#is this a tiktok thing

[your-actual-therapist]

tumblr legalese (or, why it's safer to keep an emotional support dark lord around for emergencies)

sometimes i feel like i have to add legal disclaimers to the things i write on the internet, like those "may experience sudden diarrhea or pet death" disclaimers they have at the end of drug ads. mine would read, "not responsible for not anticipating all the ways you'll deliberately misinterpret and fuck up my advice, thus proving me a villain."

i feel this way because people are so good at playing that weird game where they take something you wrote and put it in the worst possible context to make you sound like an irredeemably terrible person.

feel a mote of self-esteem? only narcissists feel that way, and narcissists have abused me, and therefore you're abusing me now.

eat when you're hungry? some people can't eat and have to be tube-fed. your privilege is showing.

self-compassion? what if there's a bear near you? how can someone have self-compassion when they're being attacked by BEARS. priorities. smh.

trans women are beautiful? AM I, A CISGENDER PERSON WITH A SKIN AS THIN AS WET TOILET PAPER, NOT BEAUTIFUL?!?!

and as you can imagine i'm like:

i'm not relating any of this to "cancel culture" or "snowflakeism" or whatever other buzzword fascists are using to characterize actual harm as valid opinion. i think the truth is weirder.

rules, fear, and extremes

the expectations tumblr-adjacent people have for themselves and others are extreme. they are extreme in the sense that they have taken sensible statements like "be aware of others' feelings" or "remember that not everyone shares your experiences" and turned these reasonable views into unrecognizable, rigid, toxically exaggerated rules.

as a therapist, i have noticed that this tends to happen to people who have done a lot of therapy or self-reflection and continue to struggle with uncertainty. the therapist or self-help book says "have boundaries" or "take responsibility" and they're like, "i like this concept, but i don't want to make any judgment calls about it. my judgment could be wrong. being wrong would be catastrophic. i need solid, unambiguous rules for every situation."

so they morph that advice into something ridiculous. "have boundaries" becomes "have indiscriminately rigid boundaries," and "take responsibility" becomes "take responsibility for everything that results from your behavior, even stuff that you couldn't have anticipated." the only 100% safe situation, if you're not okay making mistakes and being wrong, is one where the rules are inflexible and taken to their logical extreme.

want to write a fanfic featuring a romantic relationship between two characters who are teenagers? you're an evil pedophile.

you think some foods have different nutritional properties than other foods and that people need more than just cheez-its and coffee for their bodies to work? obviously you're a diet fiend and encouraging anorexia.

you're neurodivergent and you're not always 100% jazzed about the challenges your neurodivergence brings to your life? ableist.

cosmic uncertainty and the allure of safety

these "rules" may sound silly, but they're also safe. without rigid rules, you're forced to take risks. you have to use your brain and assess the situation, and you could be wrong. you may then have to admit to other people that you were wrong and engage with them to learn to do better. you may not ever know whether you made the right call.

on a cosmic level, that gets scary.

because what if you can't ever know whether you're doing the right thing? what if you're going to be uncertain about the important things in your life forever? what if it's not possible to be certain? what if your perceptions and judgments are fallible? what if you're alone in your brain and no one can ever reach in there and be like, "that's what you meant"?

behind every inflexible rule is a deep well of fear. you see it in incel communities, where they've spilled millions of gallons of E-Ink© trying to make sense of their world by explaining sexual success by millimeters of difference in eye position. you see it in dogmatic expressions of religion, which can't allow for human fallibility or subtle shades of gray because if they did, their followers would have to risk being uncertain about something. you see it in those baffling self-help articles that turn self-evident statements like "be mindful of your time and energy" into dramatic extremes like "it's always okay to cancel on people at the last minute 'cause, y'know, self-care!"

enter the villain

so—back to tumblr legalese. my hunch is that it feels satisfying to call someone out based on a rule you believe in, even if that rule is profoundly weird and doesn't take human nuances into account. it's satisfying because it allows you to have a villain.

villains are simple. you don't have to think about whether darth vader or nurse ratched are bad people, and you don't have to waste time untangling your own motives for opposing them. there is no moral ambivalence or cosmic uncertainty. you don't even have to defeat a villain to feel good. it's enough just to know you're fighting the good fight, and that as long as you do that, your life is not meaningless. maybe you haven't defeated the villain, but you know what you have defeated? anxiety.

without a villain, you're left to your own fragile human abilities. what's scarier than pennywise? meaninglessness. uncertainty. being alone in your own brain.

i will leave you with the words of the existential psychotherapist ernest becker, who summed it up in one of my favorite books, the denial of death, much better than my terribly congested, snot-filled self can right now:

Beyond ourselves we sense chaos. We can’t really do much about this unbelievable power, except for one thing: we can endow certain persons with it. The child takes natural awe and terror and focuses them on individual beings, which allows him to find the power and the horror all in one place instead of diffused throughout a chaotic universe. Mirabile! The transference object, being endowed with the transcendent powers of the universe, now has in himself the power to control, order, and combat them.

#just anti things #anti #what the hell is an anti #i leave the internet for five goddamn minutes and you whippersnappers have come up with new words #tumblr culture #villains #incels #purity culture #tiktok #is this a tiktok thing #how do i download tiktok #hey siri is tiktok an app or like a site #terminally online #anti culture #discourse #i don't know if discourse is what you guys think it is #i mean a lot of what you call discourse involves intense emotions about cartoons that have not aged well #god damn it i'm old #fanfic #ao3 #did you know ao3 has a lot of bible fanfiction #you guys ever seen moral orel? #there's a moral orel episode called “innocence” where orel is trying to figure out how to behave and of course ends up it to extremes #the adults around him realize it's dangerous to give him advice because he interprets it literally and rigidly #eventually they're like “just sit still ” and he's like “reeeally still?” #i think the episode ends with him bathing in blood #did you know the guy who wrote moral orel is starburns from community

[elephantbitterhead]

just some field observations here

Something bad is happening to the phrase 'per se.' In the last week, I've heard it used to mean both 'perhaps' and 'so to speak.'

