We Built It Brick By Brick

February 1, 2025 - Two times in my life, a single substance has cured my depression. The first was when I tried MDMA my freshman year of college. The second was when I downloaded TikTok.

It’s three months before the pandemic, the night that I join TikTok. I’m still new to San Francisco and winter has set in. Outside, cold rain blows in my face; inside, I barely have heating, in the converted attic I share with five strangers who hate each other.

I don’t have many friends here, yet, and only precious few who have time for me - though, it’s not like I have time for them, either. My first job out of school is soul-sucking and stressful. I work long hours, pouring myself into my job, and, even then, it never feels like enough. I’m always exhausted and when I’m not I feel sad.

Weekend nights are generally spent alone, in my room, listening to other peoples’ pregames. Week after week, I get trapped beside my neighbors’ revelry. It hollows me out, even more than the job I hate.

It’s on one of those nights that I join TikTok.

I return home from my walk, cold and wet, to my neighbor’s pregame still going strong. Seeking an escape, I open Instagram. Stories of more people I know - from everywhere - all having fun. At concerts, bars, and dinner parties, they’re doing their twenties ‘right,’ it seems, with people they love. All I can think is how inescapably shitty I feel in this room that’s nothing like home.

And then someone posts the ‘renegade dance,’ their TikTok handle splashing across my screen. It piques my interest. I’d heard about TikTok - all the addicted high schoolers’ cringe dance videos and embarrassing lip synchs - but never thought it could be for me. Still, I need to scroll - what other escape do I have? - and Instagram’s just too painful tonight.

Fuck it, I think. I download TikTok.

The sign-up’s seamless. Within seconds I’m on the For You page. Charli D’Amelio smiles at me, a glint in her eye, and does the dance I just saw. I’m embarrassed to be here, but, still, I scroll.

A gym bro, a thirst trap, a woman, laughing, as she pours milk in some guy’s cereal-filled mouth. I start seeing celebrities I know. One of the JoBros, doing this weirdly addictive hand 👊👍👎 dance. Charlie Puth, making music with literal spoons.

It takes all of ten minutes for the algorithm to figure me out. I don’t even know how it does - I’m too embarrassed to press any buttons - but, soon enough, I realize I’m not just mindlessly scrolling anymore. I’m watching nearly every video that pops up.

It feels like I’m flying - somewhere far away from this sad room I’m stuck in - as these people scroll past, one after another after another. They’re funny, like vine-level funny, relatable, and real - wearing sweatpants, no make-up, and just sending it on the internet. Before long, I find myself smiling. Then chuckling. And then I’m laughing out loud.

I press the little ‘like’ button. I click on the comment sections. I get invested in everything from the vine compilations to shuffle dancing trends. Before long, four hours have flown by and I’m laughing hysterically for the first time in months. It’s not just a dopamine hit, for my clinically-depressed brain. It’s the serotonin bath I so badly needed.

I fall asleep smiling. The next day - January 18th, 2020 - I write in my journal that, for the first time in months, I feel funny and happy and free from the crushing stress I’ve felt here. Against all odds, I write, TikTok gave me that freedom.

I mentioned earlier that another substance cured my depression once before. It was after the death of a friend my freshman year of college, that I tried MDMA for the first time. Single-handedly, it brought me out of that deep depression; I think, by reminding me what it was to feel happy again. After the high ended, I made the choice to just keep smiling. And like the dirty snow that covered my college campus, my depression quickly melted away.

It was years before I did MDMA again. With TikTok, it was different.

The weeks continue, and I keep scrolling. My budding happiness stays. I get funnier - not just at work, where I plan Corona-themed dinners while watching, from the office, the insanity of the coronavirus cruise ship sailing around the San Francisco Bay - but in life, too. My best friend there and I crash a Valentine’s Day street party with Sean Paul’s manager. We go on the funniest hike of my life before losing our last brain cells in an automated car wash to the sound of the Shark Tales car wash song. Everything we do, it seems, ends in laughter.

For the first time since moving life is actually good.

And then, one night on TikTok, I start seeing posts from Italy.

Influencers in hospitals, saying their cities are overwhelmed by COVID. Others, grieving their friends and family who already died from this virus nobody understands. It’s madness. I keep scrolling. The next day, my best friend and I are on our run together when her dad unexpectedly calls, and asks her to come home.

