*for best viewing, I recommend opening this directly on Substack instead of in your email*
Well what a week it has been! To be completely honest I did not spend a ton of time on TikTok as there is a certain long drawn out historical event happening. BUT I have gathered together a selection of content to provide a distraction from the numbers on your respective screens. A couple themes this week include: existentialist fish, wireless electricity, a flaming zamboni and a tangent about kids online.
Vibing in Memphis
Wireless electricity with @dr.parkinstine
Maybe a Nikola Tesla reincarnate? This DIY scientist showed up on my feed with many tutorials but I found the electrical related ones to be more interesting.
Here is their setup:
And the technology in action:
Therapy Gecko
We all might need a chat with the Therapy Gecko after this past week.
Incredible Music
I often think about this video Charli XCX posted to her TikTok, a behind the Boiler Room live stream. I like to imagine all live-streamed events like this if you were to watch them in person without knowing what is meant to be happening on the viewer’s screen.
An existentialist reading of The Rainbow Fish
I am all about this kind of content. I also really enjoy the idea of an aquatic review board deciding whether or not an Octopus is fit to be a therapist.
Mr. Tidy Bowl
This is how my brain feels after staying up until 4am to watch states turn blue.
I’ve started a strange collection
I see a surprising amount of TikToks that just feature a static photo, often the same photo paired with an audio clip for the duration of the “video,” OR a photo will be edited to have some kind of animated filter. Most of the time I will scroll past but this week I decided to start a little collection:
Will not be long…
Don’t forget to eat a bowl of rigatoni
Here is your daily reminder to eat a bowl of rigatoni on May 24 2021
McDonald’s Hash Brown
So this account only posts short clips of memes involving you guessed it.. the McDonald’s Hash Brown. This one in particular caught my eye as it was using the song Upside Down by Jack Johnson which has become popular to use on TikTok due to the virality of the Arby’s TV screen meme where someone purchased a TV screen for $25 but it was programmed to display the Arby’s menu. The audio from the original Arby’s screen video featuring the Jack Johnson song has been used over 500k times.
Winter 2020
Playing pretend
I had my first TikTok blocked on YouTube while working on this week’s issue. It was a video of two children pretending to run away. I will link to the original here
Something really weird about watching a platform that is heavily populated by kids and teenagers is the intersection of kids playing and dramatic content creation. Most of the kid created content reminds me of playing as a child except I didn’t have the capacity to film, edit and post video of it online to be viewed by mass audiences. It is clearly intended as a joke while also attempting to create a dramatic story with the caption: “Hi guys we ran away today we will update you tomorrow when we wake up. Warning really scary and intense”.
Most comments I saw were from people likely outside of their age group reminiscing on doing similar things as children or riffing on the content itself. I don’t normally spend a ton of time around kids so it is always strange to see how they interact with social media platforms like TikTok.
I grew up using the Internet from an early age when dial-up was still a thing, but the Internet back then was not really meant for kids yet with the exception of flash games that took forever to load and Neopets. Uploading video was not as instantaneous and smart phones didn’t exist. Now kids can create accounts, online personalities and content on platforms like TikTok or YouTube with the capacity to be seen by millions of people. It is interesting and strange to think about how technology has mediated the lives of children in this way. I don’t think it is inherently bad or good, it is just a very clear difference in growing up so I am curious to see how it shapes their generation.
If you have kids can you tell me in the comments how old they have to be to have a smartphone? and to what extend do you monitor what they do?
I can’t tell if I am scared of her or if I want to be her
Before you go
I’m bringing back Wisdom Dog. I think we all need a little flying dog from 2015 right now.
Thank you for reading this week, good luck out there!