i'm back on tiktok, a talk with emma

Emma Chamberlain
I cannot believe that I'm making this episode. I really can't believe it. When I deleted TikTok two or three years ago now, I truly believed in my core that I would never in a million years redownload the app. And now here I am redownloading the app. I know it's shocking to me too.

And I do feel a little bit hypocritical in a way, because I made such a stink about deleting the app and damning it as being evil. And there's a part of me that's a little uncomfortable with the decision I've made to go back on the app. I feel maybe a little bit spineless, maybe a little bit irrational for initially deleting it and damning it to hell as I did. I feel a little bit embarrassed. I think about sort of going back on my word, but I am, you know what?

It might get banned next week anyway, and then it's all good. I guess I'm not on tick tock anymore. I guess no one is. But as it stands now, TikTok still exists, and I will be redownloading it on my phone. In fact, I haven't redownloaded it yet, but I'm going to redownload it right now, and I'm going to do it with you here so we can share this moment together.

Uh, it's on my phone again. What a weird feeling. This episode is presented by Haagen Daz. It's love at first bite with the new Haagen Daz dulce de leche bar featuring rich caramel dulce de leche ice cream swirled with thick, milky dulce de leche ribbons and dipped in milk chocolate. Indulgent.

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If you're selling products. Squarespace makes checkout seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment methods. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code Emma. This episode is brought to you by Walmart. I love the springtime.

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Now trending your style at Walmart. Zachary. Okay, so let's start from the beginning. Actually, let's discuss why I deleted tick tock in the first place, because I think it's important to go back down memory lane. So I was on TikTok, I think starting in, like, 2019, and I was initially hesitant to get on the platform because prior to it being TikTok, as we all know, it was musical ly, which was an app where people just lip synced to music.

And I personally found that cringe, which in retrospect, is mean. It's like, if people want to lip sync, people can lip sync. It's like, have fun, do whatever you want with your life and with your content. But, you know, as a moody 19 year old, I was like, no, that's cringe. Then musical ly turned into TikTok, and I was late to get on the platform because I was like, no, this is a.

Like, this is too cringe for me. I don't want to do this. But then eventually, you know, it became this inevitable platform. It was like everybody was on TikTok, people were blowing up on TikTok, and it took on a new life. It was less about lip syncing and more just about short form video content, I guess.

And I, ironically ended up going on TikTok and making incredibly cringey videos in 2020 when everybody was doing the dances, okay? It was like the renegade. It was like, doja Cat say so dancing. I did all of those. And while watching those back hurts my soul.

Yep, that's a tough one. Very cringe. And my entire sort of TikTok experience from, say, 2019 to, like, 2021, I don't remember exactly when I deleted it. I didn't really take TikTok very seriously. I didn't make high quality sort of content on there.

I would dance a little bit. That was about it. I really didn't do much on TikTok because it wasn't really creatively inspiring to me. For a long time, I was only creatively inspired by long form video content, which, you know, YouTube videos. And so I preferred to put my elbow grease into those videos.

And I was like, why would I put effort into TikTok? It just seems pointless to me, and I'm not really inspired by it anyway. Like, I don't even know how I would up my game on TikTok even if I wanted to. So this is just going to remain a casual, non important platform for me. So that was sort of my relationship to tick tock.

If anything, the more significant piece of my relationship to tick tock was me consuming tick tock. I consumed tick tock far more than I created tick tocks, right? And that very quickly became damaging for me. My algorithm, I swear to fucking God, became borderline evil. Okay.

I was getting videos constantly that were about me, sometimes positive and sometimes very negative. I was getting a lot of toxic content that I won't go into detail, but was very promotional of beauty standards in a way that was very toxic for my brain. And also, I was just in general, addicted to the short form content. Like, I remember being at the gym and walking on the treadmill and just scrolling on TikTok for, like, 30 minutes. I remember laying in bed for 5 hours at the end of the day just watching TikToks.

I was wasting an insane amount of time consuming content on there. And so it was sort of this double evil. It seemed like not only was the content I was being fed toxic for my consumption, but also I was consuming unhealthy amounts of it, like, extremely unhealthy amounts of it. And it wasn't like all the content was bad. Like, some stuff would make me laugh, some stuff would make me think, like, there was some good shit on there, and that's what kept me going.

But I eventually got to a point where I was like, this app is ruining my life. I'm rotting my brain on here. I'm so addicted to it. And the type of content that I'm being fed is just negative. It's negative.

