South Asians for Change as TikTok Influencers: Sujoy Menon

By Tanya Khan

By Tanya Khan

56.7 thousand followers and 4.2 million likes. But Sujoy Menon is more than the amount of followers he has, or the cumulative likes he’s receives on videos. That is, Sujoy Menon is more than just a statistic. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Menon for a series about South Asians for Change that I wanted to embark on. I jotted down this idea on a post-it note and let it resonate with me for a couple of minutes, desperately trying to think about which internet or community personality I could interview, when I fatefully stumbled upon Menon’s TikTok account. Immediately, I realized he wasn’t just another South Asian teenager trying to get famous and cater to the dominant discourse by creating meaningless videos-- his page was entirely different. After scrolling through some of his videos, I knew right away that he was the personality I wanted to interview. 

So, who exactly is Sujoy Menon? 

The short answer-- a sixteen year old Indian-American teenager who resides in the state of New Jersey. He is one who finds comfort in familiarity, but also one who looks for new opportunities and craves risks to feel alive. 

The most unique trait, as simple and arbitrary as it may sound, that I found in Menon was his empathy and care for others. He founded In This Together, a nonprofit organization that aspires to raise awareness regarding problems concerning mental health in adolescence, with the goal of decreasing stress and anxiety in teenagers. 

Menon’s fight doesn’t stop with advocating for individuals struggling with mental disorders and the neurodivergent community. His first few videos were about equality for womxn and combating sexual assault by tackling the exigence of this epidemic-- rape culture. Though “these videos didn’t get many likes, I began to get happy with the message I was sending to my viewers” explained Menon. Soon after, he realized he wanted his page to be centered around advocating for minority rights. He began educating his viewers on the Black Lives Matter movement, and why South Asians particularly should be allies to, disputably, the most marginalized and silenced racial group in America today-- the Black community. 

“In the middle of a basketball game, I was told to ‘go back to being chained and enslaved’.”

After sharing this racially charged and hateful remark Menon had to listen to while playing a sport that he loved, he explained that just because the color of his skin gets darker while he perspires, someone had screamed this to him. This is what members of the Black community face everyday-- whether they are lighter or darker-skinned doesn’t matter, because they have afro-centric features that distinguish them from other, less marginalized groups with more euro-centric features. 

Menon put the value in allying with the BLM movement in simple terms, “we [BIPOC] have been oppressed for so many years, so if one of our own is victim to societal and systemic racism, it is our humanitarian and personal obligation to relieve them of their struggles to the best of our ability.” 

He went on to talk about the very real and deep-rooted colorist ideologies that are embedded in South Asian culture, with advertisements for skin lightening creams like “Fair and Lovely” broadcasted throughout the subcontinent. These toxic beauty standards and ideologies trickle in to many of the South Asian community members’ biases while talking about pressing issues regarding the Black community like unequal pay, police brutality, lack of healthcare, and gentrification.  

In order to combat anti-Blackness in his own household, Menon is “always respectfully educating [his] parents to eradicate these thoughts that parts of our culture has endorsed for many years in the past, and still continues to do so.” 

Pleasantly, something that Menon says was “just a joke in the beginning,” with the creation of his TikTok account, has turned into a movement that has sparked so much change and impacted so many people from newer generations. His page serves as a safe place and safe haven for South Asians and other BIPOC individuals. 

Despite being told to go ‘hang himself’ by internet trolls, Sujoy Menon knows that he is in this world to create a difference, which he has already begun to do. 

“I believe that nobody ever stops finding themselves in a journey-- this is just he beginning.”