The Toxic Side of TikTok
A personal dive into obstacles that I dealt with of using TikTok to promote my brand and music in a business outlook.
I’ve never enjoyed being on social media.
I’m the kind of person that’ll preach to you a big, long list of reasons why it can be pretty shit for your mental health. I’ve only ever had it for work purposes recently, and had a big, long gap from when I was 15–18 of not using social media, which was total bliss! Once I quit, I never wanted to go back as I really didn’t crave or feel the need for it anymore, and for some reason that sensation surprised me?
I’ve been on TikTok for 3 months now for my music career, and tonight I came to the decision to remove myself from that platform. I agree that there definitely can be pros (It’s not impossible), but these are the reasons that I have either witnessed whilst being on there or dealt with personally with the cons as a musician.
Bullying
I’ve never been personally attacked or bullied on TikTok, and I’m aware that cyber-bullying was already a thing before TikTok and on many platforms, but the immense amount of content from other musicians who had an extreme explosion of direct attack and hate, or sarcasm thrown their way in the comments felt extremely uncomforting for me to witness. I felt a bubble of anxiety rise-up in me every single time I stumbled across someone in my shoes career wise, who blew up on TikTok for the wrong reasons. It also made me feel uncomfortable of how some of these singers were still classed as children, yet being discriminated by total strangers. I’ve never seen this amount of hate on any other social media platform personally.
The Algorithm
Billions of TikTok’s are posted per-day making it extremely difficult for artists or creatives like myself to be consumed by the right type of audience who would enjoy our content. It’s difficult with any algorithm on any social media platform but especially TikTok, as random or naïve videos can blow up. It frustrates me a little as I’ve seen and spoken to so many extremely talented underrated artists and creatives who I feel they deserve that kind of support and spotlight, but unfortunately are hidden.
Trends / Longevity
It doesn’t feel like a platform I can personally be taken seriously on as a musician, as it feels like an immature platform in terms of not feeling as though I can be authentic enough, and the anxiety that comes with how original should I be vs how much should I conform to what everyone around me is doing on the app, which isn’t the direction I want to go down. A lot of the content feels very staged too and artificial, and trends are only temporary – chasing them isn’t something that will create longevity in my music career long-term.
Addictive
Posting and leaving straight away feels impossible for me and I’m sure many other creatives reading this, so after realising 3 hours have passed and I’ve still done nothing really with my day makes me feel pretty groggy inside. I can also be addicted to seeing if I’ve gained any favourited videos or likes which I hate about it. Compared to Instagram which is a lot easier to disable notifications and switch off.
Conclusion... Goodbye TikTok!
I don’t feel too awful about it content wise, as there are so many other options out there for musicians to use as ways of gaining audiences. If any other creatives or musicians out there can resonate, drop me a comment! I’d be interested to hear your views and experiences with TikTok too. Hopefully I have made people a bit wearier that TikTok isn’t always the best option in terms of the business side, and to not feel peer pressured to press that ‘download’ button. There are tons of other platforms to experiment on! Whatever works for you personally 😊
As a last note, these are only my personal opinions. If TikTok works for you I’m rooting for you! And I am admiring your strength x
Love and Light
Tabitha x
I like this blog #positivevibes
I feel like you would love the show Little Voice. It's about an aspiring musician who is a wonderful singer and writer but just doesn't fit the mainstream idea of what a songstress should be. Thank goodness for platforms like Substack where humanity exists.