My friend Kyla believes that if you were born in 1995 you get to decide whether you belong to Millennials or Gen Z. Or rather, that there isn’t so much a choice involved but that some ‘95-ers are Millennials and some are Gen Zs. I personally think I’m Gen Z. Mostly because it’s funny to say out loud and also because I am obsessed with Tik Tok.
Guys? Guys. Tik Tok is… the wildest app I’ve ever dived into. Whenever I read an article about it people liken it to Vine which is only kind of true. Both apps give people the means to make short videos, and a few people use Tik Tok the same way they use Vine, but IMO that’s where the similarities end.
Vine was mostly about bored teenagers writing their own sketches or playing pranks on their parents. Tik Tok is mostly about staring at yourself in the front-facing camera.
For all my olds out there, Tik Tok used to be Musical.ly, which was an app where teens lip synced to songs. On Tik Tok people are still lip syncing to songs but also doing a lot more mediocre dancing and putting makeup on potatoes and direct to camera monologuing.
If you spend five minutes scrolling through the For You section of Tik Tok, you will realize that it is incredibly white. Conservatively I would say that 70% of Tik Toks are made at the sleepovers of white teenagers. Lots of these videos involve white people (of any age) lip syncing to audio of black people rapping or talking. If you watch enough of them you might start to wonder where the line is between White Teens Having Fun and something that occasionally approaches minstrelsy. That’s usually the point when I put my phone away and read a book.
Despite all of its horrors, actually, scratch that, mostly because of its horrors, it is very easy to lose an entire hour of your life on Tik Tok. Who are these people? Where do they live? What are their lives like? What is compelling them to participate in a meme where they just slowly open their eyes while an XXXTentacion song plays? Are any of these people self-aware? Do any of them know shame? These are just some things I have thought while watching these videos in my bed, trying to not drop my phone on my face.
Here are some of my favorites. You will quickly notice that this is an app run entirely by locals. This is their world, and I am simply a visitor.
(There is no good way to do this in Substack so I’m just going to hyperlink them out. You really should download the app and fall down your own rabbit holes, but watching them in a browser will also suffice.)
This woman who tells a really long story about going to Walmart to buy a lot of yarn and lying to her husband about it. It’s literally… so boring and I guess there’s a punchline? It’s like the video equivalent of the sassy home decor that white moms love.
This meme where teens use the audio from a different Tik Tok to pretend that they’re playing “Fireflies” by Owl City over their school’s PA system.
This one that is basically just a Vine.
This one that I don’t even want to describe you really just have to watch it.
This lawyer who’s Tik Tok famous. He posts from his office and also his home and sometimes you can tell that he’s doing it after his family has gone to sleep and it makes you uneasy.
Similarly, this Tik Tok famous orthodontist who has nothing going on behind the eyes. Who is he? What is he thinking?
As you can tell my brain is rotting from the inside out. Add me on Tik Tok @oliviacraighead.