long post! everything here was originally posted to twitter by ted :- )
[1]
after almost two years of tiktok my algorithm is an absolute wreck. I cannot describe to you how this one tiktok is like the culmination of two weeks of the most dada-esque tiktoks of mind bending absurdity and I've soaked in it long enough where this makes sense to me
[2]
if you are worrying yourself to death and need a break, let us take a short journey through biscuit tok
it all started with a filter that put your face on a chrome lady walking down the beach with a song about tasting biscuits with the honey sauce
[3]
when I first saw it, I didn't understand and paid no heed
but tiktok kept sending me more of them even tho I immediately skipped them
and then, after a few weeks,
they started to evolve
[4]
each new version of the filter was more and more nonsensical than the previous, and you would never be able to tell they were related if it were not for the song, which also mutated
[5]
tiktok kept sending them to me. I sent out a query to my other friends. do you see a lot of tiktoks about tasting the biscuit? no, none of my friends seemed to know what I was talking about. I started to wonder if tiktok was gaslighting me. but for what end? I could not know
[6]
we live in a brave new world where the human drive to experiment and create constantly battles with the directives and pressures of algorithmic capitalism and in turn, something truly bizarre and magical happens
[7]
sometimes, it results in a tiktok asking me at 3 am in the morning if I want to taste the biscuit and I, a mere mortal who gazed into the abyss, know exactly what they mean even if no one else knows
I know
and the algorithm knows that I know
[8]
the original song, by the way, comes from a movie called Chickens in the Shadows (2010), a mockumentary (I think?) about a musical duo named Toasters 'n' Moose.
Thank you for listening to my ted talk on tiktoks