Tiktok-ification and how it's destroying you

turn it off, have breakfast with yourself, and let your flesh be flesh.

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I will not be the first nor the last person on this app or others, to speak on the dangers and damages of TikTok (and social media as a whole). There seems to be, however small or big, a movement of people choosing to turn away from the fast-paced world of social media, and I am but one of them.

It started with an Offline48 challenge from a sustainability influencer on Instagram (Venetia La Manna) - you go offline for the weekend and return on Monday. It was simple enough and I did need a boost of motivation, so off I went into the offline world and deleted the apps from my phone. Dare I say, the relief was immediate.

It felt like my brain immediately knew that I would no longer bombard it with useless content at a rate no human should consume content and that I have stopped, more or less, condemning it to a constant waterboarding of nonsensical, buzz word ridden videos. You cannot come up for air in a doomscrolling bout, and here my brain was, doing what it felt like it couldn’t- breathing, coming up for air.

Since, I had realised just how much I quite like silence. Though I do itch for the stimulation of scrolling, the moment I do return, it is torturous to sit through it, to watch until I feel physically ill, nauseas and ill-at-ease. It fuels my anxiety like no other poison, that purely useless drivel, and even what seems intellectual, should not be consumed in short bursts of profound revelation. It leaves you spiraling, attempting to dissect what should take months or years, in minutes. Then we wonder, why am I not healing or ‘doing well’ so quickly? TikTok made it seem easy enough. Instagram made it glamourous enough. We’ve condensed so much of life into seconds and minutes, that we forget evolution is the basis of all we know and are. So comes my true point here - the way it goes against our nature, and how this is ruining us.

Everything, and I mean everything, is TikTok-ified.

Nothing you do or think, exists as it is - don’t worry, in fact, it is already an aesthetic you could make a Pinterest board of, or a trend out of, and a dead horse to beat the last remaining life out of! Nothing we do or think or like or wish to like, has been left on its own, and everything must be brutally dissected and commercialized and turned into a ‘check my amazon store-front!’. You cannot be anything without being told to embody it in its entirety and become a monolith that chases the very essence of it - often pairing it with overconsumption, you know…to ensure that you’ve ‘nailed down the aesthetic’ and done it justice!

All things have become a marketable niche, an aesthetic to chase and possess and to have that pursuit become the object the subject chases, not the pleasure it might bring, or the joy or how it may serve us, as things are meant to, and not us serving them. We take what we love, look to the cult amassed at our proverbial steps, and we ask it what it thinks and if this is fitting their current standards, and we think the cult will answer with wisdom. They answer with, ‘this summer we’re doing siren-core!’.

Lest it was not enough for you, anything you do, any behaviour, now possesses a name that will be brutally dissected and ripped apart, and before you know it, you are quartered, strung apart, pinned to a wall and red thread brings you together. You are now an anomaly, to be studied, and your consciousness is pushed to the furthest recesses of your mind, where it will bounce off the walls with endless spiraling thoughts, much like a game of pinball. It bounces, bounces, bounces…bounces…bounces…and you realise there is no escape. You fold in on yourself, and on you go again.

Normalcy, allowing yourself to evolve with your thoughts, to live instead of dissecting, to experience instead of overthinking - it is stripped away in the trend of tiktok-ification. The natural evolution we should be experiencing, is interrupted and sent spinning onto another path. Yes it will slingshot back onto its original path, but how exhausting that pull is, how sudden the jerk to the side, the whiplash that reverberates as you continue walking.

Numbed, your brain reduced to a pool of thick flesh sloshing in the confines of your skull - your head feels heavy with the imposed illusions and expectations. Everything you have and are suddenly seems insufficient, misunderstood, and the want they’ve implanted is a heinous beast that consumes endlessly. Step away from it, and watch how the ache of it fades, how the problems you thought you had no longer seem as great, or like problems at all. Much of the agony it inflicts onto us becomes self-imposed through perpetrating the cycles planted in us. It is akin to unfair labour — you pay us in the greatest currency of today, attention, and we will give you inner turmoil and a sense of loss, missing out, and deeply felt inadequacy. What a tempting offer, is it not? No.

When did you, or I, last feel true connection? Satisfaction? Created for the sake of creating? Devoured for the sake of devouring? Enjoyed something for the sake of enjoyment? When did we experience without having to spread it, to share it and validate its existence or bliss? When did you, or I, live for once, and slow down, when did we last let ourselves be lulled by the silences and rhythms of life itself? Do we even live? What is this world in a slab of metal but a thing in the air that is intangible at most times? It comes and goes faster than you can grasp what it tried to bring to you — I will not look on it fondly on my deathbed.

I will look fondly onto the memories of my friend’s hand in mine, the lines on her palms, the crinkles surrounding my mother’s eyes, the laughter of siblings over a joke much repeated and loved. I will not remember or even come to think of the time a video did well, or a trend I loved very much and bought things for, but I will remember the necklace a friend gave me, still around my neck, though by then it may be green and my neck will have amassed beautiful, privileged marks of age (God willing).

I will learn the things they try to feed me in sixty seconds, on my own, in my own time and on my own terms. I will heal slowly, like viscous molasses, and because of that, deep roots will grow. Do not rush the natural — do not be a specimen picked apart on the lab table by a mind that wishes to gain a form of profit from your ribs ripped open and your mind numbed. It seems being human is becoming discouraged, particularly for a woman, and if you cannot be marketed to the masses, you are tossed aside or pushed to conformity through an illusion of grandeur and acceptance.

To be living a thing, immersed in the world, to step away from that inner agony, you must turn it off and have breakfast with yourself.

Have breakfast, and let your flesh be flesh.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

- - - - - -

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver (who tells you to live in far fewer words then I)