Why I Curate TikToks Like a Digital Drug Dealer
Hate and love share the same bed.Both require the same intensity,the same obsession,the same inability to look away.The only difference is what you choose to feed.
Sometimes I got nothing to say. And that’s the way it needs to be. To explain why I post TikTok compilations, you’d have to understand how I chose love over hate.
This week I learned that strong friendships are often bonded through shared hatred. I realized this described the foundation of my entire seventeen marriage. We built a life on rants. Like Larry David, we ranted about what we couldn’t stand about society, about the world, about everything that wasn’t us. When I gave up hate at 35, it’s funny because that’s when I stopped having a lot in common with my ex-husband.
The TikTok algorithm works exactly like this. It feeds you what you engage with most. Hate something hateful and engage? More hate appears. Love something lovely and engage? More love follows. I’d spent decades training both my marriage and my social media feeds to serve me anger. When I consciously stopped engaging with hatred, my relationship couldn’t survive. TikTok adapted.
I’ve been treating my Instagram TikTok carousel feeds like my own personal PBS. Educational, uplifting, something that makes you feel better about humanity instead of worse.
Before that revelation, my Instagram was vacation photos and family updates shared to 235,000 people. Then life became chaos. COVID, strikes, war, global financial and housing crises. Social media started making me feel like I was drowning in everyone else’s bullshit. And it still can.
(Continue reading to learn how I created this digital pharmacy to save me from myself… )