It went even beyond the content being mean about me or the content being about beauty standards. It was negative even beyond that. Whether it was fear mongering or anxiety ridden sort of stories or opinions or conspiracies sad videos, videos of people getting hurt. Like, I don't know, there was just. I felt like my algorithm was just feeding me shit constantly that was making my brain a poisonous place.

And I think that's toxic on its own. But I also think being a public figure is even more challenging, maybe in some ways existing on these platforms, because, yeah, it's just sort of open season. Like, people can make videos about you, comment on your shit freely, and you're going to see it. And depending on the culture of the platform, that can get really bad. And at the time that I was on tick tock, the culture of TikTok seemed to be very toxic.

Now, it's dumb and short sighted to make a blanket statement about a platform like that because it's so big. It's bigger than all of us. It's like as big as the world. So depending on what algorithm you have and what corner of the Internet you find yourself in, it can be completely different for you than it is to the next person. I was very short sighted about it in the moment and believed that my experience was the only experience to have this sort of negative experience.

And I just damned the platform to hell. I was like, I can't do this anymore. This is actually a source of evil. I must get off of it. But I also think, too, I didn't really respect the platform as a whole.

I think probably because societally it was frowned upon. Social media in general is frowned upon in a lot of ways. Like, being called a TikToker was not usually a positive description of a person. Right. It didn't have an air of elegance, that's for sure.

And I think that that made me sort of disrespect the platform in a way. I was like, nah, like, I don't fuck with this. Like, it's not cool, it's not, it's not elegant, it's not beautiful, it's not creative. It's just. It's just like a bunch of junk food, you know?

That's sort of the way I looked at it. Even though I knew of TikTokers and I had seen many TikToks that were incredibly creative and incredibly cool. But the platform as a whole, to me, had a bad taste in my mouth. I think because of the way that societally, we tend to look down upon platforms when they're developing. It sort of reminds me of YouTube.

Like, when I first started YouTube, being a youtuber was not cool. It was starting to be cool, but it was not quite cool yet. Like, it was still kind of embarrassing. And it was not something that was considered elevated or elegant. It was very.

It felt like junk food. You know, what was more respected was to be a singer or an actress or a fashion designer. Like, all of these jobs that are in the public eye, that have history are the ones that are considered to be elevated, right? Whereas being a YouTuber, it's like, what the fuck are you doing? This is not art.

This is not creative. This is not valid entertainment. This is just junk. And then slowly but surely, as you know, YouTube became more of a fundamental part of our everyday lives. We all grew respect for it.

And now being a youtuber is not really frowned upon as much anymore. There's a lot more respect to that. And I think the same thing's happening with TikTok where it's like, okay, well, now it's such a fundamental part of our day to day lives, it's harder to not put it up on a pedestal in a way. But at the time that I was on TikTok a few years ago, it still was not. It was very much not a platform that had a lot of respect, I would say, at least in my circles or in my world.

And so that also made me sort of excited to get off of it. I felt like it was cooler to not be on it. It was being ahead of the curve to not be on it. And I also think, you know, my final sort of feeling about TikTok at that time was that I was very against short form content. I had built my career on YouTube, which is longer form content, you know, usually ten minutes or longer.

And to me, short form content was, like, pointless. I was like, what are you gonna, what kind of story are you gonna be able to tell in 1 minute? How are you gonna connect with an audience in any way in 1 minute? It just, to me, felt pointless, which I've changed my opinion since. But that was the way that I felt at the time.

So that's why I initially left. It was this clusterfuck of all these different negative opinions and feelings about TikTok. But I think it came at a complicated time as well, because I was also struggling with my career on social media in general, I think, and I have been for years, because I sort of had this golden era where it was easy for me. You know, I was young, I was excited, and things weren't really big yet. Nobody really knew me.

Like, it was still really small. And it was such a different time for me to be creating content because there wasn't as much pressure. I wasn't overthinking anything. The negativity hadn't really started to roll in yet. Cause I was still sort of under the radar.

And in the beginning, you don't really get any hate or scrutiny or anything. You're able to get away with having it as a career and not getting that sort of backlash, I guess. But once you reach a certain point and you're visible enough, that inevitably comes. And I think the second that it became really real that I was a public figure, and this is something that I'm doing that's working, and this is real. I think it inevitably fucked with my head in numerous ways.