We finish our run - which, hilariously, involves a kiddie pool’s bathroom - and enjoy our sad frozen dinners (Amy’s, iykyk) before she leaves. Rather than opening my work computer, I start researching COVID. At two in the morning she texts, “So I just booked my flight home.” I reply immediately, “Me too.”

I get to my parent’s house shortly before lockdown begins. As soon as I land I’m on TikTok. I mean, what else is there to do? I scroll and realize everyone had the same idea. A few days later, lockdown hits and TikTok explodes.

II.

People on my For You page are literally losing their minds.

Someone’s tin-foiled their entire car to prevent germs, Karen’s screaming in Central Park, some guy’s using his sister as a mop - all to the hilarity of the comment section. Not that we’re not trying whipped coffee, PowerPoint parties, and hot girl walks, too. In Unprecedented Times, we’re bored in the house, in the house bored, and everyone, it seems, is joining TikTok. Taking lockdown one dance video, DIY trend, and prank-your-pet idea at a time. All with our silly little app helping us feel entirely less alone.

As COVID continues, those silly little users on that silly little app start to find each other. The hype house gets created, the Ratatouille musical debuts, Brooke and Connor make a podcast. But it’s not just the influencers who are finding each other. Black Lives Matter protesters, fans of BookTok, Alix Earle, CarTok, Tinx, and Floptropica - really, fill in the blank here - realize that they’re all on the same side of TikTok, too. It’s like finding out - if our algorithm is a house - we’ve had all these roommates, all along. That we’ve placed all the same bricks as all of the same strangers who are starting to not really feel like strangers anymore.

TikTok was always a safe space to be funny, dumb, and real. But as these niche communities start waking up to themselves - during the craziness of COVID, no less - it becomes more than that. Not just an escape anymore, TikTok’s algorithm becomes, like, a sorting hat for subcultures. Many of which, like BLM, begin to take on real-world relevances of their own.

I’m paying attention to the comment section now. I notice people dropping shared references so shockingly niche and personal that I can’t believe it wasn’t just me who experienced them. From niche TV moments - I’m talking random Grey’s Anatomy clips that inexplicably changed my brain chemistry - to deep Poot Lovato lore, there’s moments where I feel more culturally understood by the comment section than I do by some of my friends. As this continues to happen, I find that it’s hard to imagine how these people commenting these niche things I know - and the tens of thousands who liked their comments - aren’t my friends already. Because how could they not be, when you’re discovering - in real time - that you not only have a culture so shockingly niche, but that you share that culture with thousands of other people, too.

It’s 2021 by the time I’m realizing all of this, all at once, with a video by a girl who looks my age. She dances in front of text that reads, “To all my academically validated, anxiety ridden, people pleasing first borns: How’s moving to a foreign country going for you?” Having lived on four continents, I couldn’t come up with a better description of myself if I tried. Her video has 467K likes; the top comment - “HOW DOES TIKTOK KNOW” - 17K.

It’s more than comforting, I realize, to find that I’ve never had a unique experience. It’s the antidote to loneliness I didn’t know I needed. Because once I’ve realized that others are the same as me, how can I not love them, even anonymously?

At this point, TikTok’s not just an app, or depression-curing drug, but a para-social experience I’m beginning to believe I can’t live without.

I’m 26, now, and growing up on TikTok. Brick by brick, I’m building a life on this silly little app. Discovering myself, yes, and my own, shockingly not unique, culture. But I’m also discovering the person I hope to become. I’m learning about jobs I never imagined, perspectives I’ve never encountered, songs I’ve never heard and places I’ve never been. And I’m watching, when people on TikTok show me how to ‘do it scared,’ ‘kill the part that cringes,’ and heal the trauma I never knew I had.

TikTok feels like a place to dream beyond someone else’s highlight reel. My algorithm - that house I built brick by brick - knows me, it seems, better than I know myself, sometimes. It’s not just me, too. Months later, I catch my ‘straight’ friend’s For You page featuring muscle gay thirst traps. “I’m not into guys, I just like the gym,” he says, seriously now (we hook up a year later, his first experience with a guy).

