A wooded area. A roaring fire. A bit of gently falling snow. This is my happy place. Except, it’s not out my window; it’s on TikTok.
For months I have “taught” TikTok to serve me this content: people, usually dudes, building shelters by hand in the wilderness. Most of them are ultra-sped-up timelapses that start with a hole in the ground, an axe, and a pile of wood. Once, I watched a guy build a hobbit hole that looked like the, uh, entrance to a Dune sandworm. I landed on cabin-in-the-woods TikTok by way of outdoor-cast-iron-cooking TikTok, and I never want to leave. Of course, I might have to.
No one really knows what will happen to TikTok in the next few weeks. Back in April, US president Joe Biden signed a bill into law ordering the app’s owner, ByteDance, to divest and sell TikTok’s US operations to a non-Chinese company by January 19 or be blocked. TikTok sued, and—as of right now—the Supreme Court plans to hear the case on January 10 and potentially issue a ruling on whether or not the law violates free speech rights before the deadline.
So, between now and then, I’m going to be watching all of the cabin-building TikToks I can.
Let’s be real, I’d be doing this anyway. Dissociating on social media is practically a holiday tradition, and with 11 days left in 2024, watching TikToks—or scrolling Bluesky, or thumbing through Instagram, if those are more your jam—is about the best way to reset one’s brain. But TikTok rules for this. Sub-subgenres on the platform, like animal-fostering TikTok or furniture-refurbishing TikTok, remain one of the most effective forms of mental soothing around.
Even if TikTok prevails, no guarantee exists that my FYP will continue to provide woodsy survival content. While it’s still largely a platform for pop culture junk food and lip-sync videos, a growing number of Americans use TikTok as a new source. Since 2020, the share of adults who regularly get news from the platform has increased from 3 percent to 17 percent, according to Pew Research Center. “No social media platform we’ve studied has seen faster growth” in news, the study’s authors wrote.
The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to TikTok.
Speaking as someone who works in the news business: Yay! (Also, please watch my TikToks.) Speaking as someone who would like to zone out this holiday season: Dammit. Generally, I like when some news slides into my FYP, but, knowing the algorithm, the more I watch the more TikTok will serve up, and my woodworkers will be left out in the cold. Respite, gone.
Perhaps this was always meant to be. No platform stays one thing forever. If there were one lesson to learn in 2024—as users fled X for Bluesky and the former became a shadow of its earlier self—it was that online social spheres are fluid and fickle. But for the next four weeks I’ll be watching the most unplugged TikToks possible.
Loose Threads:
Have you seen the gingerbread man plushie that’s gone viral? Well, it’s viral, so you probably have, but here it is again, just in case.
Disney reportedly pulled a trans storyline from an upcoming Pixar series. In a statement to Deadline, Chanel Stewart, the trans actress who voiced the character in Win or Lose, said she was “very disheartened” when she got the news.
The new Superman trailer. It’s Superman, but it’s not Henry Cavill, and it’s directed by James Gunn, the man behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.