Number one, I got into this sort of content hamster wheel where it was like, I need to film everything, I need to take pictures of everything, I need to document everything, and I need to post as much fucking content as I possibly can. Now, the problem with that was it was so extreme and it was so all consuming that I did not have a life outside of the Internet. It felt like I didn't have an identity outside of the Internet. It felt like I lost myself in. In being a public figure in a way, and it misaligned my chakras in a way.

Like, you know, like, it was not healthy for me. I did not have a social media life balance at all. And I was sort of addicted to the hamster wheel in a way. And it was detrimental for me because it was slowly but surely making me really unhappy and depressed. And I felt like, well, what's the point of my life if all of it is just online?

Like, I don't even have a real life. What is my real life? Who am I? What is my real identity? And being somebody who gets depressed, that made me kind of depressed.

Okay. Understandably so, right? It's like I started to develop this sort of nihilism that, like, my life doesn't exist in a way outside of the Internet. My identity doesn't exist outside of the Internet. Without it, I don't even know what I am, who I am.

So why the fuck am I even here? What's the point of that? I don't get any of it to myself. I almost felt like I was abusing myself in a way. Like, not allowing myself to have anything to myself.

And all of that gave me sort of a depressive identity crisis. And that was a really big challenge for me for a long time. For the last few years, really, it's been a really challenging thing to figure out, like, how do I strike this balance that allows me to maintain a level of sanity, I guess, you know, because I don't want to stop. But I also can't keep going on like this because it's not working for me psychologically. Like, I cannot maintain this lifestyle of filming and taking photos of absolutely every single thing that I do.

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Squarespace makes checkout seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment methods. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code Emma. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. Take a minute to check your social battery. How's it doing?

Does the thought of social events make you feel excited or exhausted? To be honest, my social battery is horrible right now. I am running on empty. I want to be alone for a whole week straight and see no one and talk to no one. I think I've overbooked myself a little bit, and so I'm feeling very drained.

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I don't deserve the recognition that I have. I don't deserve the people who support me because I'm not doing enough. You know, I like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm just talking and hanging out on the Internet. I'm not a doctor.

I'm not, you know, a therapist. I'm not. What am I? I'm just a normal person just posting on the Internet. I started to struggle with that reality, and I started to feel like, oh, I need to be doing more than.

I need to make things more impactful. I can't make something that serves no purpose. In retrospect, I understand that entertainment is entertainment, and having a virtual friend is incredibly powerful. I now, in retrospect, understand that I didn't need to be doing more and that that was my imposter syndrome getting the best of me. But in the moment, it was like, no, I need to make my videos more creative, and I need to make my podcast more insightful, and I need to do all of these things, and I need to make my instagram more, you know, like, I need to be more creative and come up with, you know, cooler concepts for Instagram posts and things like this.

I started to take it so seriously, and it ended up sort of paralyzing me in a way where I wasn't. I constantly felt like the content I was creating wasn't enough. It wasn't creative enough, it wasn't impactful enough, it wasn't cool enough, it wasn't inspiring enough. And I lost track of why I even like doing this. It's because I like talking to people about God knows what, and it doesn't fucking matter what it is.

But I lost track of that. Trying to give what I'm doing more purpose. But it's like, no, that, if anything, ironically, that was actually giving it less purpose. It lost its purpose in that pursuit of trying to deepen things. Ironically, it made things even less deep, and it made things actually less impactful, I think, as well.

But I also think that something that came with it becoming a reality, that I'm a public figure, was this newfound fear of scrutiny, sort of this fear of cancel culture, I think. Because to be a public figure is to, at times, be burned at the stake. And sometimes it's for decent enough reason. Sometimes it's blown out of proportion, probably beyond what it needed to be. Sometimes not, though.

Sometimes it's fair. So I won't take that away from cancel culture. You know, there are moments when maybe this person isn't so good and maybe we should not, you know, be consuming content from them. Fair enough. Sometimes things are taken too far, and maybe somebody did make a mistake, but it's their punishment, doesn't seem to match their.

Their offense. And at times that. That absolutely happens. Sometimes something completely fabricated, it can be completely false, and somebody can get canceled based on something that is not even real. But with all things that were created for a progressive reason, a good reason, such as cancel culture, it can sometimes maybe overcorrect in a way at times.

