says it can be “difficult” to find the best way to broadcast Paralympic sports online, but gives the IPC account his blessing.

“Ultimately, they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, which is raise awareness of Paralympic sport,” Woodhall says. “Sometimes, no matter how you do it, if you can get people to watch the sport or pay attention to what people are doing, then you have an opportunity to change things and make them better for the athletes and the sport.”

@hunterwoodhall/TikTok

About 16% of the world’s population – an estimated 1.3 billion people – live with mental or physical disabilities, according to the World Health Organization. By putting disabled athletes front and center, “both the live events and social media accounts challenge the stigma associated with disability,” Woodhall says, with the goal of creating more opportunities for the world’s disabled population.

This opportunity could even mean sending new athletes to the Paralympics. Spence says he knows “a number of athletes” who started participating in disability sport because they saw it on a Paralympics social channel.

The same goes for the athletes’ own accounts. Woodhall has 3.2 million followers on his own TikTok account and another 235,000 or more on his joint account with his wife, Olympic long jump gold medalist Tara Davis-Woodhall. He says FOS that another runner at the national championships told him that he started running because of Woodhall’s videos.

“I think that’s the magic of it, that everyone can see what we’re doing and say, ‘Hey, I can do that, too,'” Woodhall says. “If I just stay myself, people will understand that they can do the same thing and be themselves without feeling bad about it.”

He adds that social media has “100 percent” helped make more people aware of disability sport and realise it’s not just a “charity thing”. He and Davis-Woodhall have already shared a viral moment in Paris when the Olympian jumped into her husband’s arms and celebrated her victory. The moment went viral, especially among Taylor Swift fans, as it was played to her song “The Alchemy”, whose lyrics are about a couple celebrating a sporting victory.

In addition to Woodhall’s success, Anastasia Pagonis, a blind swimmer, has 2.5 million followers, Jessica Long, an amputee swimmer, has 1.3 million followers and Nick Mayhugh, a sprinter with cerebral palsy, has more than 850,000 followers. Combined with the success of the Paralympics account, “no one can argue that this isn’t having a positive impact on the awareness of the sport,” says Woodhall.

Cultural author Lindsay tells FOS“I feel like (the account) breaks some kind of unexpected stigma that people don’t think about, and in a good way. Being successful online is about speaking the online language and showing that you can do it, even if your circumstances and body are different. Everyone has a place online to have fun and be cheeky.”