OK, if you're going to get on my case for being a sucker and giving all my info away to an app that has no regards for my privacy and sucks up all the data from any source it can access, forget it. I know it all too well. But my curiosity was stronger than the fear of data vampires.
I mean, what can they find out they didn't already know? That I like dogs? (most of my feed is dogs) Or that I'm a feminist? Facebook already knew that. And probably shared it with anyone willing to pay c5 for my profile. To hell with it, I wanted to see what the hype was about.

It started out innocently enough. I was taking a video of my dog and, because he's a hypercharged Aussie, I wasn't able to put together a decent clip so I tried some apps and then made a TikTok account just to try some of their tools. And let me just tell you, I totally got why the kids love to use this. It makes a decent cinematographer out of the lamest amateur (me). It suggests music you can layer over your video. It gives you filters and special effects and it automates the whole thing so that, in the end, you're like: whoa! I'm good. I should have been a filmmaker.

So anyway, while I'm there, I might as well check out the feed, right? Can't hurt.
The thing is, you don't have to do anything. You just scroll through each video on the main page. It's called "for your page" and it's what you see when you open the app. If the video is boring, you go to the next one. If it's interesting, you watch it. If it's confusing, you watch it again. You can follow people that look interesting to you, but there's no pressure. Ads can be skipped (hurray!), comments are hidden by default, and it's just effortless.

In the beginning, it felt a little bit like being the bride in "Say yes to the dress". You come in and you're shown a traditional dress. you're like, "I like it, but I don't love it". Then they bring you a gaudy dress. You immediately say no. Then they try a pink dress (no), a black tulle (interesting but not your thing), and so on until you start seeing mostly dresses that you would absolutely wear to your imaginary wedding. Well, not you. The bride on the reality show.

It took maybe two days (not all at once though!) of me scrolling and skipping and liking stuff, for my feed to be mostly cute dogs doing funny shit.
It took maybe a week for it to show me home DIY projects (I was renovating the hallway).
And before long, I start getting videos of sound engineers examining multi-track analog recordings such as Bohemian Rhapsody and isolating vocals to show how the harmonies were mixed and the instruments were layered over that. And why, in some cases, they used the same track for multiple instruments (they only had 24 tracks and sometimes they had more instruments than that, fyi), and how they tried to isolate instruments in an open studio while also having the musicians record in the same space.

But I bet everyone else is getting these sound engineering videos, right? RIGHT??

Anyway, I'm a sucker for music - I like listening to it, I like making it and I like learning what makes it sound great.

That's why I have the musical note and treble clef earrings and the stylized guitar pick pendant in my Minimalist collection. Check it out if you're into this whole "music" thing.
PS: many thanks to my beautiful model Kris for waking up at the crack of dawn to be photographed wearing the jewelry.