"The bathroom is simultaneously more personal but less revealing than the bedroom. If you film in your bedroom..."

"... people are going to judge you on what stuff you keep around or what posters you have on your walls, said Joshua King, 14. It can feel too revealing. The bathroom is neutral, even uniform, but still feels intimate. 'It’s quite awkward to film a TikTok, so the bathroom is an easier place to do that,' he said.... The most common bathroom portrayed on TikTok is the type found in millions of suburban middle-class homes. The aesthetic in general is Home Depot: a neutral colored sink and low countertop with a massive fixed mirror above, with composite doors and air-conditioning vents.... Bathrooms with busy wallpaper or yellow lights can be problematic. And TikToks shot in messy bathrooms don’t perform as well. Ryan Ketelhut, 17, said that shooting TikToks has made him clean his bathroom at home more often. 'I keep it cleaner now because I am in there making TikToks,' he said. 'You need to have all your stuff and all your candles and whatever else not strewn everywhere. I had to clean up a little bit before I filmed my last TikTok. I usually have clothes laying in the bathroom. I cleaned the sink out a little with a Clorox wipe and I sprayed down the mirror so it’s not as grimy.'... 'I should be moving to L.A. in the next month or so,' Mr. Alberto said. 'A hundred percent I’m going to make sure that I like the setting of the bathroom. It’s a silly thing, but the videos on my channel that get the most views are in the bathroom.'"

From "We’re All in the Bathroom Filming Ourselves/It’s got lights and it’s got action. The American bathroom is the stage set of the moment" (NYT).

It's interesting that these kids want attention to themselves as individual persons but they do not want to appear within a space that reflects their individuality. They're choosing the neutrality — Clorox-wiped sterility. Don't reveal too much. See me! Don't see me!

ADDED: I'm reading the comments over there, and they're all harping on that "We're all" in the headline. Oh, they're not all saying that. I'm just using a figure of speech, the one the NYT readers are too stodgy to let the NYT use. All that work writing the article, gathering cool new stuff, and the boring readers get stuck on the first 2 words. Eh. Serves the NYT right. That's what you get for thinking you can bring the news about teenagers to the middle aged folks who still read the newspaper.