The inexplicable lure of TikTok Live

On finding some glimpses of reality in the unreality of social media.

I stole this image from CNBC, they can afford it.

About a year ago, late to the party as usual, I started using TikTok. In what feels like the waning days of social media (or at least, a shift in how people perceive and use it), as Xitter continues its descent into Hell, its would-be successors have left me cold. BlueSky is great if you like being chastised about the many ways you could “do better,” as is Threads if you were just hatched from an egg yesterday and have never been asked if Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Both lack the juice of Twitter in its heyday, when journalists and genuine weirdos could peacefully (mostly) share the same space.

Instagram, with its baffling “perhaps you’d like to see this picture your friend posted back in April” algorithm and near-total commitment to advertising, isn’t doing much better. Nor is Facebook, which has also become more of a digital billboard than anything else, when it isn’t pushing groups, Reels, and, most insidiously, AI-generated content. It suddenly feels like nobody knows what to do with any of it anymore, not creators, not those who profit from it, and definitely not users, who want to leave but can’t, because that’s where all their friends are.

And then there’s TikTok, which is, to paraphrase the sage David S. Pumpkins, doing its own thing. I don’t consider TikTok as social media. I don’t “socialize” with anyone there. You can comment on people’s videos, but I rarely do, mostly because the algorithm will determine that I immediately want to see 50 more videos just like them. Mostly I just watch, treating it like flipping through television channels, except that it’s real people and not actors.

Well, mostly real. Beyond the actual advertisements, which sometimes blend so seamlessly into the algorithm that I barely notice them, influencers take up a large portion of TikTok, usually pushing makeup, offering dubious “nutritional advice,” promoting excessive use of home organizational products, or filming themselves at Target or TJ Maxx while they fill shopping carts with pre-packaged food and mostly useless home decor items, like throw pillows and wooden signs that say FAMILY on them. With their long, impeccably manicured fingernails and shirt cuffs pulled down to their knuckles¹, there’s a disturbingly bland white woman sameness to influencers, which makes the stranglehold they have not just on teenagers, but full grown-ass adults with jobs and families that much more fascinating (and deeply creepy²).

So no, much like Instagram (and really, much of social media in general), you’re not getting reality so much as a carefully curated, idealized version of it, where everyone’s on an endless vacation, has the resources to redecorate their homes every six months, and, above all else, always looks younger than their actual age.

But you know where you can get a dose of reality? TikTok Live.

I didn’t pay much attention to TikTok Live when I first started spending time on the app, assuming it was mostly people selling stuff. I accidentally stumbled onto a feed one morning when I was strapped to a chair during dialysis and at my most bored. It was a woman in her sixties listening to classic rock and doing crafts, just talking to her viewers and answering their questions. It wasn’t exciting, she wasn’t doing anything like peppering her friendly grandma chatter with QAnon rhetoric or anything like that. She was just talking, like someone was sitting in the room with her, and it was oddly soothing.

So I’ve spent some time since then scrolling through other live feeds (because you can just slip in and out of them unnoticed like a huge party), and continue to be surprised at how most of them are just slices of everyday life. A couple of amiable dudes who remind me of my brother-in-law working on a lobster boat. A puppy rescue. The everyday workings of a diner kitchen in upstate New York. A kid working an evening shift at Burger King. Someone taking their audience on a walking tour of Savannah, Georgia, Times Square, San Diego. People dancing in their houses, doing Tarot card readings, making crafts or artwork. So many people sitting outside watching the sun rise or set, just talking to that unseen audience like they’re old friends.

Is it exciting? No. But again, like Crafting Grandma (I don’t actually remember her handle, I’ve just started referring to her as that), it’s soothing.

It’s also often poignant. Sometimes I’ll come across people who are bedridden due to illness or disability, and need companionship. I’ve also seen a few feeds from people in Gaza, hiding out in tents or shelters, providing a viewpoint you won’t see on the news. They’re stark contrasts to live 24 hour feeds at Disney World, or wherever Taylor Swift happens to be performing at the moment.

Nothing shocking or unexpected has happened so far. It’s just regular people, no influencers or celebrities, living their lives (or not, if you’re stuck hiding out in a tent in Gaza). It’s an unvarnished, unchoreographed look into other people’s worlds, in a way that feels like what social media is supposed to be, and not this heavily filtered “you should envy and aspire to have a life as perfect as mine” horseshit we see so much of everywhere else.

I find watching someone make pizzas or run farming equipment far more compelling than someone who’s able to constantly dine out at 5-star restaurants and travel overseas every other month while being cagey about where the money comes from to do all that³. The pizza and farming equipment people, those are my people, and I enjoy the sense that together we’re pushing back against social media’s obsession with conspicuous consumption and carefully curated aesthetics.

I’ve even found myself thinking “Hmm, maybe I should try it.” But don’t panic, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. For one thing, TikTok requires that you have at least 1,000 followers before you’re allowed to do a live feed, and I’m nowhere near that. I also have no particular desire to show my face on live camera, though it’s not required. But just doing a live feed of something is tempting, maybe just taking a morning walk on the boardwalk at Coney Island and just…talking. Just being another real voice for people to find soothing. It’s not such a bad idea, I suppose. Though I don’t know how to make pizza.

1. This apparently creates the illusion of “cute and cozy,” so that you don’t feel like you’re being intimidated into decanting everything in your refrigerator into individual plastic containers, even though you sort of are.

2. This has resulted in a “deinfluencer” movement, in which content creators are encouraging people to think twice before laying out $50 for a “limited edition” Stanley water bottle.

3. Answer: it’s probably either free, or they’re in massive credit card debt. Sometimes they have wealthy parents or spouses, but usually it’s the first two.