But even more than the algorithm knowing me, strangers I share this algorithm with feel like the most supportive people on the internet. In advice, jokes, and shared interests, I find myself opening up to them as if they were friends.

When I’m moments from the biggest job interview of my life - a highly competitive dream job, at my dream company - I don’t turn to friends or family to work through my nerves. I turn to TikTok, and I get the job.

I keep scrolling. The pandemic’s ended, but we’re all still here, just as much as ever. Late at night, during the day, flying around the For You page. Concerts, comedy, music, culture, commentary, inspirational videos, local restaurants, breaking news, and dating - it’s our first stop for the latest. It’s still the funniest place on the internet, but it’s also so much more than that. Undoubtedly, it’s helping me become a better person.

Two years scroll by, and I’m moments from losing that dream job. Again, I turn to my silly little app. Perhaps unbelievably, the first post I watch is a story, a Chinese parable, about a farmer who finds the blessing in the curse and the curse in the blessing. The two - he says - are inseparable. Minutes later, I lose the job and gain a life-changing severance package. It remains one of my life’s biggest blessings.

Brought my receipts for this one

III.

Scroll again, and I’m 30.

It’s Saturday, January 18th, 2025, and TikTok is about to be banned. I’ve become so much of that person I once dreamed about, on this silly little app. I’m confident now, enough to backpack everywhere for nearly two years. To write and share my writing, to believe that I can make a tricky transition to a creative career happen - having watched others on TikTok transform themselves, too, brick by brick, over the years.

It’s been said that TikTok is like the American dream - an algorithm where anybody can go viral and get famous - but I think that gets it wrong. TikTok’s not the American dream because of fame, fortune, and the life-changing business opportunities it provides. It’s the American dream because it allows you to believe that you can become whoever it is you want to become in life. That you get a voice, too, and a say in how you want your life to be. It does this not because viral posts change lives, but because, like confidence, self-belief is contagious. All the more so when you feel a mass of people, even anonymous internet strangers - who seem just like you - supporting you from afar.

I can’t stop scrolling now.

The house we built, brick by brick, is coming down. The safe space for an entire generation - one of the only ones to exist for us on the internet - is being taken away with no close alternatives in play. Thousands of digital communities are being wiped out, and they’re all taking a final moment to say goodbye.

Many share their stories - the Instagram influencer who, years ago, read the ‘Pretty Little Bird’ poem on TikTok when she wanted to end it all and since found not just her voice, on TikTok, but her sexuality, self-worth, and best friend. The motivational speaker trapped in an abusive relationship who found a means out of it through the example of women on TikTok. The entrepreneur, artist, teacher, and grandmother with nothing but an idea and a phone, who went on to build successful businesses because of TikTok. They’re crying, these people who share their stories. Those of us in the comment section are, too.

Others dump all their drafts. Trends from five years ago flood our feeds - the sway boys are everywhere again and I’m seeing Charli d’Amelio for the first time in years - as still more influencers release tell-all’s of the products they promoted but never tried themselves. Users from other countries share how much they’ll miss the Americans, commenting how it feels like the end of an era for them, too. Like it’s a graduation, of sorts, when everyone moves on to different paths, apps, and lifestyles, perhaps never to intersect again.

Many more are protesting. In just a matter of days, over 1.2 million sign Rep. Ro Khanna’s petition to delay the ban. Seemingly more than that join RedNote - a Chinese platform available on Western app stores. The ‘TikTok refugees,’ as we call ourselves, are not just indifferent to the ‘Chinese data security risk.’ Many are enthusiastic in exchanging personal data for the algorithm most similar to TikTok that exists.

We elect Thoren Bradley - the sexy, wood-chopping, thirst-trap king - to be our supreme leader. He and countless others encourage us to attend the Ben & Jerry’s People’s Protest in cities across America. They discuss America’s tech oligopoly (see: Biden’s Farewell Address), corruption, Meta’s benefits from the ban, free speech and state capture of the public square. Still others talk about class conflict - not left versus right, but top versus bottom - and how the ‘top’ of America has systematically disenfranchised those at the ‘bottom.’ Clips from Les Misérables, even reposted by Lionsgate - its distributor, flood my For You page. Jokes about the French Revolution are being taken at least a little bit seriously. I join a Reddit forum where people openly discuss organizing for it.

