Hey there friends,
For this month's Antiracist Accountability, I have SUCH A TREAT in store: I offer you not only an opportunity to engage in simultaneously educating yourself AND supporting Black creators, but also to consistently lift your mood while barely lifting a finger. That's right: It's Antiracist Accountability AND another entry in the pantheon of terrible year survival guides!!
How, you ask? How???
TikTok. That's how.
For those of you who are heretofore woefully unaware, TikTok is a social media platform consisting solely of very brief (meaning: often one minute or shorter) videos. And it is a GODDAMN DELIGHT.
With deepest sincerity, I implore you to try the following simple, three-step experiment:
1. Rate your mood from 0 - 10, 10 being awesome and 0 being not great.
2. Choose literally any social media platform other than TikTok. Spend 10 minutes on that platform. Re-rate your mood.
(Did it go down?
Notice how it almost certainly went down?
Notice how, at minimum, it definitely didn't go up?)
3. Now, spend 10 minutes on TikTok. Come across a video that doesn't do much for you? Cool, scroll to the next one. Re-rate your mood.
(Did it go up??
DON'T YOU LIE TO ME.
More importantly, DON'T YOU LIE TO YOURSELF.)
Seriously: This site is a major-game changer for me. I have started watching TikToks during little breaks in my day, just for a few minutes at a time, and it is having a measurable and consistently positive impact on my mood.
As a result, I have become a TikTok zealot. I have started at turns badgering and imploring people I love to start using TikTok, and so many of them simply will not respond to reason.
In fairness, we are all so burned by the role social media has played in our lives. It has become at once so seemingly essential as much as it is a drainer of life force that people are just not willing to make space for another social media platform. Which, fair point: why risk opening yourself up to more arguments with strangers on the internet and bummer content? At some point, spending more time with that nonsense is just emotionally self-injurious.
But with utter seriousness: TikTok is not that. These precious tiny little videos contain some of the most inventive, silly, entertaining, informative, sweet, hysterical, human content I have ever seen. It is such an unexpected gift. It might be because it is only videos--no status updates, no articles from dubious sources, no arguments between random sectors of your disparate social circles. It might also be because you have to work to see people's comments on videos, so you can remain blissfully unaware if people are behaving badly. Whatever the reason, against the odds, the most pleasant surprise of all about TikTok is that it is a major conduit of connectedness--a portal through which we can see into other people's lives and, through that, become better, kinder, more informed, and more empathic.
Hence the relevance of TikTok to Antiracist Accountability: TikTok hosts an immense treasure trove of content created by Black people and people of color more broadly, including LGBTQIA people. And because TikTok is unlike most social media sites that are based to varying extents on a user's actual social network, TikTok users have the opportunity to engage with content shared by anyone using TikTok. Which means, quickly and easily, you can get acquainted with perspectives from people all over the nation and the world and with all sorts of lived experience outside your own.
This means that the social milieu of TikTok can, if you choose to make it so, be radically different than our in-real-life social milieu. This is incredibly important, because one of the many consequences of American systems of oppression is that essentially all spaces in public life continue to be segregated. It is work--worthwhile work, but work nonetheless--to break outside of the racial and cultural homogeneity that systemic racism creates and maintains for all of us. As white allies, it is imperative that we do this work, without intruding into spaces that are not for us, demanding work, energy, or time from people who have experienced more oppression than us, or centering ourselves. Diversifying our social media feeds can be one small way in which we desegregate our lives.
So, SERIOUSLY: TikTok!
Part of what is particularly important about this vast cache of videos is its breadth, not just in terms of who is contributing to it, but also what they're contributing. While there are plenty of TikToks dedicated to valuable social justice or political commentary, there are also plenty that are about people's passions more generally. There's the guy who shares unusual and hilarious animal facts. There's the forager who will teach you how to make cookies and simple syrups using plants growing in your neighborhood. There's the woman playing the role of a deliciously petty White House HR representative processing the outgoing administration's exit paperwork. My absolute favorite TikTok ever is just a person rocking out in her car to Phil Collins, forever endearing Phil Collins, of all people, to me:
Check out the video on TikTok and like/follow @marz.gif here!
It's all just. Freaking. Delightful.
Here's the thing: after over a year of profound isolation, where we haven't been able to just be out in the world among our communities and neighbors, we have to be ever more intentional about whose stories, perspectives, expertise, and ideas we expose ourselves to. White allies have a huge resource in a site like TikTok, which empowers us to stay in touch with perspectives outside our own while not demanding emotional labor of people of color while also doing a small part of the work of allyship by lending our eyeballs, "likes", and follows to creators of color and maybe learning something new or laughing for a moment. Everyone wins.
If you choose to get on TikTok (which you should) and you want to use TikTok in the manner I am proposing (which you should), take the following steps to intentionally #DiversifyYourFeed:
1. Download TikTok on your phone.
2. Watch TikTok videos.
3. When you see videos you like by Black creators, as well as other creators of color, watch them all the way through and/or "like" them. If you really like a video, follow its creator. All of this will teach TikTok's algorithm which type of videos to show you.
Major hint: If you don't like the content TikTok is showing you, you screwed up this step. Seek out what you want to see using the "Discover" feature and try again. Again, whatever your interests are, there will be creators of color making videos about that subject. Seek them out and support their work!
4. Feel better, and be better.
In conclusion:
I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO DOES NOT LIKE TIKTOK.
**WHY** WOULD ANYONE NOT LIKE TIKTOK.
Happy scrolling! (But actually happy scrolling!)
{Heart}
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