From "TikTok Made Me Gay" by Emma Turetsky (The Cut).
August 28, 2021
"But there was one thing TikTok was getting wrong: TikTok thought I was … a lesbian?"
"If you happen to be unfamiliar with the app, know this: You are no match for TikTok’s algorithm. By way of sorcery, TikTok learns your every interest, tendency, and pattern based on how you interact with its content, even if that’s just watching a video mostly through. What that means is TikTok knows you better than you know yourself. And it will show you more of what you like, even if you didn’t know you liked it yet. For me, I can only assume it started with lingering on a video of a gay pop star. So? I like her music. Then came the thirst traps, then the thrift hauls. I mean, I also like rocking a secondhand Carhartt pant, so?! Next came the the 'Disaster Bisexuals,' 'Gay Panics,' and 'Hey Mamas.' All of a sudden, almost every video on my For You page included a 'Woman Loving Woman' hashtag. I was confused and yet somehow … more addicted than ever?
I’m not gay, I thought, but these lesbians are like… really hot.
Then one fated night... the Most Subtly Pornographic Video ever.... Our protagonist sits at a pottery wheel, drops a mound of clay on its surface, and begins molding it into a cup or hollow vessel of sorts. She looks seductively at the camera, mouth ajar, as we cut to a close-up of her hands where she slowly (extremely slowly!) shoves two fingers into the too-wet clay.
I let the video loop again and again.... Painful as it is to think doom-scrolling AI-selected content was the thing that alerted me to my years of internalized homophobia and vicious cycle of self-hate, boy am I thrilled I downloaded that stupid fucking app."
From "TikTok Made Me Gay" by Emma Turetsky (The Cut).
From "TikTok Made Me Gay" by Emma Turetsky (The Cut).
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19 comments:
I've noticed something about social media companies. They'll host sessions explaining how it is wrong to mis-gender / mis-identify someone, but then they'll casually apply labels to people's accounts without notifying the person.
Per my comment in an earlier post today: I'm not sure who's going to be around to wipe the asses of this generation when we're gone. Perhaps the Taliban? Or their Chinese masters?
It will be interesting to see. Too bad I'll be in that Great TikTok Video in the sky.
First, good for her learning who she is.
Second, isn't the headline itself a kind of thirst trap? I thought that the headline was horrible. TikTok can't make you gay. I had to go read the article. Of course, her obsessive TikTok watching did not make her gay-it just slowly revealed her preference and led her to consider and accept that she was a lesbian.
This is the type of self knowledge a therapist who is right for you would help you discover.
Which brings me to my third point: she should find a new therapist who works better with her. Assuming the author thinks she still needs therapy, of course. I hope this resolved enough of her confusion that the rest of her life falls into place.
Sounds like Emma Turetsky needs to get a real life, and not be such a waste of oxygen.
"TikTok learns your every interest, tendency, and pattern based on how you interact with its content, even if that’s just watching a video mostly through."
This assumes TikTok learns about you only through your interactions with TikTok. But there is a huge amount of data about you available from a lot of other sources. There is an entire industry based on collecting information about your from various sources and aggregating it. Isn't it likely that TikTok also learns about you from these other sources?
This undermines the whole gee-whiz attitude of the article.
Tivo was doing the same thing 20 years ago.
China's diabolical plan revealed!
Then one fated night... the Most Subtly Pornographic Video ever
Link please..
Interesting -- so many of the 1st-person articles are just pointless narcissism in search of a byline, but this one was fascinating to read. The unlimited profanity made me think its author still has a lot to learn, though. Do extended-adolescents really talk like that? The ones I know don't, at least not in my company. Author does a good job of making her thoughts sound like talk, however. Hard for me to believe someone actually practices that tone.
Tik Tok probably knows she is an idiot.
And how about a Ghost reference?
Modern society encourages self-expression.
Modern selves have so little to express.
Hmmm. If Tik-Tok can make her a lesbian, do you think it could make two for me?
Tom -- that's always been one of my favorite articles.
> Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."
> "The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."
How do we KNOW, that she DID become a lesbian?
How do we know, that she isn't just a comedian; ACTING like a lesbian convert?
Maybe, the whole thing; is just a proformance*?
just a proformance* All the World's a Stage; and the people are just comedians, Acting insane
She might be a lesbian. Or she might be one of the 75% of straight women women who get hung up in the no-man's-land between wanting a beautiful girl and wanting to be her. Then you add the 2021 frenzy to classify identity and you get a lesbian--at least until she starts thinking about having kids.
Drama Queen.
"But I only watched 'Will and Grace' one time, one day.
Wish I hadn't, 'cause Tivo now thinks I'm gay."
-"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Couch Potato," 2003
I’m not gay, I thought, but these lesbians are like… really hot.
A motto for this generation. All the old Freudian speculation about the origins of homosexuality crumbles under the weight of the internet.
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