
Graphic: Elena Scotti (Photos: Screenshots via TikTok)
In a long year where everything was, generally, not great, the one questionably-bright star in our collective galaxy was TikTok—an app with an addictive quality that consumed hours of our valuable leisure time. For every bout of Sunday Scaries that hit hard during 2020, TikTok was there for us, serving story ideas, jokes, and gentle reminders of our own mortality. It’s not that TikTok is good for society on a large scale, but it’s hard to say that it’s completely bad, either. For every hundredth TikTok promoting pro-ana thinking, there’s at least one to two videos that provide some sort of joy. We tried our best to find that elusive feeling this year, as we scrolled endlessly on our phones in the dark, night after night. Here are the fruits of our labor.
@kentai.haven #stitch with @marsmakesmovies #greenscreen #fyp #guessmyheight #guess #dunkindonuts New Method in the works 🤫
I have spent so much time on TikTok this year, obsessively tracking what Fyre Festival-level disaster meals NYU freshmen were served in quarantine (I’ll never forget you, ~watermelon salad~), watching zoomers roast millennials’ #adulting and Harry Potter-obsessed asses, learning that teenagers want to kill Matthew Morrison, etc. It’s impossible for me to pick one good TikTok, but I’d like to shout out this kid who tries to figure out people’s heights online using increasingly intense mathematical equations using other objects in the frame, as knowing everyone’s height is very important to me. — Hazel Cills
@uhjuanb “I can’t sing or dance but I know how to have fun.” -Wendy #TheMaskSinger #WendyWilliams #Lips #ShowUpShowOff #WeWinTogether #fox #fyp #fyp #viral
I have written quite a bit about the creative goons, goblins, and gremlins that run amok on TikTok, sowing chaos and discord wherever they might appear. But in a year positively stuffed with memorable exploits on the app, my fondest memory is not of a specific video, but a sound. It’s of Wendy Williams, on The Masked Singer, performing an instantly iconic cover of Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker.” This sound spawned more wonder and joy on TikTok than anything else this year, even Doja Cat’s “Say So.” I suggest a quick exploration of other videos that employed this sound. In my book, they are all nominated for TikTok of the year. Ooh ooh ooh! — Joan Summers
https://www.tiktok.com/@southernbelleinsults/video/6894489678569901317
I’m far too joyless to spend any considerable time on TikTok, but there are a few top contenders in my mind: the dog who speaks with a word board, every horrible “day in my life in NYC” TikTok and its parody, the Laura Dern sitting challenge, and so on. But the one that hit me right in the gut is this narc-y girl calling out Jake for dancing to Cardi B on Tik Tok instead of contributing to their group project—I feel for her, because I am her; we are all her. —Maria Sherman