TikTok Thinks I'm a Teenager Overstating My Skill with Microsoft Excel
And frankly, the accuracy of that assessment is alarming.
I’m kicking off today with something potentially mortifying. I’m going to open TikTok and tell you the first 10 things that show up on my #fyp (that’s “For You Page,” for the uninitiated). Of all the social media platforms, TikTok is the clear leader at serving its users content it thinks they want, as opposed to content they actively seek out. As someone who initially joined with the explicit goal of learning how TikTok drives book sales, buckle in for a story full of left turns and unwanted self-reflection.
Today’s topics include:
The First 10 Videos TikTok Selected “For Me” on a Random Thursday
How I Got into This Mess in The First Place
Why Writers Are (And Kind of Have to Be) Obsessed with TikTok
Spoiler Alert: I will NOT be discussing how to succeed as a TikTok creator. But I’ll almost certainly do a follow-up on my own bumbling efforts in that realm.
Today’s Countdown Clock
It’s June 13th, 2024. Time remaining to procrastinate writing by scrolling TikTok:
Click here for more about the countdown.
The First 10 Things TikTok Showed Me Today
It’s 10 AM on a Thursday morning, which is an excellent time for some potentially painful self-reflection, don’t you think? To that end…here’s what an algorithm based on my own behavior and an unknown — but undoubtedly large — trove of demographic data thinks I want to see right now:
A video “proving” that Bridgerton actors Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton are dating IRL (Okay, this is basically a conspiracy theory, but talk about MASTERS of narrative. These two actors know exactly how to market themselves and their work.)
A guy singing a song with the refrain, “Face it, your mate is a d*ck to women”
It’s true. The bear DOES always win. If that’s confusing to you, go search “man or bear.” I’ll wait. Source credit: https://www.tiktok.com/@emersonbrophy A rescued Przewalski’s Horse, an endangered breed (How did they uncover my horse girl origin story?)
Creator / comedian Josh Zilberberg identifying as “the weather”
Same, dude. Same. But where’s the fun in that? Source credit: https://www.tiktok.com/@josh.zilberberg Travis Kelce washing a car (If you can go on TikTok without getting Travis Kelce content, you might be dead)
Megan Mulally and Nick Offerman singing in a car (They’ve successfully determined my age)
Concert video of Taylor Swift from a recent Era’s Tour stop (Clearly I need to spend more time on feminist TikTok if I’m getting Travis before Taylor)
Coworkers arguing about who messed up a shared spreadsheet, set to the viral Post Malone / Morgan Wallen song, I Had Some Help
I can’t fight my corporate roots. Side note that I’ve gone from hating this song to favoriting it on Spotify, because I am as suggestible as a 12-year-old. Source credit: https://www.tiktok.com/@rachbrownnn An attractive, straight-coded British man sharing his thoughts on Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (We’ll essentially come back to this in the “how I got here” section.)
Back to Nicola making her now famous “Women with my body type” comment
The woman is a queen. I accept every over-serving of Nicola Coughlan content the internet wants to give me. Source credit: https://www.tiktok.com/@tifaine.red_
Okay, that wasn’t too bad. In fact, that was SO not bad that I scrolled a bit further to see when I would get something genuinely embarrassing. (Answer: Two vids until a “Clark Kentish” guy magicked his shirt away to reveal extensive chest and arm tattoos. DM me for that source.)
How I Got into This Mess in the First Place
A quick, personal-opinion preface: ALL social media platforms are demonstrably dangerous, and we should be doing more to regulate them. But we probably won’t, because money.
It took me a looong time to set up a TikTok account. I’m old enough to listen to NPR, so I had plenty of hesitation around national security concerns, data piracy, conspiracy theory propagation, etc. At the same time, I’m young and techie enough to understand that I signed up for all of that when I created my very first Facebook page in 2005. My personal data cat is very much out of the bag. And don’t even get me started on the crazy stuff I’ve seen propagate on US-based platforms.
But as a writer, I knew I had to sign up for TikTok. Since approximately 2019, the platform has positively upended the book industry. The massive “BookTok” community has accomplished what no one, especially romance readers and writers, thought possible. It made our books not just acceptable, but…popular.
So, knowing that I needed to understand this key marketing tool, I created an account exclusively to follow BookTok accounts.
The result? My feed was…mind-numbingly boring.
Until.
I honestly can’t remember what the first “non-bookish” content I received was, but it was probably book-adjacent. Even today, the path from Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton book series to the Netflix series of the same name to the show fandom’s obsession with two lead actors is pretty clear.
The Taylor and Travis content is likewise obvious. Those two have crafted the public image of romance MCs (main characters). Strong female lead? Check. Alpha male who doesn’t really seem like a jerk under the surface? Check. Adorable one-liners and easter egg shoutouts to each other? Check and mate.
But then we get into the less-obvious connections.
I’m a big stand-up comedy fan, so it makes sense that I’m getting comedian-generated content, but what was my entry point? Did it start with me liking a BookTok joke, thereby revealing that I’m actually here for comedy in general?
And what about the Microsoft Excel content? That’s pretty dang niche as humor goes, and yet somehow TikTok knows that I’ve always loved the absurd elements of office culture. Did they pull that from something I liked on another platform, like Instagram? Or did they just assume that most women born in the 1980s have since been wronged by a shared spreadsheet?
And yes, I do like tattoos, though I’ll be offering no further speculation on how they got that data.
By now you can see what really happened here. I got on TikTok to learn about the platform. Instead, the platform learned all about me.
In fact, if you look closely at the screenshots above, you’ll note that I don’t actively follow a single one of those content creators. My entire top 10 list is stuff that I didn’t explicitly seek out, but did enjoy watching.
Why Writers Are (And Kind of Have to Be) Obsessed with TikTok
Sorry to be obnoxious, but I’m going to quote myself for emphasis:
My entire top 10 list is stuff that I didn’t explicitly seek out, but did enjoy watching.
That’s the entire goal of book marketing in a nutshell. Most authors can’t publish more than 1-2 books a year, and most readers can consume that many in a month. (Or faster, if you’re and addict like me.) Readers are always looking for our next find. Which leaves authors to reflect on how to make those finds happen.
As part of a publishing course, I recently did an exercise assessing books I’ve purchased in the past year. They all either:
Caught my eye in a bookstore or airport gift shop (the old-school way),
Were selected by one of my book clubs (the word-of-mouth way), or
Came highly recommended by people with similar reading interests (the TikTok way)
As a debut author, the chances of my book getting out in the world via method number one is virtually nil. You have to be a BIG BOOK to even get a print run these days, not to mention sell into something as curated as an airport gift shop.
Method number two seems equally unlikely. Yes, “book club fiction” is a huge category that traditional publishing targets, but romance and book club fiction are generally viewed as different genres. Think about it — good book club books drive lots of discussion. (This is why they have “discussion questions” in the back of the book.) I’m not saying readers can’t or won’t discuss romance ad nauseam (au contraire, wait till I post about Threads…), but most book club books feature more angst, more moral grayness, and fewer unambiguously happy endings.
So where does that leave me — an unknown quantity writing unambiguously happy endings?
Guess I’m looking at door #3.
Which apparently leads to TikTok.
Which…I kind of suck at.
Since this turned out not to be as embarrassing as I feared, next week I’ll share all about how I’m a terrible TikTok creator. Stay tuned for mortification!
PS — If anyone else is feeling brave enough to share their own top 10 videos today, I am ALL EARS.
My TikTok algorithm is now showing me tattooed farriers, so I will be forever grateful to you for that addition. Also, I think I might be dead because I never get Kelce content.