With the quarantine has come many alternative ways people are trying to desperately keep themselves entertained, so it’s no wonder Tiktok is thriving. And whilst it is a great app that invokes creativity through dancing, art and other methods, and can be pretty funny at times, there’s also a dark side to this app that no-one seems to be talking about.
I can scroll through TikTok for hours and I will come across streams of the same thing, a pretty woman tilting her head and lip syncing off beat to a song, yet still have 10,000 likes. Why is that so? Why is mediocre content being applauded? Because beauty sells. This is nothing new to us as a generation. We are not alien to the commodification of beauty as it is all around us. It’s what drives us to consume beauty products the way we do, and is reflected through numerous media forms around us. However, social media and branding have taken this obnoxiousness to a new level.
Tiktok breeds narcissism in younger generations, and unconsciously sends the message that all it takes to be liked is simply about looking good. Women on Tiktok are almost competing with one another in order to be the prettiest, fittest, most beautiful, and many of them don’t even know it. It plants a seed of longing within an individuals mind to appear as others do, and in my opinion I find it having more detrimental of an impact than Instagram. Unlike Instagram, you can’t control what you see on Tiktok as videos are generated randomly on the ‘For You’ page, and because of this everyone is seemingly exposed to the same content, making it unavoidable.
Living in an individualistic society means we are already competing with one another to be the best, however Tiktok is contributing to this self-obsessed culture we now live in, and frankly I’m sick of it. Mediocre content is popularised due to the creator being beautiful, and as we begin to descend into a world that glamorises beauty instead of creativity it makes me wonder what the future holds for us as a collective.
I also used Tiktok, and I found myself slowly being sucked into the vortex as I begun to make content that revolved around materialistic items or my physical appearance. I could feel myself putting myself down on occasion and I didn’t truly understand why. However, I made a choice that I didn’t want my sense of self to be diminished because Britney had bigger boobs than me, or a nicer nose, or cuter makeup. Because who cares.
If you begin to question your self worth or put yourself down, just ask yourself what kind of media you are passively consuming on a daily basis.
thezedword 