How I stopped worrying & learned to love TikTok

Okay, fine, "love" is maybe too strong a word, but still.

I am not a proud woman.

When I refuse to get involved in whatever thing everybody else seems to be into, it’s not out of some sense of misplaced superiority. With the possible exception of Discovery’s alarmingly robust reality television line-up, which includes twelve different shows inviting viewers to gawk at morbidly obese people, there’s very little that I pointedly refuse to acknowledge out of propriety. There’s simply too much stuff out there to take it all in. Too many TV shows, too many movies, too many books, too many people on YouTube I’m supposed to know about. Unless I can make a deal with God that I cannot die until I’ve experienced all of it, I never will. There’s just not enough time, and we’re chasing our own tails faster than ever before.

I also don’t look upon with distaste the things that are popular with the youth. Despite whatever other people my age may tell you, what younger people enjoy is not by default silly and pointless. It’s just not for us. I decided a long time ago that TikTok, despite its immense global popularity, was not for me. I gladly accepted individual videos sent to me by friends, but actually downloading the app and scrolling through it proved to be a baffling and overwhelming experience.

The interface seemed designed specifically to prevent anyone over 40 from using it¹. Without understanding how to at least slightly skew the algorithm towards stuff I wanted to see, I mostly got advertisements, reels of flat-voiced young women applying makeup while talking about things that had nothing to do with makeup, and endless videos of white people dancing to the same song². The videos my friends sent me seemed very tailored to my interests (even the weird ones), but I came across nothing like that in my own idle browsing. So I gave up on it. It’s fine, it’s just not for me. I’m too old for that shit, and when I say that I don’t mean “I’m too smart and mature,” I mean in the Roger Murtaugh saxophone riff sense.

And then, for reasons I am not yet sure I understand, a couple weeks ago I decided to give it another shot. Without shame, I asked Megan, my resident TikTok expert friend (and the one who sends me the most #onbrand videos), to explain to me just how in the sweet fuck I was supposed to make it so I’d see something other than videos of young men “pranking” strangers on the street and nearly getting their asses beat for it. With the patience of a saint, she explained: use the search function. Search for stuff that interests you. Be generous with your “likes.” Use the “I don’t want to see this” button liberally³.

You know what? Now that I’ve cracked the code (more or less), it’s often pretty entertaining. It’s also dumb as hell much of the time, but what about the miserable current state of the world isn’t? I’d rather see some guy yelling about his love for root beer (which I can totally get behind) than watch one single second of Ron DeSantis’s dumb fucking face. I even figured out how to make and upload very simple videos, and because I have to work out my addictive personality somewhere the immediate response of other people watching them is nicer than I’m comfortable admitting. I will likely never show my actual face on it, but I won’t lie, I have been considering other ideas for #content, for an app that contains such an infinite number of videos already that even if you were bedridden for six months and unable to sleep you probably still wouldn’t be able to watch them all.

Here’s a few other things I’ve learned in my recent excursions into TikTok:

There is a surprising amount of older people using it. Yes, true, TikTok skews very heavily towards Gen Z, but (perhaps because by internet standards I’m ancient as well) I do come across many videos from people my age and older. Now, true, a lot of those people focus on interminably dull “back in my day” or “let me tell you spoiled young whippersnappers a thing or two” shtick, but at least they’re there, and I don’t have to feel like the weirdo hanging out in the local playground.

There are a lot of really funny people there. Ever since my journey into TikTok began I have been tormenting my family by shoving my phone in their faces and demanding that they “watch this, it’s hilarious.” I’ve watched at least a dozen times a clip of someone reenacting a scene from Oppenheimer using kitchen tongs and a can of soup. There are numerous accounts whose sole purpose is commenting on 5 Minute Craft videos, and many of them are riotously funny. Lately I’ve been watching clips of people who deliberately seek out the lowest-rated restaurants in their towns, including one guy who orders a slice of pizza that is so burnt it audibly crunches when he bites into it. I don’t think any of this is dumb or pointless, I’m just annoyed that I didn’t think to do it.

Surrealism is alive and living on TikTok. Nothing can really prepare you for the weird shit you may encounter just idly scrolling, like a clip of a single slice of bread on a counter as an upbeat guitar riff plays over it. Then there’s the unintentionally weird stuff, like a series of clips I found of a 60-ish woman poorly lip-syncing country songs against an animated background. Though it suggests a Tim and Eric sketch, as best as I can tell she’s completely earnest. She’s just putting it out there for either everyone or no one to see, and I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Whatever niche interest you may have, there’s probably a TikTok for it. Yes, obviously, true crime dominates a large parcel of real estate there, as it does everywhere else on the internet. But maybe you’re more interested in 18th-century cooking, or the cultural history of 70s furniture design. Or perhaps you want to pass an hour of your valuable day watching clips from Solid Gold. It’s all here, once you know how to look for it. “But Gena,” you may protest. “Can’t you get all that on YouTube?” Yes, but sometimes you just want a bite, an amuse-bouche of information, rather than 57 minutes. Hey, I own my short attention span, I have a professional diagnosis to back me up.

You might see a clip from Kevin Bacon in which he prepares breakfast for himself. He enjoys steel-cut oats with fruit.

Now, I know the love affair won’t last. I know that it’s just filling in a hole previously occupied by Twitter back before it was owned by Richie Rich But He Sucks. I know that it’s the internet’s current favorite source for misinformation from people who have designated themselves “experts” on nutrition, fitness, spectrum disorders, and mental health. Even beyond that, I know eventually, like the rest of social media, the novelty will wear off and it will begin to frustrate and irritate me, because I never fucking learn my lesson about anything. Is it a “good” place? Well, I suppose that’s subjective. But as I continue trying to find ways to distract myself from an increasingly bleak world and uncertain future, it serves a necessary purpose. What else am I supposed to do, read a newspaper? There aren’t any left!

1. See also Snapchat, which I did use for a brief time, until it seemed like every new update made it harder to use, despite it being mostly a delivery device for dick pics and selfies with a Twilight sparkly vampire filter.

2. In ten minutes of scrolling one very dull morning I heard Megan Trainor’s “Made You Look” so many times that I thought it was a glitch.

3. I christened mine with one of those godforsaken “Dr. Pimple Popper” videos, because no fucking thank you.