For a long time, I stayed away from participating in TikTok. I thought social media was already kind of a problem for me. I was heavily obsessed with Instagram, reaching for my phone and logging into the app as soon as I woke up in the morning, and then continuing to scroll through my feed, scroll through stories, and check my personal messages many times throughout the day in a sort of fugue state, even though, rationally, I knew that seeing the seemingly perfect, satisfied, and happy lives of others often made me feel like crap about myself. X was also a problem. As a longtime Twitter user, I persisted with the app even after Elon Musk bought it, despite the proliferation of racist, pornographic, and conspiratorial posts. These platforms had such a strong influence on my time and habits that the only way to refrain from using them was to deactivate them completely, which I resorted to from time to time. (If I had simply deleted the apps from my phone, I would have—with shame and self-loathing—downloaded them again almost immediately.) My brain, addicted to the instant gratification of likes and replies, reliant on the mind-numbing comfort of scrolling and clicking, and terrified of the prospect of being alone with my thoughts, was too full of venom without adding another social media platform to the mix.
My concerns about TikTok seemed to have some basis. Of course, the app has been blamed for many of today's social ills over the past few years. This has been variously associated with phone addictionmisinformation and zombie-like hypersuperficiality. (In a recent episode of the new HBO comedy “I love Los Angeles» Real-life TikTok influencer Quenlin Blackwell poses as a shallow content creator hell-bent on maximizing his empty fame on TikTok.) The app, with its busy, mindless and meme-laden channel, often accompanied by reckless sound effects and cartoonishly sped-up music snippets or narration, seems particularly geared towards attracting young people, raising concerns about the platform's potential. negative impact on children's mental health. “When I started this project, one girl told me that half of my friends have eating disorders because of TikTok, and the other half are lying,” documentarian Lauren Greenfield said when I spoke with last year's release of Social Studies, her recent series on teenagers and social media.
However, I knew there was no denying TikTok's absolute centrality to modern American life. TikTok's U.S. user base has reached a staggering one hundred and seventy million at the latest official count, and TikTok Shop, an online in-app marketplace launched in the States in the fall of 2023, is growing at a breakneck pace in the country, already competing with long-established online retail companies like Etsy and eBay. (Between January and October this year, marketplace sales in the States reached ten billion dollars, up from half that amount in 2024 – despite Donald Trump's tariffs.) As a critic, I too realized that TikTok was a breeding ground for more than just the memes and trends that animate popular culture, such as the mindless but strangely funny ones.six sevenor downright disgusting Dubai chocolatebut also for celebrities who go beyond the platform. (Addison RaeFor example, who gained fame as a teenager performing in dance videos on the app and then turned to a career as a pop singer, was recently nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and selected as Best New Artist. Guardian artist of the year.) Long story short, I began to feel like I owed it to myself, my readers, and maybe even my nation to dip my toe into the choppy waters of TikTok. And when the opportunity arose to attend the first-ever TikTok Awards in Hollywood, I knew the time had come.
To get some reinforcements on my first trip, I invited my friend Hannah to join me. Hannah, although she is an adult and even a parent, which you may know as food critic for this publicationsurprised me by admitting that she's a “genuinely big fan” of TikTok, although she was quick to add a disclaimer. “I think it's terrible and a scourge on the earth,” she said, adding that she has lost endless precious hours to mindless scrolling of the app and that she sometimes has to turn it off when she starts hearing the most popular sound clips echoing in her head, A Beautiful Mind style. Still, she explained, she appreciates TikTok for the unfamiliar corners of the human experience it opens up to her. Unlike Instagram, which makes her compare and despair with people she knows, TikTok “doesn't make me hate myself,” she told me brightly. She watches murder trial footage, or “get ready with me” videos made by eight-year-old moms in the Midwest, or weird challenges like the “candy salad trauma dump,” in which people name the trauma they experienced by throwing Sour Patch Kids or Skittles into a bowl. “I’m fascinated by all the strange strangers,” she said.
A couple of days before the ceremony, I prepared to create a TikTok account and began to reverently scroll through it. Hannah praised the platform's algorithm as extremely sensitive to her preferences (“I feel like it really cares about me,” she told me), but I knew it would take time for the app to recognize my deepest needs, whatever they might be. (Cats? Plastic surgery before and after? Blind things about celebrities?) So, I got a little bit of everything: videos with tips on how to “enhance your femininity” (“wear perfume everywhere”; “treat your hair like gold”); a prank in which a guy tries to direct confused drivers into a “gay parking lot”; recording of a 911 call reporting a double homicide; a pretentious “Christmas in New York” video that looked and actually was (I think?) A.I. I also remembered the words of my teenage daughter, who gave me some reluctant but helpful advice before I boarded the plane to Los Angeles. “On Instagram, some people may still want to connect with people they know,” she said. “On TikTok, everyone creates their own content.” In other words, I wasn't here to make friends.
I shouldn't have worried. As we headed to the Palladium, the venue on Sunset Boulevard where the event was held, we saw many of the nominees and some of the event's presenters gathered near the press pit, and I realized that I truly was a stranger in a strange land. Who the hell were these people? The atmosphere was a bit like that of a small town prom, with revelers partying in sequined evening gowns, inventive jewelry, artfully styled hair and bold makeup. Some are class clowns? — they were even in suits. The artist at the event, named Mr. Fantasy (1.1 million followers), wearing a jet-black bobbed wig, Elton John sunglasses and a trendy pink suit, delivered Austin Powers-style soundbites in an exaggerated British accent during his step and repeat. (I later learned that he is rumored to be the alter ego of “Riverdale” actor KJ Apa.) Jules LeBron (2.3 million followers), the host known for her viral 2024 TikTok catchphrase “very modest, very thoughtful,” dressed in a sparkly, plunging dress, cooled down with a handheld fan; Chris Fink (1.8 million followers), a creator nominated for his skydiving videos, jumped in front of the cameras as if about to take off while wearing a wingsuit.
