TikTok between intimate space and the digital self
[independent research still ongoing on are.na]
“(…) When major new media appear every three or four years, the need to train awareness becomes a matter of survival. Each new medium is a new culture and each demands a new spin on identity; each takes root in one or another group in society, and as these flow in and out of each other the abrasive interfaces generate much violence.” Eric Mcluhan
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns that followed, our relationship with the living scopes we encompass has taken new leaps. Living, working, cooking and sleeping in the same space is not an easy feat and can quickly become mentally taxing. Stay-at-home quarantine measures and global boredom led many people including myself to start looking for distractions. The latter manifested in the form of a video content creating app that has earned meteoric growth during 2020. When I first started using Tiktok, I was easily hooked because of the agressive way its algorithm responds and serves you based on your interests. But for the most part, I was fascinated by the way it deconstructs the experience of hearing and seeing for the user.
“This is gonna blow up!”
When endlessly scrolling on the app, I noticed a lot of people will predict the virality of a video based on the sound or visuals it offers. This is because TikTok’s tools allow the user to take the sound from another user’s video and appropriate it as their own. Subsequently, when the user is watching a video on Tiktok, they’re not only consuming the video itself but breaking it down as a whole and thinking about the sound separately from the image, and additionally thinking of how they might appropriate it for a new whole video.
In parallel, this “virality” depends on the visuals as well and most often, the space in which the video is taken. As a matter of fact, when you open the app, it’s almost impossible to not have a teenager in a bathroom show up on your For You page.
The “Bathroom” phenomenon
In August of 2019, long before TikTok largely “blew up,” Brian Feldman wrote a piece about How TikTok Has Turned the School Bathroom Into a Studio, in which he states: “What all of these videos do in aggregate is reframe the bathroom, not just as an escape from the craziness of school but as a production studio. It’s a sterile, blank canvas onto which video-makers can project themselves and share their private moments with the rest of the world. That the authenticity of these private moments is unclear is part of the joke.”
However, with COVID-19 restrictions and schools closing, how did this bathroom phenomenon mutate? The answer is simple: it did not. Teenagers and adults alike still film themselves in their own bathrooms, this space that has long been associated with privacy and intimacy is now a public entity in and of itself, ready to be shared with the rest of the world. Although more personal than the bedroom, the bathroom exposes less than the latter and is less telling, which must play a huge part in its appeal. Moreover, the bathroom mirror takes on a whole dimension in TikTok fashion, be it for a 60 seconds skit, a dance routine or a “transformation/GlowUp” video.
This phenomenon is a living testament to the fact that the era of self-contained spaced enclosed within our living space is coming to an end. Privacy and intimacy are no longer mutually exclusive. Actions which have long been considered “private” are slowly moving into the public sphere yet at the same time new means are constantly being developed to ensure that zones or enclaves of “intimacy” are safeguarded in our increasingly public private lives — be it online or off.
But how do we balance out the thin line between our public private lives and our digital selfhood? This is something that I am constantly struggling with and I know it’s a universal experience. It is no secret that digital space has no defined shape or accurate physical counterpart with which we interact or to which we can relate, so we occupy social media platforms by comparison with actual models of interaction like classrooms, living rooms, etc. But the problem is that these projections are imaginary and illusionary because whatever happens in public digital spaces, even though it might look like a living room with friends, it’s actually a big public square. Really, really big. Worldwide big.
In real life, we are tied to the body that contains us. Even when we change, it takes time for others to change their attitudes towards us. Most of the time, the only effective way to get rid of an established self is to move to a new place and rebuild by interacting with a totally new and different group of people. In the online world however, a given version of one’s self can be deleted relatively easily. The digital personhood constructed online is detached from the corporeal body. This independence of the two entities allows us to remain unidentified, making it possible for us to disclaim whatever is undesirable and build new versions of ourselves without resorting to relocation and social uprooting. This enables teenagers and adults alike to explore and curate multiple versions of themselves in the online world, which can be seen clearly on TikTok.
Navigating my online presence has always been a struggle. Social media takes a toll on me mentally because I tie my worth to my productivity, which results in me constantly feeling guilty when scrolling through apps. I am slowly learning to maintain a healthy relationship with the media I consume and how I present my digital self, and it’s something that I started pondering on more seriously after using TikTok and seeing the lives of people change overnight: Should I unashamedly document my life and my stream of existence? Do I remain private or go public? Am I digitally attractive? Should I personalize my own brand? Can I make use of my career, interests, appearance or stances to maximize my platform? And most importantly, do I even want to?
