TikTok etiquette

Or, navigating context collapse

A few months ago, at my work, we hired someone. She didn’t last very long before she quit. We re-hired, we moved on.

Then, a few days ago, my colleague saw her on TikTok. She had popped up on the ‘For You’ page. And, hear me out:

She has a video where her boyfriend of four months (!) gets her initials tattooed on his bicep (!!).

The video immediately after shows her crying (!!!) because they’ve broken up (!!!!)!

Genuinely, incredible content. But also, weirdly personal, right? And a bit dark?

In the last Web-Led Substack, I talked about the blurring of boundaries that female writers experience when they publish confessional, highly personal essays. But, at the very least, these writers are professionals - they’re financially compensated in exchange for writing ‘confessional’-style work. What happens when that boundary is blurred, and it’s just your colleague? Your neighbour? Someone you used to know?

Thanks to TikTok’s powerful algorithm, it's not uncommon to stumble upon a friend’s TikTok video while mindlessly scrolling through your feed. And while the girl is no longer at my company, there’s an awkward clash between worlds that shouldn’t meet.

💥 Context collapse 💥

I want to introduce a phrase here, ‘context collapse’. According to researchers Brandtzaeg and Lüders, context collapse is the phenomenon where “social media flatten multiple audiences into a single context”*. 

So, once upon a time, you might have had username ‘JoeBloggs2005’ for your university forum; ‘JoeyKNIVES’ for your emo MySpace page, and ‘JosephLovesVictoriana’ for your niche antiquing group. Now, all of those different facets of your personality are squashed into one, flat persona. Your emo audience know all about your interest in antiques, and your university mates know you listen to MyChem. 

People universally agree that it’s a bad idea. And it’s one of the many ways where increasingly the internet is kind of worse than real life.

The ex-colleague’s TikTok videos are a classic example of context collapse. Maybe she was dreaming of sharing that video with her friends, or an imagined audience of supporters. She probably wasn’t expecting it to be shared around the office Slack channel of the job she left back in January.

And, as a go-getting millennial woman, I put a considerable amount of time and effort into appearing professional and put-together. I am also aware of how delicate it is, and how it can come crumbling around me at any time. If my Gen Z colleagues found out that I not only know the Chinese waiter TikTok dance, but I have tried to record myself doing it (failed), I think any semblance of authority I’ve built is going out the window (and I have started dabbing at them to subtly imply that I am not on the internet 100% of my waking hours.)

And so, just to clear some stuff up, I’d like to suggest that this is the etiquette for if you ever stumble across a colleague’s social media page when they have not shared it with you:

1. Avert your eyes.
   Does this person want their shit to be seen by you? Are you seeing a completely different side to them than the side you see at work/the Post Office/the school run? Then it’s probably not for you. Move along.

2. Keep it to your damn self.
   It’s weird when someone mentions your Instagram in conversation. “Oh, that meme that you shared on Saturday was funny.” Was it? It’s not for you. Now everyone in the office wants to know about the meme and what my Instagram handle is. No! You should’ve kept it your damn self!

Since social media is so new, we’re bound to find these awkward obstacles where the etiquette that has served us for centuries is no longer applicable. Maybe we can all just agree to pretend other people’s private stuff is still, well, private.

And that’s it! Happy scrollin’! See ya next week!

*The quote I used was from Brandtzaeg and Lüders, 2018. Time Collapse in Social Media: Extending the Context Collapse. Social Media + Society p.2 - it’s not behind a paywall, so you can read the whole thing.

🐕 A meme to end it on 

I love this sound of Gino D’Acampo complaining and I have especially enjoyed it being used on this poor chihuahua.