TikTok Is Ruining My Brain (So Why the Hell Am I Still Posting?)

@sj_watson"The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage, you stand in the centre of your room..." I’ve come back to this poem over and over again. It’s about ownership, or the illusion of it — about time, and land, and being humbled by the world we move through. I’m reading it here not because I’ve figured it out, but because I haven’t. #ReadMeSomething #PoetryReading #MargaretAtwood #TheMoment #ALifeWorthWriting #LiteraryTiktok #PoetryLover #WritersOfInstagram #VoiceOverPoetry #FictionAndFeeling #SpokenWord #BookTok #PoemOfTheDay #atmosphericreadsu

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I posted this on TikTok. I enjoyed making it and putting it out there. There will be more. Here's some background, and a little story about my complicated and sometimes ambivalent relationship with social media.

I was chatting to a friend yesterday, the enormously talented writer Alex Thornber, who writes No Use Crying Over Spilt Ink. Before we got onto the Star Wars films, (vis-à-vis the merits and flaws of episodes 7-9 and whether 1-3 are really as bad as all that, with a fifteen-minute swerve into the spin-off shows and why Captain Phasma got no storylines and nothing to do in the final three films) we were talking about social media, creators, content, art and content creators. And BookTok.

I spend far too much of my time on social media. I know I do. I’ve hardly read anything this year, (compared to how much I normally read at least) and while this is largely due to the fact that I've been writing much more, it's also because of social media. I'll sit down, intending to read the book I have on the go, but then tell myself I'll just check my phone first. I scroll through messages and answer any that need answering, then decide to quickly check in on Instagram, then maybe have a quick look at TikTok, or Substack, or Facebook. If I'm not careful, the next time I look up from my phone, it's time for bed, and yet again, my book has gone unread.

The crazy annoying thing is: I'm not stupid, I know this is how these apps are designed. I know I'm falling for their tricks. But equally, I know it's not all bad. There are some genuinely talented people out there making ‘content’ — Comedians who are every bit as funny as those who were given a TV series on the BBC in 1992. There are people sharing really good advice too, stuff about being more confident, or having healthier relationships and stronger boundaries, pretty much anything you can think of. I can even make a mean poached egg now since watching a TikTok video, where before I always used to overcook them.

But it's so easy to fall into the trap, isn't it? The Facebook algorithm has decided that I love ‘Am I the Asshole?’ posts, so that's all it feeds me. ( I mean, to be honest, I do. They're usually stories of people behaving really badly — either the poster or more often someone they've encountered — and stories about people behaving badly make great material for building characters and dreaming up plots). The problem is I've now reached the point where I think I've read them all. I can be halfway through rereading a post I read a few weeks ago before I stop to ask myself what the actual fuck I'm doing with my life and whether this is actually a good use of my time. (Spoiler: it isn't.)

Anyway, where was I? See, my attention span is screwed too. Oh yes, BookTok. Alex was telling me about a few BookTokkers who started full of enthusiasm for the books they were genuinely reading, wanting nothing more than to pass on their recommendations and share the joy of the written word. But then they get big. Publishing companies learn of their existence and start to court them, and then it's game over. They're now just pushing the books that they've been asked (or paid) to push, books they probably haven't read and wouldn't like if they did. It's annoying, but inevitable.

You know what, I don't like being annoyed. So for that and a myriad of other reasons, I've been hesitant about being too active on TikTok. I don't like the thought of having to come up with ‘content’ all the time. The algorithm rewards consistency and regular posting, so there's the pressure to constantly be finding something new to talk about. Nothing against people who post photos of their breakfast, but unless it's a particularly nice breakfast, I don't want to be one of them.

Perhaps naively, I've always believed that the work should stand for itself. Over the years, aspiring authors or those with a book coming out have regularly asked me whether they need to start tweeting or Instagramming, or if I think they need to start BookTokking or writing a blog. And my answer, (which is quite possibly wrong, I accept that) has always been the same.

Only if you want to.

I think you can tell when someone is creating content because they ought to. I've done it over the years. I’ve seen what other people are doing on these platforms and thought it was something to emulate. But it’s been crap and I've given up.

The problem is I haven't been listening to my own advice. I've been telling others that if they do decide to interact with social media, they need to do it in an authentic way that feels right for them. But for a long time I wasn't doing that myself.

I think it shifted a little during the pandemic. The world had become horrible, depressing and small, and — on Twitter in particular — too many people (some of whom I loved and respected) were going on and on about the way those in power were letting us down, pointing out horrifying statistics and generally adding to the overwhelming barrage of negativity.

I decided I didn't want to do that. I made the decision to be apolitical. Positive. I started posting random updates as if they were written from the point of view of my dog, reminding people what day of the week it was and telling them that it was going to be okay. Silly but fun. I started asking people what their moments of pleasure had been that day, whether there was anything that had happened or that they'd done which had caused a spark of joy, and whether they'd like to share that. People told me they appreciated it.

Gradually, in the years since, things have shifted. I started listening to my own advice. I'm on social media because I want to be. I enjoy it. I enjoy connecting with people. And in my position as a published author with some success, I have more than a few people I can connect with, which is great.

But more recently I've also started to listen to my own advice about what kind of ‘content’ to produce. I've done some hard thinking about what I'm prepared to put into the world. There are some very funny people on there, but I'm not a comedian. So I won't be lip-syncing to scenes from The Devil Wears Prada, even though I kind of love watching videos put up by people who do. I'm not going to be sharing my recipe for poached eggs, sadly (they really are good) because guess what? That video is already up there somewhere and I have no desire to add to the noise.

But the name of this newsletter is A Life Worth Writing, so I do want to talk about writing and life. And I describe myself as a ‘multi-passionate individual’ so I also want to talk about my passions. I want to do these things in a way that feels authentic to who I am, and I also want to make sure that anything I put out there is quality ‘content’, not content for the sake of it, which only exists to feed the algorithm.

Anyway, I think this is all a very long-winded way of saying I've started to be more active on TikTok. You might want to consider following me. That would mean a lot to me. Genuinely. You can do so here.