Welcome to The Group Chat, a new series wherein the senior team discusses something relevant to the plot. And by “the plot” I mean the collective mileau of culture and current events that we’re all swimming in at any given time. This month: we all admit to more or less being on TikTok… and then we realize that “being on TikTok” probably means something wildly different for each of us. Enjoy this brief moment of levity / extremely mild existential crisis brought to you by the Autostraddle team.

xoxo,
Nico

Kayla: I am obsessed with watching extremely cringe lesbian couples who are content creators together. I don’t mean any of the ultra popular ones. I mean ones I find in random corners of the internet. The ones making the most cliched gay jokes and who embrace stereotypes and are so basic they almost circle back to being straight. BLESS THEIR HEARTS!!! The worse their sense of humor is, the more I like them. I am constantly trying to show their videos to my fiancée Kristen, but she can’t handle the cringe. She gets way too much second hand embarrassment.

Nico: My sister has Extremely Strong second-hand embarrassment, so now it’s a quality I find extremely endearing. I love this.

Drew: Kayla, is that on TikTok? I do think there’s something special about the TikTok algorithm’s ability to bring you to corners of the internet that will scratch your weirdest or most embarrassing brain itches.

Riese: That is unfortunate news for me because TikTok seems to think the weirdest corner of my brain is occupied by AI people from the 19th century telling the story of how they were murdered.

Nico: TikTok is really like the medicine in Mary Poppins that tastes differently to everyone. There is no definite TikTok.

Kayla: It is indeed on TikTok! My FYP is basically cringe dykes and food/recipe vids lol. TikTok is a wild place. I saw Kristen watching something the other day that was like a video of someone playing a phone game but with text from a Reddit AITA overlaid on it? And apparently that’s an entire genre of vids!

Carmen: I quite literally cannot process those words together as a sentence.

Nico: It is a genre of videos! People like, read Reddit threads while showing a video of something else.

Drew: My girlfriend Elise isn’t really on TikTok but it’s become an almost nightly ritual to watch the TikToks my friends sent me together before bed and then maybe scroll for a bit. Nothing like having an audience to really highlight the random things presented to you. Like why did I watch so many simulations of cars or trucks smashing into things at various speeds? What am I a four-year-old playing with Hot Wheels?

The weirdest for me though is probably the pizza cat monster who sings. Is this a popular account? I can’t tell if this is going to be basic or super weird. (Pauses to search for pizza cat monster.) Oh of course NOW I can’t find it. Did I make this up? I swear a couple times a week I watch the pizza cat monster.

Riese: I have not heard of pizza cat monster who sings but have you ever seen a straight white woman unload 45 different sizes and flavors of ice into her enormous freezer?

Nico: Really, truly, what do you mean by “pizza cat monster who sings”?? The phrase is kind of setting me on edge. I’m a little scared. Is it at all like the button dogs who are now asking why they are alive and what their purpose is and why daddy isn’t home anymore?

@whataboutbunny

Bunny: Bringing you existential content since dogs could talk #bunnythedog #talkingdog #fypシ #aac #WeekendVibes #doggos

♬ original sound – I am Bunny

Drew: No, don’t worry. It’s way weirder than that.

Nico: Wonderful. Thank you for the reassurance.

Drew: In general, I love when TikTok feels like some sort of surreal video art. Even the milk girl who I know is pretty mainstream. I’m just like wow this would make Maya Deren or Matthew Barney or at least Ryan Trecartin proud!

(Keep talking… I will look for pizza cat monster.)

Nico: Drew, I love Maya Deren, also used to make video art. Strange days! Might be why I’m also so pleased to see that kind of shit so democratized by TikTok? I love that video editing has gone so mainstream. We’re getting a lot of really interesting things from it. I was talking to a friend of mine who makes TikTok’s and who has ADHD and they mentioned that it is the first medium that has ever allowed them to communicate accurately the kinds of associations their mind makes when thinking because they can do these cuts between subjects that also display the connections.

Carmen: That is fascinating!!

Drew: I obviously love slow cinema and don’t want us to totally lose the ability to watch things longer than a minute, but I also don’t think the kind of editing and storytelling associated with TikTok is bad! I mean, since Vine I’ve loved seeing people tell stories in very short periods of time.

Nico: I’ve loved watching people construct new art forms out of it! I have to find it but have you ever come across the woman who makes these shorts that emulate a point and click horror game, all starring her? She’s also an OnlyFans creator. I fucking love those so much. Okay, found her: mollymooonnn. I’m obsessed.

@mollymoonn2

Smile for the camera

♬ original sound – Molly Moon 🌙

Nico: So yeah, I’m also finding my most embarrassing content on TikTok? I’m currently on Cishet Women Who Are Fed Up With Cishet Men TikTok and they are… they have some things to say. I don’t know what it is. Is it the glimpse into a world I know very little about? Is it Just How Cringe some of their experiences are? Is it the ways that talking about emotional abuse has become normalized that allow me to process my past relationships in ways that feel safe? And also, I am truly horrified and continue to be horrified right along with them by the discourse around the “that phase when you slowly start hating your girlfriend” Tweet. Everyone seems to not be doing very well and I am just fascinated, watching. As my sister said, “straight men are having a moment… not in a good way.”

Also, my TikTok is now so straight because I keep diving in on these women. I’m obsessed with the lives they are living. Like, sure, straight women have been biphobic to me, but like, damn, when I say I have solidarity with women as a non-woman, that includes straight women. They appear to really and often be going through it.