And I think we did get to a point where that was the case in some scenarios, right? And I think that that incited a lot of fear in me. Not because I am hiding something, but because I started to feel like, okay, I really cannot make any mistake because anything and everything will be blown out of proportion, twisted, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's the name of the game now. It's different.

There's less room, I think, for forgiveness now than there once was. I felt that way, and that really fucked with my head. And I'm not complaining. I'm not the victim of this, okay? Like, this is.

I'm not trying to, like, scream and cry and call myself a victim. Just stating the facts here. It was really frightening for me, and it's still really frightening for me. And it prevented me from wanting to say anything. I didn't want to say anything because I was so afraid of, like, can I make fun of myself even?

I don't know where the line is. I sort of became like my own publicist in a way, where it was like, oh, well, I can't say that because if I say that, then it'll be turned into this, like. And it was irrational because it's like, the things that I was. I was censoring myself to a level, and I have been censoring myself to a level that is just unnecessary. It's like, you gotta say something.

But I've been so afraid for the last few years to fully just be free and feel free because of the tense nature of the Internet and the hunger for drama and for character assassination when it comes to public figures that it's just been a scary time to be on the Internet for me. And, yeah, that's just been something that's been very overwhelming for me. But I think, last but not least, I was surrounding myself with certain people who were not conducive to me, not only being myself, but also pursuing the career that I've worked hard to build because I had some people around me for a period of time that, number one did not like me for me. Okay, I have a very, you know, loud at times. Not as much anymore, but still, I can be loud and talkative and outgoing and silly and.

Okay, that's great. Good for me. Yay. But there were people around me who did not like my soul, people who are very close to me. Right.

And when you have people like that, very close to you, in your close circle, who don't like you when you're being your truest self, it's incredibly damaging. And I loved these people who, it did not like me for who I was so much that I was like, you know what? I'd rather change myself in a way and mold to fit what they want me to be, instead of just saying, take what you get or get out. You know, like, you get what you get, and you don't be upset. I didn't have that mindset.

I was like, no, I love these people so much. I want them to be in my life, and they don't like when I'm really outgoing. They don't like when I'm having fun. They think it's annoying. So I became a shell of a person for a long time, and that's happening at the same time as all these other challenges.

Right? There's people in my life who just do not love me for who I am. And that makes you overthink every single thing that you do. How the fuck are you supposed to turn on a camera or turn on a microphone and be yourself when there are people at home, people in your world, people in your circle, who do not like you for you? There's already a fuck ton of that on the Internet.

Okay? I got enough of that on the Internet. People who think I'm annoying, people who think. Who don't agree with, I don't know, like, what I think about fashion or people who don't. Who think I'm ugly or, like, it doesn't matter, but it's like, there are enough people who do not like me.

That is an inevitable part about being a public figure on the Internet. But to have one of those people sneakily in your orbit, in your personal orbit, absolutely not. And that's what I had. I had that for a long time. And you know what?

It was more than that. It was also people who did not respect my career, who did not respect YouTube, who did not respect having a podcast, who did not respect, you know, being on TikTok, being on Instagram who thought that that stuff wasn't cool, people who thought that that wasn't cool. It's cooler to reject all that. And I understand that. And I agree with that to an extent.

I do believe that, like, it can be fucking badass and healthy and awesome to not be on social media, but it's also, like, social media is my medium for doing what I'm passionate about, which is fucking talking to people. Where the hell else am I supposed to do it? So I had the wrong people around me as well. And it was really at a bad time. And it was sort of like this catch 22 where it was like, having this sort of identity crisis and fear surrounding my career on the Internet was bringing me down.

But it was frustrating to me because it was like, God, I need to be doing more, but, like, I just can't. Like, I have a mental block. And that made me overall, a shell of a person, right? Like, that sort of dilemma, that challenge being, like, I want to post, I want to be present, I want to be doing all this, but it's just like, I don't know how to make it feel right. That made me very sad in a shell of a person.

But then on the other side of things, my personal life, the people that I was surrounding myself with, were also turning me into a fucking shell of a person. So now we have me even more of a shell of a person. I can't go and address my identity crisis and my fear of the Internet when I have people who do not love me for me and who do not fully support me. I can't do that. I can't address that.

But then I also was struggling to address the people in my life who were bringing me down because it was like, I don't have the strength to go do that because I'm so weak from. From feeling unfulfilled by my career and not understanding how to, like, get it to a place that feels good. So it was sort of this thing where I was like, I could not fucking get myself out of it. And I tried different things. I tried so many things.

