The Rise of the Machines

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love TikTok

I recently joined TikTok. I was really resistant to it for a long time. A friend showed me the app back in February 2020. I tried using it but found it too frantic and frenzied for my fragile synapses. I felt a tangible sense of anxiety, it felt like eating too much candy. It made me think of the Tricky lyric “MTV moves too fast / I refuse to understand.” Oh, how quaint his pre-millennium tension seems today. I was disturbed by the idea that I might be forced to sing and dance to stay relevant. I quickly deleted the app.