I joined TikTok for a week and it made me feel sad.
Is TikTok creepy AF? Or am I just nostalgic for the "good old days"?
A couple of months ago, I quit Instagram. Ok, not quit quit – because, let’s face it, I’m a millennial (and a mum) – but I quit enough to uninstall the app from my phone. My account was still available, should I ever want to re-upload the app (spoiler alert: I have) and I could still access it from my laptop if I desperately needed a hit of mindless scrolling, or to reply to the occasional message. Feeling quite happy with myself, I lasted about a week before that relentless feeling of wanting to look at something… anything… anyone… snuck back into my mind, despite the fact I had chores, admin and work to do, and a toddler to look after full-time. So, I downloaded TikTok.
I’d seen the short videos pop up in my Instagram stories with increasing frequency – the thing (or should I say, one of the things) about TikTok is that you can actually download and save videos that you like, then share them either on your messaging service of choice or on another social media platform, like Instagram.
I was intrigued.
So the little musical note icon appeared on my phone interface and away I went. I signed up and made an account, but didn’t bother putting a bio or even a profile photo. I was there purely as a voyeur. And being a voyeur is not hard on TikTok: the moment you open the app, videos start playing. The first I saw was a person lip-syncing the song Montero (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X as they skateboarded down a street in L.A. Every few seconds the person’s outfit would change – one moment they were wearing baggy shorts and a tee-shirt, the next they were in a black mesh top with a black bra, tiny hot pants and heart-shaped sunglasses. I was mesmerised. The skill of the skateboarder and the infallible lip-syncing was incredible. I hit ‘like’ then scrolled down. Some videos weren’t as interesting as the lip-syncing skater, but most were either very funny or very clever – or both. In fact, unlike almost anything I’d ever seen on Instagram, some TikToks had the ability to make me truly laugh out loud. Not just LOL, but actually, physically belly laugh. Just search for the guy who performs metal drum solos and inserts clips of random Karens absolutely losing their minds in Walmart/car parks/restaurants if you don’t believe me.
I’m not sure how the algorithm works, especially as I entered almost no details about myself, but I was being shown a lot of LGBTQIA+ content, BLM activists, feminists and people standing up to online trolls and bullies – and I was HERE. FOR. IT. Everything I’d grown sick and tired of on Instagram –influencers and ‘zen mamas’ with their toddlers dressed in chic beige outfits with better wardrobes than I’ll ever have – didn’t seem to exist on TikTok and instead I was blown away by the hilarity and intelligence of people from all around the world, popping up in my feed. It all seemed harmless enough.
But, very quickly, a funny feeling washed over me – much like it had any time I’d opened Instagram recently. I started to feel a bit icky. Was it because I’m a 35-year-old mostly stay-at-home mum watching a bunch of Gen Z kids lip-syncing and performing WAP dances? Nope, that wasn’t it. I couldn’t put my finger on it… Until I scrolled onto something I’d never seen before. On my screen was a girl, staring deadpan into the camera, performing a one-person skit with music playing over the top of it. She was mouthing words, but instead of hearing her voice, little captions played across the screen and changed colours depending on what character she was being i.e. herself, her teacher or her dad. A caption below the video explained that she was performing the POV (Point of View) of a student/parent/teacher interview where the student asks her French teacher (in French) to get help because these aren’t actually her parents, they are people who have kidnapped her. The teacher replies in French then excuses herself, presumably to go and call the authorities. The father of the student says he’ll go and get whatever the French teacher said she needed from the room. The teacher explains he can’t, as she needs to go into the teacher’s lounge which has limited access. The father laughs and says he understands, he used to be a teacher too. The teacher asks what he taught. Cue: dramatic pause and climatic music. The father replies: “French”.
Dun, dun, dunnnnn!
He has heard and understood everything his “daughter” has told her teacher and we are left with the impression that some serious shit is about to go down now that he’s been outed.
It was so cleverly done, I had to see more. Sure enough, this person’s entire page was chocka with similar, suspense-filled skits in which she is playing all the characters and mouthing the words while the captions reel on by and music plays over the top. I was so impressed. What a brilliant idea! What a brilliant actor! How novel! How unique! Ahh, but that’s where I was wrong. Tearing myself away from this mini-mystery treasure trove, I scrolled down and sure enough, another young woman popped onto my screen, also performing a one-person skit. Also a suspense-filled mystery. Also about being kidnapped. I checked out her page and, sure enough, many of the storylines were the same as the first account I’d looked at. I left that one and not three scrolls later had landed on yet another budding solo actor, also performing very similar skits. I wondered which came first. Who was copying who here? How many more of these copycat actors were out there?
Then I realised, I didn’t care.
I closed the app, uninstalled it, and reflected on a week of wasted time spent scrolling through random people’s videos.
But something had hit a nerve and made me feel a little…. haunted. By the next morning, I’d figured out what it was. All of these people, all around the world, were performing these skits, these monologues, these rants, these lip syncs and these dances, mostly in their room or their car, to a static, unfeeling, inanimate object, by themselves. Alone. Yes, there were some really great things being said, complicated issues being raised and tough subjects being tackled, but the words were all coming from one individual at a time, each speaking into the void with no one to converse with other than the soulless screen in front of them. A one-sided chat with no warm body sitting across the table or sofa from them ready to concur or offer their thoughts and opinions, instead just the harsh black and white text of typed replies in the comments section.
It’s this that has made me feel sad. Perhaps I am mourning a time gone by, that will never be again – where kids really were kids and all we cared about was impressing each other and sharing secrets, gossip and our deepest thoughts IRL. I remember being (at least) fifteen and - in a supremely uncool moment - painting “camouflage” stripes on mine and my friends’ faces then waiting until it was dark and running through the nearby fields pretending we were on some sort of secret mission to find god knows what. It was so childish and ridiculous but we didn’t have a care in the world at that moment; no inhibitions and certainly no suggestion of getting it for the ‘Gram (not least because we were still living in the days of MSN Messenger being a new and scary thing – and something we were very often grounded for using).
So maybe this is all just nostalgia.
I don’t want anyone thinking I am a bitter old Boomer who thinks the youth of today are all messed up loners who spend too much time on the internet – for the most part, I am genuinely impressed by, and in awe of, the knowledge, confidence, creativity and ballsiness of the younger generation (and the makeup…. the makeup!! At 35 I still can’t apply eyeshadow correctly let alone mess with the contouring, highlighting and eye-lining that some of these kids are pros at). Not to mention, I can’t tell you how goddamn happy I am that a significant portion of kids and teenagers *these days* are standing up for what they want and what they know is right, whether that’s rejecting society’s ideals around gender norms or trying to save the planet from the dumpster fire previous generations have created. Their attitudes and determination have actually had quite a profound effect on me…. But that’s a story for another day!
I have sat on this ending for over a week now – enough time to reinstall Instagram and delete over 1400 people, places and brands I was pointlessly following. I don’t see myself ever getting TikTok again, though. I think I will leave that for others to enjoy – after all, for many, it is their way of sharing their talents, thoughts and opinions with the world, and good on them for creating a platform from which to do that. Me on the other hand; I’m left feeling even more like I want to burn all screens and never let my now 15-month-old son learn what social media is. I realise that’s impossible, though, so I guess all I can hope for is that even if, when he’s 15, he spends hours in his room making up dance routines to share with thousands of followers through a phone screen, he is also spending time running through fields with his friends, covered in face paint and using his imagination until he is laughing so hard tears are rolling down his cheeks. Just like we did back in my day.