It’s still funny - all the tearful goodbyes to our Chinese spies - but it’s also apocalyptic. With ‘scroll, scroll, scccrrrroollll!’ as our battle-cry, we embark on our final doom scrolls.

I’m unashamed to say that mine lasts twelve hours. It breaks my brain but blows my mind. I’m feeling everything all at once. Laughing, crying, cringing, protesting as the kaleidoscope of my feelings - some of which I didn’t even realize I had - opens up before me.

I go back through all 1,500 of my bookmarked videos. My whole TikTok experience unfolds before me. It’s really emotional. I remember watching many of them for the first time - where I was, who I was, how I was feeling at the time. Though I realize many of these videos changed me in some way, what I really can’t stop thinking about is how supported I felt just by watching them, and reading others’ reactions in comments. Reactions that mirrored my own. Improbably, this connection to my internet roommates feels real. A connection I’ve taken for granted, yes, but now that we’re all saying goodbye, hits me full force.

It was always real.

These shared experiences being digital doesn’t make them any less real for me. Every concert clip, every joke, trend, song, poem or piece of art that sparked inspiration in my life, every story that made me believe even a little bit more, in myself and humanity, hits me as a shared experience. As the last five years fly before eyes, I realize that those little kernels of belief have grown into a full-fledged faith in humanity. Faith that people are kind, the world is good, and that all I’m meant to do in life is just be myself.

Tearfully, now, I’m back on the For You page. Unsurprisingly, it’s filled with thousands of people - hundreds of thousands in the comments - experiencing the same kaleidoscope that I am.

It was always real. I know that not because somebody told me that or validated it for me. I know it because my heart feels like it’s breaking as I scroll through this house that built me. I know it because - behind the jokes and the comments and the hilarious handles are real people - just like you and me - sitting on the other side of their phone, having the same experience that I am too. Like this place I’ve gone when I want to feel happy or sad or just not alone in my bedroom anymore is being dismantled, brick by brick. And though I know life is not all online, and that my offline life’s been really great for a while now, losing TikTok inevitably brings up fears that I have to go back and be all alone. That this thing that helped me when I really needed it, over and over again, is now something I’ll need to learn to live without.

It hits me that, improbably, in this much-bemoaned age of digital radicalization, we built a house that fits all of us on this part of the internet. A house that, in the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, had room for the parts of ourselves that are glorious and divine and wonderful and room for the parts of ourselves that are petty and jealous and ridiculous, too. A place that could fit hopecore just as easily as hopelesscore, one where we could all show up, just as ourselves, and find people who appreciated us just for that. Where we could discover each other; where we could discover ourselves; where we could discover Floptropica.

I scroll past compilations, Titanic’s sinking scene, La La Land’s credit sequence, and just feel grateful for it all. The sleepless nights, the moments of comfort, the person it helped me become. I choose a final video - Joey Kidney’s goodbye - and, with bleary eyes, shed a tear as he says, “Good things come to an end all the time.”

I log off for what, I believe, is the last time.

IV.

Like any good drug, the high must end - and after that final doom scroll I find myself feeling, yes, sad - in mourning, even - but also relieved.

I hadn’t realized the extent of how chronically online I actually am, until I wake up the next morning, exhausted from the ban and my breaking of Dry Jan, with still-bloodshot eyes. Internet addictions are for people, I thought, who can’t get off their phones when they’re with other people. Who don’t know when to go outside, engage in their off-line lives, and just enjoy a moment away from a screen. That’s never been me. I trained as a yoga teacher and pride myself in being present. At least annually, I’ll go a few days - even an entire month, once - without using my phone at all.

And yet, here I am - on my last week at the beach - reeling from my inability to stop scrolling. Yes, it was TikTok’s version of the apocalypse - a moment so highly dramatized that I couldn’t step away - but it also was a reflection of, perhaps, where so many of us are at in our digital lives. That roughly 62% of Americans between the ages of 18-29 are ‘constantly online,’ according to Pew Research.

Just as real as our TikTok experiences is the brain rot that pays for them. Though Oxford doesn’t elaborate on the effects of brain rot when they named it their much-lauded word of the year, researchers at Macquarie University - a prestigious Australian research university - found a significant shortening of attention spans. That’s in addition to relative loss of memory and increased lethargy that they associated with extended social media use (x).