I tried a thousand things, and it's been a really big challenge for me, and it's taken a lot of time. And for fuck's sake, is there a pressure when you have a career on the Internet to not take your time? Like, there's a fire under the ass of all who are public figures, to never disappear, to never be confused, to never make mistakes, to never, like, have a moment where you're not feeding the beast that is the Internet. You know what I mean? The beautiful beast, shall I say?

But the beast. Now, I broke the cycle mainly by shedding the people who. That was the first step, I think, for me, was shedding people in my life that did not truly support me, shed people who judged me, who made me feel uncertain in what I'm doing and not for a good reason, like, not for, like, a valid reason. Like, it's one thing if somebody in your life is like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't do something like that because it's damaging to you or it's damaging to others or it's. Or it's disrespectful or something.

Like, yeah, that's one thing. But if what you're doing is harmless and you enjoy doing it and someone's judging you for that, that's not somebody that you should have around. Nope. No. And it really started with getting rid of that energy out of my life and replacing that energy with people who genuinely respect me and respect what I do.

I'm, like, choked up thinking about it because all it takes is, like, one or two bad apples to fuck with your head and. And make you turn you into a shell of a person, make you insecure, make you. You cannot have people in your fucking direct orbit who do not believe in you, who do not respect you, who judge you. You cannot have people like that around you. You can love them, but it doesn't matter.

It will ruin you. And it ruined me for a long time, and I didn't even realize it was happening. As with most things, you don't realize it till it's gone. This episode is brought to you by Walmart. I love the springtime.

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No take backs. It's done. When I say, okay, I'm no longer going to go out on the weekdays, okay? That is a choice that I'm making. No exceptions.

I'm very final with my choices because for me, it simplifies things a little bit. It's like now I'm clearing up more brain space to sort of figure out more important things. If I have a sort of like a half choice that I made lingering in my peripheral, it will clutter my brain. I can't handle it. And I did that with TikTok.

I was like, I'm deleting this and I'm never fucking redownloading it. And this does not exist in my world anymore. I'm done. And I made this very final decision because that's how I tend to do things now. I'm working on that because I've noticed that a decision can be final for now, right?

You can say for the indefinite future, this is a final decision. But if my mind changes down the line, that's okay. That's not a failure. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think that my problem has been sort of my stubbornness about the finality of things.

And I think that that's why I've refused to even analyze. Like, hey, is there a world where I go back on TikTok? Maybe the issue was not TikTok as the platform, and there was an issue with me personally in the way that I was using the platform. Like, I refused to even look there because I was like, no, I'm done. I made my decision and I'm done.

But more recently, I've become more intrigued with short form content because I've been consuming a lot of it. Because I watch reels and YouTube shorts. I don't watch TikTok exactly, but I watch things that are quite literally reposted from TikTok to other platforms. I'm very much consuming TikTok like content, and I've recently sort of had this inspiration, like, you know, I kind of want to make short form content, and I was like, maybe I'll dabble in that. Like, that could be something that could be fun for me for many reasons, but I was like, but I won't go back on TikTok because I've made that decision and I'm never going back.

And I felt that way for a long time until I sort of had an epiphany a few days ago where I was like, you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that, okay? If I want to make short form content, because that's something I genuinely am interested in doing, and I think it would be fun for me. And I have some ideas that are, like, maybe, you know, that feel exciting to me.

If that's something that is intriguing me, and I want to start dedicating time to that in my life, it's just stupid not to involve the largest short form content platform that exists. So I've decided that I'm going back to TikTok, and here's why I want to come back. Okay. Number one, I think I've solved or gotten really close to solving a lot of my prior issues with social media. I've already sort of touched on this.

But number one, I feel far more solid in my identity as I've grown up and stabilized. I started on the Internet at age 16, and I'm 22 now. And from ages like 16 to 20, there was so much growing going on. I was a mess, as we all are in that time. It's so turbulent.

There's so many changes. There are so many epiphanies. There are so many morphing opinions and morphing beliefs and morphing, like, morals and values. And it's all happening so fast, and it's overwhelming as it is. But then to do it in the public eye is even harder.

I think now I'm still very young, and there's still a lot of learning to do for me, but I'm so much more stable in my identity and who I am online and offline, which is pretty much the same for the most part, but I feel comfortable with that. Things have settled down. Things have stabilized. I think that that just comes with age and maturity. Number two, I'm really practicing maintaining a healthy social media life, real life balance.

