E/n Is Trending in the More Narrative Corners of TikTok — Here's What It Means

As it has continued to grow and evolve, TikTok has become more and more catered to what each user might want from it. While there are certainly things that trend across large swaths of the platform at any one time, there's also plenty of stuff that is more niche, and it can be hard to understand those particular things when you come across them out of context.

One great example of this is the acronym e/n, which is common in certain parts of TikTok, but is obviously confusing if you've never seen it before. Here's what we know about what the acronym means.

E/n is not exclusive to TikTok, and it's often found in posts that are more focused on narrative and storytelling. As it turns out, the acronym is actually a placeholder that stands for "enemy's name," and is commonly used in the world of fanfiction and in other forms of storytelling online.

This kind of placeholder is used to give readers the chance to insert their own name choice into the story, and in doing so, make the story more personal to them.

In addition to its use on TikTok, the acronym can also be found on Wattpad, which is specifically designed for this kind of fiction, and it also pops up on Twitter. The idea is to engage in a role-playing scenario where you can imagine that people from your actual life are engaged in a far-flung scenario. It's definitely not something that everyone would be interested, but plenty of people find it to be an interesting exercise.

For obvious reasons, e/n shows up most frequently in scenarios where the story being presented involves some level of antagonism. These are often stories of triumph, where the character you're inhabiting is able to overcome obstacles that are put in their way by an antagonist. Not every narrative story has this placeholder, but there are a bunch of others that are also commonplace in this world of role playing.

Among the other common acronyms are:

• Y/n, which stands for your name
• H/n, which stands for his or her name
• Bbfn, which stands for boy best friend's name
• B/n, which stands for brother's name or boss's name, depending on the story
• F/n, which stands for friend's name
• T/n, which stands for teammate's name.

While not every story in this space is likely to resonate with every person, the idea behind the exercise is to give you a chance to engage in some structured daydreaming. While most stories teach us how to empathize with others, these stories give us a chance to live lives very much outside of our own.

These spaces exist outside of TikTok, but the video platform has become a popular way for users to engage in these kinds of immersive stories. Whether you're interested in this kind of role playing or not, hopefully you at least understand a little bit more about what it is now.