Not that we need science to validate it for us; in the lead up to the ban, many shared how they planned to use the time as the social media detox they so badly needed; a whole trend was born of people practicing how to touch grass again. As influencers shared the apps we can follow them on, fans replied that they’d rather just give up social media all together than get addicted to something else, with an algorithm that doesn’t know them yet, or, worse, that has actively traumatized them in the past (see: WSJ’s Pulitzer-winning Facebook Files, documenting internal knowledge that Instagram and Facebook algorithms promoted body dysmorphia, anxiety, depression, and even suicide among teenage girls, in addition to human trafficking and political radicalism; as you can guess, Meta did nothing about it).

My eyes are still bleary when my friend at the beach tells me that the ban’s over, just 15 hours after it began. Though I’m totally exhausted by it all, I log on immediately to the now-famous system message that Donald Trump saved TikTok.

Of course, it’s still hilarious. James Charles - of literally all people - being called the Anne Frank of TikTok for posting a video during the ban, pretending to be in hiding under his covers. All the accounts that froze during live-streams to the shock of their international viewers. I laugh as I see that my literal first video is, again, Charli d’Amelio dancing with her glinty smile. But, as I scroll, I notice that my house I built, brick by brick, is different than before.

We all knew the vibe wouldn’t be the same - it’s always awkward when you say goodbye, only to walk off in the same direction. But my algorithm feels markedly different than before. Micro-creators I’ve never seen dominate my feed. Posts from years ago are everywhere. The Ben & Jerry’s People’s Protest, which just the day before had been all over my feed, is, suddenly, nowhere to be found. It’s not just me, either. After a while, accounts I know start showing up. Their first posts are about censorship.

Free Luigi posts are now unsearchable. Anti-Republican comedy now ‘violates community standards’ and influential liberal leaders - like AOC - and independent journalists - like Aaron Parnas - are inexplicably getting unfollowed by thousands of accounts that, self-reportedly, did not unfollow them. Other users notice their feed getting increasingly ‘conservative.’ For my part, I see Christian religious posts for the first time ever on my For You page.

Frustrated, I join RedNote. Its bewildered Chinese users are welcoming, if shocked, by the sudden influx of Americans, as they kindly explain that this isn’t actually their TikTok, but Pinterest, instead.1

I pay my cat tax - the only thing our gracious Chinese hosts ask for, to start posting, is a picture of your pet - and suddenly am part of a different world. The discourse between two peoples whose governments have long sought to keep them apart was always going to be emotional. Americans marveling - like I did, last year in Chengdu (x) - at the incredible kindness of the Chinese people they encounter; the Chinese tearfully reacting to the long-overdue responses of the ‘Li Hua’ letters they all sent in school.

Yet, I didn’t expect this cross-cultural exchange to be so rich.

The scale of it - millions of Americans, and, hilariously, the Europeans that followed us, engaging with millions of previously Great Fire-Walled Chinese - is, perhaps, unprecedented. Though social media has connected the world before, never before has the world connected with China.

I scroll, and learn about China. Mostly, that what their people thought was propaganda - our paid ambulance trips and lack of free healthcare - is actually true, while the propaganda we’ve been served - their extreme censorship and brain washing - is generally false. Even the community guidelines that we all signed, when translated into English, aren’t exclusively about legal liability, data usage and ownership, like in America, but include treating others on this app - especially newcomers from different places - with kindness, acceptance, and respect, as well.

Within days, RedNote rolls out auto-translation features, enabling Chinese and English-language users to more easily talk to each other. Whatever was left of the propaganda bubble bursts - for both Chinese and American users. In its place: a creaky bridge of shared understanding; of knowing not just each others’ situations, but our humanity, as well. In an increasingly hawkish world, these bridges aren’t just important. They’re essential stopgaps against discrimination, racism, and violence on both sides of the Pacific. And though our governments may not continue supporting this exchange - RedNote is already closely monitored by the Chinese Communist Party, while, anecdotally, I’ve noticed less Chinese content on my feed already - the fact that it’s happened means something.