I do not have it perfectly figured out. I literally just made an episode a few weeks ago about how I do not have it figured out, however, because it's something that I'm so actively working on. And for the last two weeks or so, I've been doing pretty fucking good about it. I'm confident that going back on TikTok will not just derail me completely. Like, I used to have a terrible balance when it came to consuming that content, and I think it'll be fine.

And then also, you know, I have a better understanding of how to balance what I film and what I keep to myself. That's just gotten easier for me over the years as I've gotten off of the hamster wheel and set myself free from feeling like I need to film and document every single thing that fucking happens to me in my life. I broke that cycle. I'm free from that cycle. So I feel confident that I won't fall back into it from making TikToks.

Like, I think it's fucking fine. It's all good. I'm also not as afraid of scrutiny anymore. And I think because, number one, I've worked so hard over the past few years to truly become the best person I can be at times to a point that's almost damaging for myself, because it's like perfectionism to a point that is debilitating. That's something I'm working on, sort of figuring out the opposite extreme.

But I know that I'm a good person. And if people scrutinize me, they hate me. They don't like what I said, they don't like how I look, they don't like what I'm wearing. They think that I'm annoying, they think I'm dumb, they think I'm a bad person, they think I'm this, they think I'm. That I'm at a place now where I know that I'm a good fucking person.

Have I made mistakes in my life? Absolutely. As we all have. Blah, blah, blah. What?

Everybody always fucking says I've made mistakes. I'll continue to make mistakes. I'm not fucking perfect. However, I know there is not a cell in my body that has a doubt about whether or not I'm a good person. I know I am.

In the only way that you can survive being on the Internet in a healthy way is to come to that conclusion. Like, that must be who you are, and it cannot be a facade. It never was. But I feel like it was never as much of a priority for me. Like, am I really a really good person?

What does that mean? How can I be that? When I was younger, I didn't focus on that as much. It wasn't actively a part of my thought process, I was far more concerned about other things. How do I look cool at school?

How do I get good grades and get into a good college for, honestly, bragging rights like, you know, shit like that, much more surface level, much more juvenile, far less spiritually fulfilling. But, you know, we all have to go through that phase at some point in our lives. I know that I'm a good person, and also there are people in my life again, I've shed the people who did not believe in me, who judged me, who made me feel bad about being myself. And I've replaced those people with people who fucking root for me, and I've strengthened relationships with people who have always rooted for me. I've sort of figured out what that looks like, what that feels like in my life, and that has set me free.

I am not afraid of scrutiny on the Internet anymore. I'm fucking sick of it. I'm not sick of it when I say I'm sick of it in an angry tone. I'm not talking to the Internet. I'm not even talking to the people who say mean shit about me because that's par for the course that is a part of this job, that is a part of what doing this is.

I'm mad at myself. I'm mad at myself for letting it get to me. But also, I can't be mad at myself because it was just a part of my journey. But I'm not afraid anymore. Listen, I'm talking about this like, I'm about to start fucking, like, saying, like, crazy, controversial shit.

It's not even that. It's that I was afraid of saying anything. I was afraid of existing online, you know, like, it was just merely existing, showing my personality at all, showing my sense of humor at all. I was afraid of all of that. Right?

Also, I'm really trying to drop all of my limiting beliefs about what it means to make good content, what platforms are good and what platforms are bad, and what makes for a respectable career and what makes for respectable content. Like, I'm trying to drop all of that because I think all of that is ultimately limiting. I think that it is good to be analytical and critical of your own content because, you know, especially if it's something that you do as your job, you should be analytical and critical, but in ways that are constructive. Believing that a platform is inherently cringe or bad or whatever is sort of ridiculous, I think, and I've definitely had my experience with those feelings. Content doesn't have to be this highbrow sort of thing.

All the time. It shouldn't be. In fact, it should be fucking fun. It should be fun, and it should be entertaining. That's it.

It should be fun for me to make, and it should be fun to watch. That's all that fucking matters. It doesn't need to be some sort of life changing sort of thing for every person who watches. Or maybe it is life changing in some ways, but it's not in an obvious way. It's not in the way that maybe music impacts people.

It's in a different way. It's in a more modern way that didn't exist years ago, but there's still value to it. And I also think that social media is what you make of it. TikTok is what you make of it. There are negative parts of TikTok.

