The world’s on fire—literally.
It’s been a hell of a week. In my province of British Columbia, an entire town burned down days after shattering Canada’s heat record. More wildfires are coming in what is expected to be a record year, and climate change means it’s only going to get worse. Meanwhile, Canada’s unmasking as a colonial state literally built on the lives of Indigenous children continues to reach horrifying levels with new discoveries of unmarked graves. Misogyny, racism, transphobia and homophobia are running rampant, we’re in a once-in-a-century global pandemic and the Delta variant is surging. And apparently the ocean is literally on fire, too?
It’s a lot, dear Tik Talk reader. And while I conceived this column as a way to highlight the important representation, education and advocacy happening on queer TikTok, this week I want to step back and say that like most of us, I’m tired.
But in its own weird way, TikTok is helping me get through it.
Scrolling through the doom
Business journalist Karen K. Ho popularized the phrase “doomscrolling” to describe that endless urge to stay on social media and read the news, especially when the news is bad.
Since getting a Twitter account almost a decade ago, I’ve carefully curated my feed for optimal doomscolling. Like, if you wanna doomscroll, I highly recommend all of the accounts I’ve filled my feed with. As a working journalist, I’ve justified it as part of my job—I need to follow all of these different outlets and reporters so I know exactly what’s going on in the world.
Of the nearly 2,000 accounts I follow on Twitter, the vast majority are delivering, commenting on or responding to some sort of news, whether it’s local, national or international. Lately, as mentioned, there’s been a lot of bad news. It’s one thing to hear about a fire in a town a three hours’ drive away; it’s another to scroll through two dozen reshared first-person videos from people as they’re fleeing.
And I don’t blame the outlets sharing these! News is vital, and we need to talk about the hell our world’s going through. But I had such a moment of dissociation the other night as I scrolled past news of Bill Cosby’s release and saw the first inkling of a new wildfire starting near Kamloops, B.C.
“Kamloops is on fire,” I said almost flippantly, exhaustedly, to my partner, before I scrolled to read about Britney Spears’ conservatorship and the sexual assault allegations against baseball player Trevor Bauer.
In an effort to get away, I instinctively opened TikTok, as I’ve done almost every night for the past year.
Butches in bikinis
I’ve written at length before about TikTok’s incredibly intelligent algorithm and how it curates the content you see. And much like how I’ve carefully curated my Twitter feed to give me the absolute most (bad) news, I’ve curated my TikTok feed to be a safe haven.
On that particular doom-laden night, I opened my “for you” page to see someone lifting up a floorboard on a deck to reveal a swarm of baby possums. Next, a tiny corgi puppy waddling along to a pop song. A non-binary influencer doing a makeup tutorial. My favourite TikTok cat, Gizmo, was getting his eye goopies cleaned out. A queer couple dancing to “Come on Eileen.” Each short video felt like a cold face cloth on the back of my neck during the worst of the heatwave.
If a certain post gave even a hint that it wouldn’t be incredibly calming and/or chill, I quickly flipped past it. I lingered on baby bulldogs riding boats for the first time, and on a chicken nesting with a turkey chick. I watched a clip of Laganja Estranja’s entrance on this week’s Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6 on repeat for five minutes. I know that every second I linger on that bulldog I’m telling the TikTok algorithm to spit more out at me—and it’s wonderful.
But one trend based entirely on joy really caught my attention this week (and therefore, I got to see a lot of it): butches in bikinis.
For the uninitiated, a TikTok trend refers to a template creators follow to make videos with their own spin on the topic—say, for example, a dance, or using a certain song to accompany their videos. This particular trend, though, is all about butches in bikinis. That’s it. Someone out there decided the Internet needed more images of butches in bikinis, and who am I to disagree?
All sorts of masc-of-centre folks were getting in on the action.
I love this trend because it’s fun, queer and positive. We love to see masc women and non-binary folks thriving! We love to have a little bit of sexy thrown into our feeds. And the best thing about it is the more I watched, the more butches in bikinis TikTok showed me. It was a sexy, queer, perfect feedback loop. And I loved every minute of it.
I can’t promise that everything is going to be okay, that more things won’t light on fire, that oil companies will stop burning the ocean or that the bad guys will always lose. Nor am I saying we should stop reading the news. (I still wake up and check my Twitter to see what new horrors await just the same as the rest of us.) But sometimes we need a break—and if you trick the algorithm just right, TikTok can facilitate that.
Queer TikToker of the week 🌈:
I’ve regularly used this section of the column to highlight creators who bring me joy, and this time around that’s especially true. This week I want to highlight Right Choice Shearing, a queer-owned shearing company in Texas comprised of a delightful couple of sheep-loving gays.
Not only do I learn about livestock shearing, they also pepper in an adorable queer edge to everything they do. Every time one of their videos crosses my feed, a smile hits my face!
Why you can trust Xtra