#is this a tiktok thing #probably #farewell per se you were good while you lasted #enjoy your trip down the slippery slope #this is another instance of getting yourself into trouble by trying to be fancy

[thebookworm0001]

The number of people I’m seeing getting into the throne of glass and a court of thorns and roses series right now is very amusing to me

#I was reading those when they were first coming out #now i Know Things and get to wait for reactions #not my favorite anymore #but anyway if y’all want to talk about the spicy scenes in Mist and Fury #PLEASE come find me #because hot damn #is this a tiktok thing #because booktok keeps recommending them to me #as if I haven’t already gone through my fae phase

[willgrahamscock]

WITCHCRAFT!!!!!!!!

#alex says things #holy fuuuuuuuuck #tiktok

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

hey since it's coming up again: no it's not a good thing that the government wants to ban tiktok. no you should not be glad that the government might ban tiktok. no you should not respond to this with "good riddance" or "hurry up I hate that app". I should not have to explain this to you but the government banning a social media app is still a bad thing even if you don't like the UI or booktok or having to say "unalive" or how you think it's killing the very notion of attention spans. It's still bad. It's bad.

#the amount of times ive seen people be happy they're trying to ban it as if its not blatant censorship is like... #hey did you know that we have these things called brain cells? might be fun for you to try using them #mine #tiktok #tiktok ban #us politics

[sergle]

Are you on southern men swing dancing together tiktok?? Huh??? Because I AM

#this is my favorite thing ever it's such a sweet video and they're legit good dancers #and I'm NOT remotely horny. WHO SAID THAT #sergle.txt #video #tiktok #TELL ME IF I SHOULD MAKE TIKTOK POSTS SOMETIMES BC LIKE........

[lazylittledragon]

made a sticker for anyone to slap onto their work if they need to

#ramble #i've only interacted with tiktok via osmosis #but something is eating their brain matter and it makes me sad #it's fine if you only want to read light things (all power to you) but don't whine at me because i write about bad people sometimes #i'm so tired

[eatyourdamnpears]

I’ve been in such a funk since the concert. I’m not even sure I enjoyed myself that much. maybe I did. I don’t know

#I don’t think I’m a concert person #parts of it were fun but parts of it were like …I’d rather be in bed right now and watching clips of this off tiktok #isn’t post-concert blues a thing? right? it’s a thing? #all I know is I feel really shitty and all I want to do is cry about it

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

We’re fanfiction writers, of course:

We’re going to use song lyrics as titles.

We’re going to check for comments 30 seconds after we post something.

We’re going to have more WIPs than days of the month.

We’re going to use any excuse to post snippets.

We’re going to use ask box games to procrastinate.

We’re going to hype up our writer friends.

We’re going to scream, cry and throw up reading our friends’ work.

#hopping on the tumblr version of the tiktok trend #feel free to add ones I missed #writing #writing things #writers #pinned post

[dyscomancer]

hating tiktok is not a "back in my day" type thing. tiktok is objectively affecting other social media platforms in detrimental ways. ux elements are being stripped and everything has to have a fucking short video clips function. it's rampant homogenization and it's a problem

#from the desk #fuck tiktok #it's the absolute worst thing to happen to the internet in years

[hollowboobtheory]

DONt dO thAT TO HeR!!

#beck rambles #why is this the funniest thing ive seen all week #tiktok

[fruit-teeth]

Me: maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer…idk what if I’m not good enough

BookTok romance writers: ‘what if you were just a normal school teacher…but the MINOTAUR wanted to get you PREGNANT’

#i know I’ve made posts like this before but like #it amazes me #I’ve never used tiktok but I find this shit hilarious #just me things #text post #writing #booktok cringe #shitpost #this isn’t a real book btw I made this up

[just-bee-lieve]

IT’S MURDER ON THE DANCE FLOOR—-

AND YOU BETTER NOT KILL THE GROOVE!!

#my art #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #william afton #purple guy #IVE HAD THIS SONG ON MY PLAYLISTS FOR AGES AND IVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR WEEKS IF YOU THINK THIS IS A TIKTOK THING I WILL EXPLODE #sorry. normal again. anyways. #springtrap

[injuries-in-dust]

A sound to give you some serotonin.

#tiktok #not my video #funny #cute #good stuff #good sounds #nice things

[sapphosewrites]

Teaching creative writing to 8 to 12 year olds this summer, a demographic whose stories include a shocking amount of murder. The use of "unalive" was so egregious I had to tell them, "if you aren't comfortable using the words death, die, and kill, you aren't mature enough to be writing about them yet". Kiddo asked me if that applies to adults as well, and I told them it very much does, so here's a PSA.

If you aren't comfortable using the words death, die, and kill, you aren't mature enough to be writing about them yet.

#teen teaching assistant did say it's a thing people do for social media #but i do not care #do not let the brain rot of tiktok affect 8 year olds please

[soyochii]

Quick doodles before I evaporate.

#jjk #geto suguru #satosugu #gojo satoru #Don't look to close these are so rough #“Girl dinner” I say to myself looking at the 500th tiktok edit of sato/sugu actually dry heaving wanting to crumble into dust #jjk is the worst thing ive done for my mental health in a while #anyway I still love them and wish they could have been happy together for a little longer #Didn't get a chance to hug your best friend and tell him how much he means to you in highschool #no biggie just do it in the afterlife #Jkjkjkjjkjkjk Everything is fine #my art #jujutsu kaisen