Professional Sweetheart: 1/17/25
Adventures in the Algorithm, Part 3: TikTok, Mon Amour
Hello subscribers! Here’s another free issue for everyone. If you feel like taking things to the next level to unlock a bunch of stuff, including full archive and commenting abilities, feel free to do so here:
Welcome to another entry in a weird little occasional series I started a while back about internet algorithm rabbit holes and my scattered thoughts about them. If you want to read the others, you can go here and here.
So, by now you’ve probably heard about the plans to ban TikTok in the States as of this Sunday, January 19th. As someone who has made very good peace with my TikTok addiction recently, I am bereft by this news. My whirlwind romance with this app of the past year was discussed a few times on my former podcast where I went back and forth with my personal feelings about it. I actually feared TikTok for a long, long time before downloading it. It was entirely due to the rumors of it being run by foreign spies (bad press works, by the way) coupled with my core belief that the internet is always being used by scammers and murderers (firmly established by my experience of being a 90’s kid cluelessly surfing the early days of the world wide web). But curiosity, and the frustration of never being able to see the videos I was being forwarded, eventually got the best of me and here we are!
Like I said, I went through a substantial love/hate period with it at first. I took it off my phone several times, even deactivating my account once or twice. In these hate moments, I think I resented the fact that young people went to TikTok to assert these very Young People Opinions™ about movies and music, of which I never agreed. It also made me mad that TikTok seemed to REALLY exacerbate the flawed idea of anyone and everyone presenting themselves as an expert, especially in the mental health/wellness space, but also literally anything else, from food to travel to astrology. I even got annoyed with the viral dances after a while. And just when I felt like my brain would rot out from all the scrolling over what was essentially space garbage, lo and behold I started finding things that entertained, informed, and relaxed me. I now come to you with the plain fact that I’m not only obsessed with TikTok but I also just love it, for at least five reasons:
The lack of polish or professionalism is awesome.
This is one of my favorite things about TikTok. After going through roughly four months of super annoying social platform training at my last job, I more or less learned that TT seems to have the loosest “rules” of how you’re able to approach it as a person making content. Meaning, you don’t necessarily have to have fancy backgrounds, lights, HD makeup, or any of that high production stuff to be successful. I see a lot of videos by people who are just in their car or bedroom, often in pajamas and no makeup, at unflattering angles, in their work uniforms on break, whatever — and it totally hits. Granted, I’m not making videos on TikTok (and won’t…unless someone wants to pay me millions of dollars, haha). But in my lurking, I’ve noticed that TT can get real loosey-goosey, more than anywhere else I visit regularly, which is great. At the same time, there are also people on it making very high-quality stuff but amazingly it’s usually about the weirdest things, like glass bottles being thrown down marble staircases or very elaborate fan supercuts of favorite moments from Full House or some shit. I swear I’ve seen horny celebrity clips so sophisticated that you wonder if the people making this very niche content are also editing Marvel movies in their spare time. But when you combine these two things, it always presents as a funny range of high/low and I love it.
Of course, there’s been all this debate about where people will eventually go to get their fix once the ban is in place. I always think this is an interesting thought experiment. If you want my opinion (it’s fine if you don’t), I do not think it will be Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts or Facebook-whatever, which all feel sort of cooked lately (well, maybe not YouTube, but definitely the ol’ Zuckerberg haunts). Maybe it’s that Reels always felt like week-old TikTok at best. To me, IG basically created the “influencer” concept and lots of places on TT often feel very de-influenced to me — maybe that’s it too? Or maybe it’s simply that nobody ever wants to go back to old platforms once they’ve moved on from them.1
All I know is, I did create a RedNote account recently, just in case. Goodbye!
Most people my age don’t use it / don’t want to use it, and I love that. For me.
Look, I’m not trying to be the current iteration of Madonna when I say this but I like that most of my middle-aged friends and family refuse to be on TikTok. It feels like the one thing y’all can really gather around about some days. So, I guess you must just HATE that I’m hanging out with my young friends now LOL!!!!!!
My point is ultimately that it’s actually fine. Do we all need to be on the same apps all the time anyway?! In this scenario, you get a break from my esoteric film screen grabs and dumb, forward-facing videos about lipstick colors I like and I don’t have to see you and your kid at Wicked. It’s cool! Just imagine we’re the social media equivalent of Nick and Nora from The Thin Man, sleeping in separate twin beds in the same bedroom. Lovely!
It’s also possible that maybe I’m just a fool and that I’m actually the weird old lady at the young people place, who came alone, and is now off to the side doing an interpretive dance without a care in the world. Oh well, I still don’t give a fuck. She might have been a total weirdo, but she was always harmless, okay?! Just buy some of her paintings or handmade jewelry after the show and let her COOK!
