Tiktok and VSCO girls and I feel old
This week I read an explainer on VSCO girls and then a long profile of Tiktok teens and honestly felt a little overwhelmed. I had resisted Tiktok for a long time, but after reading the New Yorker article I finally downloaded the app and watched several videos. (And I made two Tiktok videos of my dog, obviously; pets on Tiktok are definitely the best part of the app).
I sort of get Tiktok now — the good ones are hilarious! — but it can also be an endless timesuck if you let it. Jia points out:
I found it both freeing and disturbing to spend time on a platform that didn’t ask me to pretend that I was on the Internet for a good reason. I was not giving TikTok my attention because I wanted to keep up with the news, or because I was trying to soothe and irritate myself by looking at photos of my friends on vacation. I was giving TikTok my attention because it was serving me what would retain my attention, and it could do that because it had been designed to perform algorithmic pyrotechnics that were capable of making a half hour pass before I remembered to look away.
This is the scary thing to me about Tiktok: it has no purpose; its only purpose is to keep you scrolling as long as possible, by serving you whatever it is that will hold your attention. I can see how that makes it endlessly appealing to bored teens avoiding their homework. But for adults with lives to juggle and a need to monitor and cut down on their screen time, it’s a dangerous little black hole to get sucked into (sorry, I know, OLD).
And then there’s the VSCO girls thing, which also made me feel exceedingly old. From what I have read, it’s basically a 2019 version of the cool-girl aesthetic from when I was in high school: girls who carry Hydroflask water bottles, wear long shirts that cover their shorts, scrunchies on their wrists, shell necklaces (puka shells are back?) and excessively filter their photos on VSCO. They are not unlike the girls that were “cool” when I was in high school, which goes to show you that time is just a flat circle!
Reading both of these pieces about teen internet culture this week struck me as fascinating but also a little exhausting. There’s so much social media to keep up with already — you have to document everything on Instagram stories, maintain a professional Twitter presence — and the number of platforms for performative #content creation seems to keep multiplying while none of the platforms ever really go away. I sometimes wonder about what today’s teens, growing up with these apps ever since they were small children, will function in the world as adults, treating everything as a performance, treating every moment in life as content that can be consumed by and audience.
I’m tired just thinking about it.
What I’m reading
How TikTok holds our attention, The New Yorker.
The Cancel Culture con, The New Republic. “Cancel culture” is not a real thing, it’s just holding people accountable for their actions!! This is a great piece.
The age of bathfluence, The New Yorker. I’m not a bath person personally but it is true that I have seen 1000 bath photos from Instagram influencers. But really, must we turn *every* moment of our lives into #content?
Stories about my brother, Jezebel. Heartbreaking and extremely good.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 hustle, The Information. I made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list once but I’m not sure it actually has any benefit or meaning. It’s a good moneymaker for Forbes though! This piece pretty much nails it.
Would you like a tiny fish with that?, New York Times. Yes, I’m spreading pro-anchovy propaganda.
Big Fan, Catapult. This is a delightful short story that nails so many things about New York media!
Four years in startups, The New Yorker. This was so good that I cannot wait to read this woman’s book.
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