There are also negative parts about Instagram. There are also negative parts about YouTube. There are also negative parts about Twitter, and there are also negative parts about threads. I don't. I'm not on threads, but I bet there are negative parts about that.

Okay. There are negative parts about Twitch. There are negative parts about fucking Reddit. That play scares me. But with all of these platforms as well, there's positive.

There absolutely is positive, and it is up to me to decide how I want to look at these platforms. Do I want to choose to see them for only their negative? Where does that get me? You know, I think I need to change my lens a little bit the way that I view social media and say, yeah, these things are dangerous in some ways. They're damaging in some ways, but also they are the tool for me to do what I'm passionate about, which is talk to people and hang out with people and discuss things that excite me and things that I'm struggling with.

This is my canvas in a way, and I must make the decision to see these platforms in at least somewhat of a positive light, or ideally in a neutral light, because that's the light that they should be viewed in. Blaming TikTok or any sort of platform is not taking responsibility for our decisions and choices as adults. I'm an adult. If using these platforms in certain ways hurts me, then I need to not use them in that way. It's my job to figure out how to use them in a way that works for me, and the only person responsible for that is me.

So that's been an important, you know, conclusion for me to come to. And I think, you know what? This shit's fun. Like, TikTok was fun when I used to be on TikTok. Before it got kind of toxic for me.

It actually was kind of fun. I didn't take it seriously, but it was fun. I'm excited now, though, to get back on it and try it again. I think it's going to be fun, and I know that a lot of you are probably thinking right now, you're such a freak. Emma, you just made a fucking hour long episode about tick tock and you going back on it like, it's not that deep.

I get it. It's not that deep, but it kind of is that deep for me a little bit because, I don't know, I think I'm just somebody that tends to make everything deep, sometimes to a fault. But anyway, I'm excited to be back on TikTok. I have sort of this excitement around being on social media in general, and I think short form content is fun, and it's inspiring to me right now. I also love long form content, too.

I've been editing this one fashion week video for literally a month now, but I had 5 hours of footage. It's just taking me. It's like so fucking long that it's taking me a month to edit. But I'm excited about all of these things. I'm excited to be on the Internet again, and, you know, it's been a fucking journey, and it's been so turbulent for me.

But I'm proud to say that I've done. I think that I've done the work in a way to hopefully get to a place eventually where, like, this is just all positive for me. I mean, nothing's ever going to be all positive, but I'm keeping it together. I'm keeping it together, and I'm really determined to find the way to do it in a healthy way. And I love you all, and I am so grateful that you've all sort of stuck with me through these many years of somewhat turbulent times.

There's been a lot of fun times, too, but a lot of turbulent times. And I've spent easily half of my career thus far battling this complicated relationship with arguably, my canvas, which is social media. You know, I've spent so much time struggling with my relationship with it, and that's no one's job to deal with but mine. But, you know, there have been a lot of you who have stuck with me through it, and I'm so grateful for that. Truly, truly, truly more than you know.

I'm just very grateful for you all for hanging out with me for so many years now. And hopefully you love my TikToks. So go follow me on TikTok now. Love you. Thank you for everything.

Go follow me on TikTok. No, I'm fucking. I'm so kidding. But, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited, and I'm feeling inspired, and I'm feeling really good.

And hopefully. No, you know, not hopefully. I was gonna say, and hopefully it lasts. It will last. Although if it doesn't and I end up getting, like, emo again, you can say, I told you so, but I really, my fingers crossed that I'm starting to reach social media nirvana.

Okay, I have to go now. I love you all. I appreciate you all. Thank you all for listening and supporting me in all the ways that you do. I'm so fucking grateful.

Listen, new episodes of anything goes. Thursdays, Sundays, anywhere that you stream, podcasts, although video is exclusive to Spotify. You can check me out on Instagram at Emma Chamberlain. Check out my coffee company at Chamberlain coffee. We have coffee.

We have matcha. We have cute accessories. We have canned lattes. You can find us in a store near you. Or order online, chamberlaincoffee.com, and it will come straight to your door.

That's all I have for today. See you all on the fucking Internet, baby. Oh, my God. See you all on the Internet. Okay, love you.

Talk to you soon. Bye.

i'm back on tiktok, a talk with emma

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Reflection on Deleting TikTok

2: Decision to Rejoin

3: Addressing Past Criticisms

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Content Warnings:

Transcript