Maybe 10% of my brain is paying attention to things going on around me in the real world, i.e. my daily life. The other 90% belongs to the internet.
I’m not going to say that’s a bad thing. Before I broke down and got a smartphone in 2016 (I resisted as long as I could), I lived a very small life. I would hazard to say that everything that followed has been for the good.
For one thing (and it’s a very big thing which I’ll probably share at some point after the statute of limitations has expired), I stopped stalking my ex-husband.
More importantly, I found a community online where before I had none. Yes, I know, it’s not the same as having a real-life support network, but it’s better than nothing. And it suits my severely anti-social nature. I can drop in or out at will without hurting anybody’s feelings. God forbid.
Twitter was the gateway drug. I think I got maybe five likes for some comment I made about Thom Yorke and that was it. I was hooked.
As Twitter became more about politics and less about fun, I drifted over to Instagram and discovered Reels. What better way to waste several hours of your life? Plus, dogs!
TikTok was the next logical step, even though I resisted downloading the app, knowing my obsessive tendencies and the common portrayal of TikTok as a black hole from which you can never escape.
Mostly because it is.
I’ve just started dipping my toes in TikTok creation, and I gotta tell you, I like it. It’s fun, it’s mindless. The barrier to entry is nonexistent and you instantly feel like a creative genius for having made a 30-second clip of your dog doing, basically, nothing.
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Writing is hard. Making TikToks is stupidly easy.
That’s why the app has conquered the world. Ease of use equals ubiquity.
Of course, many, many, many people are on TikTok hoping to become rich. They have links, they have product endorsements. And in return, they commit themselves to the internet’s ruthlessly hostile gaze.
For example, there’s this video from C.J. AKA CarGirl (@still.bad.decisions). It has 909,000 likes.
I believe she started out shilling for her husband’s car parts business and she branched out from there.
In the video, she’s crying (and taking off her make-up at the same time for some bizarre reason) because two strangers at Walmart whispered that she looks bigger in real life than in her videos.
“We’re just people,” she snivels while complaining about the hit her mental health took from the comment, which SHE INVITED BY BEING ON TIKTOK.
Helloooo.
She should try being somebody who’s actually famous sometime and see how many comments and insults she has to field every second of every day.
It’s like they say—if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Of course, the entire video might be for views and sympathy. It’s great how you can’t trust anything on the internet, even seemingly raw emotion.
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
The other corner of TikTok I’ve somehow stumbled into is “sick child TikTok”.
I now know all about Sanfilippo syndrome. I don’t know why. I probably liked a video and the algorithm decided I enjoy looking at an endless stream of terminally ill children.
The families clearly post these videos in hopes of generating interest in the illness, thereby spurring research into a cure.
There are many, many, many sick kids on TikTok. You do not want to read the comments.
Because that’s always the trade-off. That’s the pound of flesh the internet demands of its users. You can just be having fun, or baring your soul, or trying to save your child’s life. It doesn’t matter.
The minute you post that video, you stop being human and you become an object. Facebook started it all because it provided the template of interaction. That’s where it all goes wrong.
Because if people are allowed to say something, they’re going to say something bad. Out of jealousy? Out of stupidity? Out of plain ol’ miserableness? Who knows.
People have always badmouthed other people, but it used to be behind closed doors.
Now there are no doors.
This answers one of many questions involving "What the hell is wrong with the Internet?" Tik Tok worries me, as all of my grandchildren are on it constantly. It feels like an electronic version of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story. Side note - Hershey with a glowing collar made me laugh. Dogs are our compensation for the abundance of the crap in this world!
Yeah, I've heard of various app addictions from time to time. Like with instagram it can easily become insta-buy. Except for Medium which has value IMO I'm not on the social so much if anywhere, of course that doesn't mean the retail world isn't trying to chase me down all the way onto my computer desk.
Sometimes all I have to do is go to a big box store parking lot and if I have any kind of an account there, (even random grocery stores), (because phones are on all the time) later at home, I'll receive a message asking how the retailer did on my last visit. Huh? Like I'm going to drop everything and do some performance review. I don't think so, they can do their own marketing on their dime. Sometimes I don't even need to go into the store. This is just notification tracking for data sucking purposes gone wild and probably bad.