Many, of course, left RedNote (in Mandarin: XiaoHongShu) after the ban ended - ‘I had fun studying abroad on RedNote!!!’ one user wrote - but something special’s still happening for those of us who stayed. Something - dare I say - like TikTok, all those years ago.

V.

We call TikTok our ‘silly little app’ often enough. But it was never just a ‘silly little app.’ Maybe it took this ban - PR stunt, political ad, whatever you want to call it - for us to all realize. And maybe it’s embarrassing now - the fact that we did realize and said something - all of us crashing out publicly while the rest of the world watched in either shock or indifference. But I’m glad that we did. As we became refugee’d and then un-refugee’d, we realized that our digital homes - little corners of the internet where we can be ourselves - matter. That the sense of community we find online matters. That this relationship we’ve built is not just with an app but with each other - even anonymously, as we may be.

If loneliness is an epidemic today, I’d posit that digital communities are a veritable cure. And yet - like any drug - our usage of these platforms doesn’t come without big risks. The reality is that, just as these risks are real and under-researched, so, too, are the benefits - especially of TikTok. I say this to fight the overwhelming narrative in America today that social media use is bad, even if re-connecting with far-flung friends is supposedly good. The type of social media platforms - and the kind of engagement we have on them - really matters.

“Facebook’s for my parents and Instagram’s for my hometown. Joining TikTok was like leaving that hometown to go find my people, wherever they are,” was originally said, I think, by TiffMcFierce. But it stands as a feeling so many of us share. YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Club Penguin - they’re not the same as TikTok, and though that’s great, that also makes TikTok uniquely important for those of us who did find our people there.

A lot of life occurs online now. The possibilities that enables us, that I’ve experienced, are both dizzyingly expansive and completely unexpected. Yet, I’d be remiss to not mention that these digital communities do, inevitably, come at costs charged by the platforms they’re built on. Like everyone, I’ve experienced the ‘attention economy’ - the ads, goods, services, votes and ideas promoted by those who can afford it - and how it shapes our discourse, all while making all these ‘free’ platforms ‘free’ for us to use. And I’m aware of how easily viral moments - possibly even contrived by savvy social media operators - can turn niche events into powerful movements. Just ask any dictator what they think about social media or the plethora of social media-fueled protest movements - from Bangladesh and global support for Gaza last year to Black Lives Matter and last decade’s Arab Spring.

I’d bet they’d say that this viral moment-machine is, ultimately, a political stability risk for their government. One that, like wayward journalists, can be considered outside of their government’s control. One that begs the question: Is our data security the risk that American legislators see with TikTok? The same data security - location-tracking, surveillance-enabling - situation that American Big Tech companies abide by, as well? Or is the real risk, perhaps, us - the users, our movements, and the ‘independence’ of the media that we see on TikTok, instead? I won’t pretend to know the answer - to this or to what will happen to TikTok in less than 90 days’ time. But I will say that this experience has made me - and millions of others - further skeptical of our government, on both sides of the aisle.

Of course, this experience has also been so much more than that. It’s been a revelation to me to realize how important digital community is in my life. That it not just dug me out of depression, but helped make me who I am today - and who I’ll become tomorrow.

Just last week, Dr. Barlow accidentally launched the now-viral TikTok University, by posting about her free African-American Studies class, prompting tens of thousands of signups, and hundreds of additional courses by like-minded professors, all offered directly on TikTok. I’m already enrolled in Screenwriting 101, and am excited to engage, as always, in the comment section.

Whether or not TikTok lives for me to finish my screenwriting class, I’ll always feel deeply grateful for everything this community’s given me. From the free therapy to Olive Oil Girl, our Roman Empires and enjoying the butterflies - enjoying everything - it was never just a silly little app.

It was always real.

1

RedNote, or XiaoHongShu in Mandarin, isn’t just Chinese Pinterest. During the pandemic, it became known for more than just lifestyle content. Predominantly comprised of women and LGBTQ users, XiaoHongShu evolved into an essential support community for millions during China’s notoriously strict lockdown. As users tell it, domestic violence, economic disempowerment, and strict family obligations all became increasingly difficult for its users to manage during lockdown. Like TikTok users on the other side of the planet, XiaoHongShu discovered, around 2020, resilient communities of like-minded internet friends. These friendships - anecdotally - contributed to major changes in these users’ lives.