“We live in a culture of a big me … We’re in social media, where we broadcast … highlight reels of our own lives on Facebook.”
—David Brooks
I will be the first to admit that I probably have a social media addiction. Not in a bad way — it hasn’t wrecked my life or anything — but honestly, I probably spend too much time on it. It’s easy to get lost in Facebook reels. There’s no rhyme or reason to it; everything seems to interest me, from recipes to clips of the royal family on their outings to some parking-lot crazy person getting bent about someone not returning a shopping cart.
It’s just a passive way to scroll around and see something I might not know about from my regular perusal of news sites and my daily struggle with Wordle.
A good friend of mine films food reviews on TikTok, and she’s an expert at it. She’s developed a following, she has fans, and it looks fun. So I started to think maybe I should give it a go.
I’m not old, but I wouldn’t consider myself young either. Sixty is coming up in another year, but age is a matter of the mind, right? If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. So why can’t I do a TikTok? OK, read on. Here’s why:
My friend has been at this for a while and knows how to do it. Me, on the other hand?
I’m at my dining room table, trying to figure out how to flip the camera on my phone. I prefer not to wear my glasses for pictures, but I can’t see the phone without them, so my look will be full-on #Dork. Still, I persevere and figure out how to get the camera pointed at me.
Then it’s choosing something to film. It turns out there is some filter, or game or something, that tells you what character you are from the television show “The West Wing.” It’s only my favorite show ever, so of course, I choose that.
It takes me three tries to figure out how to activate the game, film it, and then upload it. And even then, I don’t get it right. There’s no sound except bits from the show. There I am, on video, chatting away, wearing my nerd glasses, with my silly dog wandering around in the background and me looking like I’m trying to lip sync along with fictional President Josiah Bartlet.
I might love technology and be a screen addict, but that doesn’t mean I know my way around it.
What I realized about these reels is the good ones take time and effort. The bad ones, like mine, make you look unhinged. I like watching them because it’s a glance into someone else’s world, and, like any writer, I’m nosy enough to want to look.
I won’t be going viral anytime soon, but that’s OK. It’s still fun to scroll through clips of people making pasta in an air fryer and dancing along to fun songs. That’s the thing about social media — you can be passive and just watch it or join in and be a part of it.
For now, at least until I find a video that shows you how to make videos, I will go back to watching and not venture into TikTok-ing my middle-aged life. Once I figure it out, maybe I can make sheet-pan dinners and do that dance where it looks like you’re flossing your armpits.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years, and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.