How I Stopped The Doomscroll & Learned To Love TikTok
Wow! You Can Really Dance!
This year, technology reporter Karen Ho started tweeting out reminders that it is okay to stop the “doomscroll,” a painful lesson that there is such a thing as “knowing too much.”
(I also spoke to talented writer and esteemed critic-of-things Emily Yoshida about the internet she loves…scroll down for more of that!)
Doomscrolling is a new and unofficial term to the digital lexicon that taps into our nightly process of firing up the ol’ phone machine and endlessing refreshing, flicking our thumb up and down our phone and ingesting an entire week (month?) of headlines in just one hour. Covid-19, death ripping through entire communities of at-risk people, economic uncertainty, job loss and financial systems crashing, more death (this time of unarmed black men), extremely divisive personal politics, social unrest, some more death (this time, your favorite celebrity), death, death, death. A fun thing about living on the West Coast: I would wake up, and the news-covering individuals will have been puttering around for the last three hours, making it feel like I was awakening to a new pot of fresh hell every morning.
My friends, it is a lot!
But sometime at the beginning of the year, I ventured into this strange new world of TikTok. I’ve always been pretty adept at social media, but I felt like this was just one new platform I just didn’t get. There is dancing? Donald Trump hates it? KPop has something to do with it? I was confused. It was all bright lights and flashing objects and I felt a bit adrift.
But then, like most things in media, came an assignment at work that asked (as these sorts of things tend to do), how can we make TikTok work for us? And I thought, like, I should know this stuff. It can’t be too hard. It is just a longer Vine, and we all know how much I love that.
And then, it happened. I found a couple weird TikTokkers that seems to soothe me, like the incredible @GhostHoney and his absurdist skits. Then I was served the Washington Post, which has nothing to do with the actual newspaper and seems to singlehandedly employ a very funny guy to do TikToks. Then, of course, you have your requisite cute animals.
But as I started to explore, I discovered a whole host of strange communities that seemed to thrive, on positivity, inclusiveness, and understanding that a lot of us were on TikTok trying to do the same thing: Scroll our pain away. I followed a southern dude who spends his entire feed talking to white people about “reverse racism”, handling all sorts of right wing talking points in a folksy way. Dungeons and Dragons TikTok was ripe with lots of female DMs and one guy who hosts a friendly tavern that always welcomes you. Even found some cool places to learn things like song origins or a ton of animal facts. (In fact, learning is an entire facet of TikTok—you can follow accounts that teach you something daily in one minute increments.) And most importantly, the sheer inventiveness of storytellers—who use creative methods or repurposed sound clips to add to the narrative—is astounding.
Earlier this year Quibi, a Silicon Valley-funded platform that supposed, erroneously, that people want developed, well-done pieces of content to watch on their phones, shut down. Because that was a failed proposition: No one wants to watch a beautifully produced and serialized story done by fancy Hollywood names when you have a democratized platform where truly creative weirdos are able to unite with other truly creative weirdos…and for free. On our phones, we want to laugh, we want brain tingles, we want things that feel authentic. That’s why we love memes: they look like shit, but they also look familiar.
And TikTok might go the route of Facebook; pretending to be a media company and switching algorithms mysteriously while mining the attention economy. But for now, it is home to the most interesting content out there, and a sweet balm for the shrieking sounds we make daily while screens burn into our eyeholes.
Here are some of my favorite, most absurdist trends I watched this year. Maybe this guide will help you gently scroll for your gentle soul. (Sorry. It rhymed. I couldn’t not use it.)
Enslaved pets
I don’t understand this trend, but it was so strange and Dadaist that I had to include it. I supposed I understand the need for personal freedom at all costs, even if your snake ends up committing crimes.
Bi-rates
I texted my friend earlier this year and was like, “Did you know there is a big trend going on right now on TikTok where bisexuals transform into hot pirates and then ask to be a part of your crew in full pirate-y costume” and she never texted back.
Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” Turned Into Bardcore To Describe Doing Something Quaint
This is one of those hard-to-describe trends that do not make sense unless you boil your brain daily on the internet, but this trend just encapsulated the feeling of doing something very quaint and how enjoyable it is to have, say, something wrapped in wax paper or calling your dad “Papa.”
Calling The Ways Animals Sit “Distinguished”
I don’t know what I like about this soundbite so much but it really pleases me because they think they are little distinguished gentlemen, and they are not!
Wow, You Can Really Dance
It Started When We Were Young
Search by music and watch hundreds of videos of people re-enacting cute things their pets and kids did when they were much smaller. It’s hard not to endlessly scroll.
Over 50 TikTok
The most insane, hilarious, and well produced videos come from the over-50 bunch on TikTok, and I enjoy them so thoroughly. There is a gentle account of a woman just talking to you about tea, and she “spills the tea.” Beware of the fucking dragons.
Sexy Waluigi
People love Sexy Waluigi, the oft-overlooked Mario baddie.
If you do not think this is a thing, just search #Waluigi.
Ratatouille: The Musical
I think a lot about people beginning a bit for fun and then the bit takes life of its own and suddenly you have a fully formed, entirely established musical. (See? This is why Quibi wouldn’t have worked. We want to watch strangers in bad costumes impress us, not impressive people in normal costumes tell us stories!) Based on a call to action, all of TikTok began to submit their ideas for a Ratatouille musical, based on the Pixar movie, and somehow a fully formed musical HAPPENED. Like, songwriters wrote songs. Costumers created costumes. Dancers choreographed moments. A Broadway producer stepped in. Eventually, Disney had to submit to the crowds, and a musical was born because we were BORED AT HOME AND WROTE A MUSICAL ABOUT A COOKING RAT.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the internet, once extremely isolating, is now the only way we connect with each other, and I’ve been thinking about how we use social media to reach out to strangers and how storytelling has changed. It’s given me a deluge of Things To Think About, so I asked some of the most thoughtful people I’ve encountered online to tell me about how their digital consumption has changed this last year.
Emily Yoshida once wrote for lots of different great places and now writes for film and TV. She also directs, and she has some of my favorite thoughts on anime and conducted the single best interview of all time.
Me: What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Emily Yoshida: The Sylvanian Families [@SylvanianUK] on Twitter for brain-cleansing optimism and simplicity that I can sometimes trick myself into thinking is the most radical account on Twitter, and 80smodern [@80smodern] on Instagram for vintage interior design that gives me the warm fuzzies. I follow both of those up by fully committing and crawling back into the womb.
Me: What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
EY: This lecture by the late Marshall Berman about what he terms “urbicide” — the planned destruction of a city. https://dissentmagazine.org/article/emerging-from-the-ruins… It’s about what happened to the Bronx in the 1970s — the intentional, almost fantastically ghoulish neglect by the city in hopes that so-called “unproductive” communities would just move away — but notes of it feel relevant for what is happening to cities and communities after almost a year of lockdown with little to no meaningful financial assistance to anyone but that MyPillow guy. I read it for a sci-fi project I’m working on, because almost anything I read about the modern history of urban development in New York sounds like it’s straight out of a sci-fi horror movie. (I’m trying to make “real estate horror” happen. Someday it will happen.)
Me: Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
EY: Not currently, though I’ve lurked in my share over the years. My favorite off the top of my head is YouTube Elevator enthusiasts.
A great, deceptively mundane tour-of-the-mind during COVID times. (I don’t know about you, but my elevator ridership is at an all time low this year.)
Me: What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
EY: Azaelea Banks calling Elon Musk “Apartheid Clyde” … 10/10 incredible work.
Me: What is your meme of the year?
EY: This summer while on a mild dose of hallucinogens I discovered Froggy Chair, and most importantly, Thanos' reaction to Froggy Chair. I had not seen Infinity War or Endgame, nor played Animal Crossing when my fellow trip-partner showed it to me, but I think I broke my spleen having the kind of laughing fit that feels like it’s been sent down from heaven to kill you in the most merciful way possible.
Come by next week where I talk to Bakoon and more about his best of the year.