Training your algorithm sucks but eventually you will be rewarded with fun/weird/interesting stuff.
Not gonna lie, this got a little funky. The times where I did deactivate, it was because I thought my “For You Page” (a.k.a. the “randos feed” that features algorithmic content outside of the accounts/friends you follow) was heading in some very stupid directions. No clue how it actually happened but suddenly my FYP was nothing but straight, tech bro/nouveau Tony Robbins types and scoldy dating advice from 23-year-old white girls. Eventually, though, it got back on track and I have since been rewarded with the greatest shit ever, including but not limited to:
car detailing videos
carpet cleaning videos
videos of things being crushed by a hydraulic press
interviews with rappers I like
Japanese woodworking
this guy who pressure washes dirty road signs in England
poetry
color theory videos using kinetic sand
an Asian guy who regularly goes into convenience stores in South Korea and eats microwaveable ramen with a melted mozzarella stick on top multiple times a day
mid-century modern furniture and decor dupes
compilations of cats who sound like they’re speaking English words
people who own little dogs and set them up to do little harmless physical challenges like jumping over dominos, set to music from the original Super Mario Bros. Nintendo game
time lapse gardening videos
People making traditional Chinese food in rural China
A Russian woman who uses acrylic markers on heavy cardstock as ASMR (just go with me on this one)
It’s truly the place where memes are born, a.k.a. it’s funny as shit.
Believe me when I tell you, I find so many funny things on TikTok. It’s such a hub for weird humor. I mean, I never thought I’d ever use the term “MY SHAYLA” in a conversation or laugh at Timothee Chalamet in a mustache going, “Uh….uh…”, but I’ve done both. If you could see my Liked Videos, you will understand it’s very much like a beautiful museum of random shit I have laughed at over and over for the past twelve months. And I swear to god, I tend to it with the thoughtful and gentle touch of fuckin’ Peter Sellers in Being There. It is my menagerie, my master work.
Almost every night, a girl I went to high school with gets on a live broadcast with guys from all over the world, and I basically get to see them going on funny dates.
So, here’s a good story. I went to school with this girl Jessica who was also lovingly known as “La Boricua: The Craziest Puerto Rican to Ever Live” (she also dated a semi-famous rapper but that’s a story for another time). She was fun, stylish, beautiful, vibrant, and one of the only people of color around (we went to a REALLY white high school). We’ve kept in touch on social media since then, and I even went to visit her a few years ago because she lives not too far from my parents in Florida. I’m happy to report she is still, if not even more, amazing which very rarely happens in life. A few months ago, I was scrolling TikTok and noticed she was doing these live videos where she interacts with one or more people, which I quickly figured out were complete strangers. A lot of times, they were attractive men, and she and they would seem like they were flirting with each other in a very joyful, cute way. It was massively impressive! Since then, I’ve seen other instances of this on my FYP with people I don’t actually know at all, and have figured out that it’s basically like coming across a random person who is in mid-conversation with someone (or just themselves). And apparently you can just pop in and check things out if you want. (Like, I’m not sure you can even do this on IG — I’m pretty sure you need to be following someone to see if they go live?) It is SO fascinating to me. I never, ever go into any of them but in a weird way, I kind of like that it exists, if people want it? I will say, I have gone into La Boricua’s on occasion and every time she’s stopped to notice and shout me out, even if she’s in the middle of rizzing someone up. What a peach!
Anyway, hopefully I’ve made a compelling case here. With just days left with my lover, I’ve been hearing of a possible stay of execution that’s in front of Congress right now, which might extend TikTok for another two hundred days (?) or so. We shall see. All I know is, they’re really going to have to take this thing away from my cold, dead hands at this point. I am sat!
Talk soon,
Millie
Except Livejournal.
I've feared Tik Tok too, but purely because I was afraid I'd become hopelessly addicted. Now I'm feeling like I very much missed out, and a little bit sad.
I do have it so I can open things people send me, mainly clients (I'm a therapist). I do think there's some danger in so many arm chair experts about, but I've been surprised to find that there's also a lot of really good and interesting reflection and info, particularly from folks who are underrepresented or ignored by the mental health field. And sure, I've had to navigate a few iffy Tik Tok self diagnoses, but whenever a client says, "I saw this Tik Tok and I think I'm xyz", I'm like, send it to me. This is one way of explaining how they feel or what they're experiencing. And that's helpful. I'm going to miss that, for them and for me.
blessed we were all able to be alive and together at a time when social media wasn't about algorithms curating feeds.
laughing at the idea that when we die and we stand before god at the pearly gates and he asks you if you've been a good or bad person and you go "i've been a good person" and he goes "okay well let's go through your tik tok algorithm history for minute"
kinda sad i never got into tik tok. thinking about jumping on and just going HAM with it this weekend until it gets nuked.