warning rambling on ahead ❗⚠️

i went to the mall the other day with my husband. i was looking for a cute sundress for the summer, something that could help me not overheat in this hot weather. suffice to say i did not buy any clothes for myself but i did end up buying a keychain charm for my flip phone. with cute little bananas on it!

in all seriousness, each time i go out in public i am reminded of how much of an outsider i am. most of all of the young girls and women walking around had one of two themes, either mainstream goth or preppy. both themes looked like they came out straight from the early 2000s. barely any clothes was worn though for both, but i realize through my use of pinterest that this has to do with tiktok. ive seen copy paste versions of these girls on pinterest videos with the tiktok branding when i go on it every once and a while to look for cute wallpapers for my phone.

it was bad, the styles were cute, just that the lack of clothes was a little disparaging. i'm not a nun, but i think i dress nicely without showing too much. but i don't subscribe to the belief that less clothes is liberating, its not liberating when all eyes are on you and you're being predated by men who are often times much older than you. i don't believe the shit most social media tells you to adhere to, and i'm unapologetic about it. i dislike tiktok the most.

i could write a book on this topic

i noticed every store sold more or less the same article of clothing rehashed. apparently there's also a Sanrio craze going about, every clothing store had Hello Kitty merchandise to some degree in it! it felt just like the early 2000s again, but with smart phones and tik tok added as a variable. the current economic recession definitely brought me back to the old times, and it was saturday, so the small boom of people walking about also brought me back to pre covid times when everyone went to the mall. nowadays,the mall is usually a barren landscape on any other day of the week.

there was something new too, a whole Sanrio store popped up out seemingly overnight. pink, plush, adorable merchandise everywhere! it was very cute, that's where i found my phones keychain. (way too expensive BTW!) but i could tell it had to do with tiktok.

tiktok has really changed the world. not for the better, either. i personally dislike it, i can barely stand pinterest, almost every square inch of it is trying to sell you something constantly, like a virtual shopping mall. the other bit of it is trying to tell you you lack something, usually material but sometimes physical. but i guess thats what all social media is, really.

i've never had tiktok, but i see what it's doing to people and it's crazy. it feels like everyday in public is a nightmare. there's always some young kid dancing by themselves in front of a screen in the middle of a parking garage, or kids being incredibly rude, or my favorite, so immersed in their phones that they don't look up once. what kind of life are you living if you're letting your kid get consumed by social media and technology at such a young age? not a healthy one, i'll say that much.

when I look up seemingly mundane topics on any search engine, the search result is often a suggestion ending with tiktok. everything is a trend at some point, even songs! that hasn't changed, what's changed is the speed that everything is a trend. it feels like every other week some trend is quickly discarded for a new one, then the thrift stores see a surge in old trends. the new one for clothes seems to be bed sheet flower dresses, short tennis skirts and ugly lacy crop tops that remind me of beer and trailer parks, and the women that reside in them.

i will admit i like some trends, i'm not against the fact that trends happen. i like the cute Sanrio stuff for sure. but jeez, it's like every week now. you can't enjoy something without it being a trend at some point. you look up a song and lo and behold, its popular on tiktok. nothing wrong with that, with popularity i mean, but maybe i don't want to see tiktok as a search result every time i look up mundane things like purses or food recipes.

all the clothes i did see in several stores is tiktok inspired garbage straight from china. ah yes, red china, where slave labor is rampant, and everything is socialist garbage.

i wonder how many people actually know what tiktok really is.

tiktok is just china advertising stuff to sell to us a week in advance. they already have their factories revved up they're just getting us as consumers excited about it through the app. tiktok advertises it, and stores like temu sell it. it's more nefarious than that though, tiktok is pure propaganda, it's a narrative everywhere you go, but the app is like the las vegas of propaganda. large and loud, lots of new stuff and lights. except it doesn't stay in tiktok, it spreads everywhere like a bad cold.

i dont even have tiktok and i know this. i cry about the state of this country. everything feels so mindless and inauthentic. the wave of complete approval to anything new that is stated, the fear of not believing the same thing, of FOMO. it's absolutely bonkers. this is nothing new, but the rot is so apparent now that it (metaphorically) oozes out and IT STINKS.

don't get me started on people that use tik-tok for news. the last thing you want to hear is your cousin talking about the news they got from tiktok. that's not news, that's propaganda. if you repeat something blindly or consume something passively without reflecting on it, you've just fallen into someone else's narrative/propaganda. i advise everyone to stop and think for themselves at least once a day to avoid being mindless.

finally, in conclusion

i don't mean any of this in a negative way towards anyone. i say it as someone who (when i was younger) HAS fallen into blindly following ideologies, or repeating new phrases that sound very much like jive, or even changing up my wardrobe because its all 'old'. but at some point i decided i didn't want to be a vehicle for somebody else's beliefs, i wanted to believe what i believe and be done with it. i used to use instagram and facebook and snapchat. i realized it was soul consuming so i stopped. when that realization struck me, i was so angry. angry that i had been used. it took me years to get to that point but i did it, i'm free as of two almost three years now. simple as that, i know everyone is capable of stopping, but they don't want to. they see no harm in whats actually happening.

i remember when tiktok was musically and musically was for your best friends dorky little sister/brother to dance and talk to other kids. we'd laugh about it all the time.

the chinese government has succeeded. the war is won already. they have our youth completely distracted and completely and blindly in-line with all the maoist bullshit they spew forward through that damn app. i dislike it so much.