Carmen: I have this straight mommy blogger out of Texas who I have built a parasocial relationship with. She has this husband and gay sister and two adorable little kids and her husband’s brother also married an influencer? So they are just this whole influencer family? Down to the grandparents? Anyway! I love her curated TikTok life because it feels so far removed from my IRL messy life and I find comfort in that.

@jaylabrenae5

Replying to @rinnsister the girl gang got it!💕✨ #nylabop

♬ original sound – Jayla Henry | Influencer

But every few days I have to like a few videos from studs licking their lips in a row, so that TikTok doesn’t forget that I’m gay.

Nico: Love how you snuck in that thirsty moment at the end like I wasn’t going to notice.

Riese: I think maybe TikTok thinks I am a gay man, which maybe started because I have seen every single Trixie & Katya clip on TikTok at least five times. When I think about all the creators who I see and follow most often, they are gay men. Obviously Brian Jordan Alvarez, but also I have an intense parasocial relationship with Max Balegde:

@max_balegde

The most chaotic interview you will ever watch… Black Adam is out now!! As Noah said, watch it. #BlackAdam #noahcentineo

♬ original sound – Max_Balegde

a British kid who drinks too much and loves his crocs and goes on shopping sprees in Disneyworld and also Dutch:

@dutchdeccc

I have been waiting all year for this moment #september #september21

♬ September – Earth, Wind & Fire

a New York native who loves couponing and sitting in his bathtub. I’ve really loved like, seeing them get more popular? I feel like Max is my son? Oh and those boys in North Carolina who eat a lot.

I think on TikTok I wanna zone out and get a break from The Discourse or anything lesbians are talking about (unless it’s relevant to a story I’m working on or celebrity relationship I’m keeping up on for potential future stories) so I try to aggressively swipe away lesbian videos to tell TikTok that I’m not here for that, but of course I cannot escape myself or the humor of my people! But honestly, I imagine I spend more time watching straight people. I like to keep tabs on what they are up to. I feel like I had no idea what straight people were up to until I got on TikTok.

Drew: That is fascinating to me, because I spend so little time around straight people these days. But then sometimes I’m in a straight space and I’m like OH RIGHT, this is why their feminism is so basic! Because sometimes it really is as simple as men suck! (Or at least the men these women are choosing to be around.)

Kayla: I do think I experience most straight culture via Bravo and TikTok and there is a LOT of the “All Men Suck” vibe in both spaces.

Nico: Right, I am like. These women are Fighting For Their Lives when it comes to getting anyone around them to recognize their personhood. They cannot get even the most basic elements of being treated like a human by dates, partners, men in their lives, other women who are authority figures. That’s a super interesting connection to just like, there still being a reason for their feminism being so basic. It’s because the people they’re dealing with have not moved beyond the basic, in so many ways.

I am having a moment of reflection now. Maybe that’s why I’m obsessed. It’s a deep dive into how fundamentally broken things are, even for people who queer people might think of as privileged or as oppressors.

Drew: Okay I found pizza cat monster, except I was wrong it’s a possum!

@alternatebazaarart

dainty little pizza paws 😍 #pizzapossum #babybiscuit #marblecity #weirdcore #nostalgia #cgi #animatedmusicvideo #catsoftiktok #cursedfyp #blender3d

♬ The Way I Walk – Robert Gordon & Link Wray

I guess the possum isn’t a pizza monster but rather is friends with the pizza monsters. And I see they also have a little strawberry friend and a corn friend.

Riese: EVERYTHING WHAT’S WRONG WITH POSSUMS: IT’S ALL OF THEM except I suppose maybe this possum pizza monster. My girlfriend apparently sees a lot of cute dog videos but instead I am sitting here watching a 10-part video about a girl who was attacked by a dog and had to get her face replaced.

Nico: Oh I know that guy! How is this being pushed so hard to both of us? TikTok is just like: here. You need to see this. Are they a promotion for a musical artist? What is their purpose?

Reminds me of my girl, Wendy Vainity who I will stand by as being a visionary artist, not cringe.

Drew: Oh this is wonderful. I could watch hours of this late at night on TikTok.

And I don’t think the possum is promoting anything! I think it’s just that person’s art! But if record labels were smart they’d pay the artist to have pizza possum sing their new releases.

Kayla: This is the first time I’m experiencing pizza possum and I gotta sayy………pizza possum: GOOD.

I also have a bizarre love for TikToks that’ll just be like 7 INTERESTING SCREAM THEORIES and just like… list basic facts about the Scream movies that aren’t theories at all and kinda seem like they were written by AI even though they weren’t. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

Carmen: I absolutely do not have any idea what you are talking about.

Drew: I do know what you’re talking about but I hate them! Probably because I get excited for real Scream theories. :(

Riese: See meanwhile I am simply watching seven facts about Kowloon Walled City or seven theories about who is the most unhinged person on this season of Love is Blind.

Kayla: People are really obsessed with the “flannel theory” at the moment and it’s profoundly stupid lol

@sistapam

#scream #scream1996 #screammovies #ghostface #scream2 #scream4 #scream5 #scream6 #steveorth #derekfeldman #livmckenzie #deweyriley #vinceschneider #mindymeeksmartin #screammovie #greenscreen

♬ First Cool Hive – Moby

Drew: Also sorry to bring it back to my thing but now I’m doing a deep dive and the possum’s name is Biscuit !! Meanwhile, corn turtle’s name is just Corn Turtle.

Nico: Taste the biscuit!

Riese: Has anybody here ever seen someone go mini-shopping for their mini groceries in a mini store tho or nah.

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