On Being a TikTok Creator Who Doesn't Dance

In April, out of boredom and curiosity, I joined TikTok. I knew it as that app that a bunch of my students were obsessed with featuring dancing teenagers and short comedy videos. I did my research and knew that I had to spend a good 15-20 minutes on the For You Page to click Like or Not Interested on videos enough to get to content that might interest me.

Almost six months later, I run two accounts with over 1100 followers each. No, I don’t quite understand how it happened, but I became a TikTok creator, albeit on a comparatively small scale.

It started simply enough. I had no intentions of actually creating videos for TikTok. I wasn’t going to dance or sing or make up pranks to get attention. Then the algorithm started pushing more and more creators at me who were doing similar things to me. I had even worked with some of these people before when I was on the convention circuit or writing for a bunch of other sites. If they could do it, so could I.

What started as a distraction became an obsession during the early months of quarantine. I’d plan out blocks of content related to what I was writing here, shoot videos on my professional equipment, edit them to perfection, and send everything out on a production schedule. Naturally, that failed miserably. My luck can never be that easy with content creation.

There are quirks to TikTok you may not know about. The big one is how you film the videos. Though TikTok has an upload a video feature, whatever automated and manual systems they use to determine who is or isn’t destined for immediate viral success red flags accounts that don’t shoot and edit in the app itself. I need more options than point and click for my video process to work at all, and I’d watch as a video I uploaded at, say, 9AM on a Tuesday wouldn’t get pushed out until 3pm on a Thursday in the early days. However, a short nothing shot in the app with simple voiceover went out within minutes.

Branding is also important. TikTok rewards you for producing content in a single niche. You’re allowed variation through popular challenges, but they prefer you to stay in your lane. It does make sense. The algorithm anticipates what kinds of videos people will like and delivers those accounts on the FYP. So, if you’re little BookTok channel specializing in YA literature also does gluten-free recipe makeovers and builds tiny ships in bottles, the algorithm might not understand. They want similar videos with a similar look and similar quality.

Branding is not the most important part. Anyone who saw my earlier videos saw me in full teacher mode. I had my colorful button downs and ties on while discussing signature style elements of Joe Dante or the symbolism of purple lighting in a Stuart Gordon film. Spoiler alert: I still dress like that in my day to day life, but the algorithm and evaluation systems weren’t onboard. My account grew significantly once I switched to t-shirts and sweaters.

That’s another quirk of TikTok that people are actually pushing against. The way the app handles harassment is awful. They have a policy in place that essentially suppresses content from creators who they believe could be bullied, so those accounts will very rarely get wide exposure to prevent harassment. What are these qualifiers? They admit them openly every few months. People are held back on TikTok due to weight, mental wellness, physical disabilities, general attractiveness, race, and sexuality. Basically, if you don’t pass as straight, fit, and beautiful, you have an uphill battle to viral success.

I’ve noticed that in my video creations. I may have body dysmorphia, but I’m not totally delusional. I’m fat. I wear thick glasses. There are days that my pain is so bad I can’t grin and bear it for the few minutes of filming to not wear my compression gloves or full on wrist braces. I have speech impediments. If I shoot a video from the right angle, avoid words I know I can lisp or stutter on, rehearse just enough that I don’t pause from dissociation in the middle of a sentence, and hide any signs that I’m in pain, my videos do better.

It goes further than that. I openly discuss my mental wellness on all my platforms when I think it’s appropriate. I will post videos about my struggles with OCD, Clinical Depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I refuse to hide that. Those videos TANK. Same for my Pride series about LGBTQ representation in horror films. Same for any attempts I make to address diversity in media and recommend books, films, and other art not created by cis straight white men. The algorithm is powerful in delivering personalized content, but it’s also incredibly damaging in its censorship.

Still I keep posting. I’m helping shape a community of thoughtful media consumers who want to understand the deeper meaning of what they watch. I’m followed by fans of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy who want to hear about the latest and greatest things they can see on Netflix or Shudder. For some reason I’m still investigating, mentioning Hulu is grounds for immediate suppression; Prime is a coin toss. I discuss the styles of filmmakers, touchstone pieces of entertainment, the tropes of certain genres, and even the occasional interesting news story about media.

That brings me to another huge issue on the platform. TikTok does not want you to leave TikTok for anything. Sure, they have tools to share videos to Instagram or Facebook or Twitter built in. You can link to your other social media and even can earn a URL link in your profile. However, if you DARE to mention the existence of another website, your content is getting suppressed. You will not be on the FYP. You’ll be lucky if your video even goes out to your followers. I can’t tell people to read the accompanying article to a video because the video will never been seen by people on TikTok.

TikTok is also fast and loose with what does or does not violate its guidelines. I have (knock on wood) never had a video removed from the platform. However, I have seen videos suddenly get pulled from circulation for random reasons.

I discuss a lot of horror media. Violence is part of the substance of those films. If my captions spell out the word “violence,” the video will not last long on the FYP. If I substitute with “v1olence,” it might go further, but will eventually stop. If I dare mention a content warning at all, the video isn’t going to leave the starting gate. TikTok will push POV videos acting out these same acts like nothing is wrong, but my videos will be stopped in their tracks for mentioning that a story features violence against women so viewers can make an informed choice on whether or not to watch something.

For me, the good far outweighs the bad on TikTok. I’ve gotten into a rhythm of knowing exactly how much time I have to work with in a video. I figure out what my main point will be and can usually bang out a video in one take. I trim the ends in an external closed captioning app, adjust the captions to actually be accurate and meet my own style guide (you will learn to use an Oxford comma, captioning bot), export the video from my phone to my computer to tweak the audio, export it back to my phone, throw it on TikTok, add on a filter, and send out to the world. It takes about 15 minutes if I take my time to post a 59 second video. People respond or they don’t, and I’m okay with that.

Meanwhile, on my alt account for my horror art and haunted house work, I got hundreds of thousands of views on a 15 second video of me showing off the Halloween decorations at Michaels to an orchestral cover of “What’s This” from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Maybe TikTok is a silly place.