I am not on TikTok. Everything I have learned about the official Mount Holyoke College TikTok has been through stealing someone else’s phone and looking it up. So, forgive me if I don’t have the most timely updates on the posts. As of the time of this being written, the MHC TikTok has been torn to shreds by our students. And personally, I don’t think that’s fair! Let me tell you why.
First of all, the TikTok is run by students. Yes, the person who posted that Jorge jaywalking video (which was absolutely hilarious, by the way) might be sitting next to you in class, analyzing Shakespeare. When you comment your grievances and insult the videos, all you’re doing is probably upsetting an innocent student worker at the Marketing and Communications department. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!
Second of all, we must distance ourselves from the concept of CRINGE. Some of you may say Mount Holyoke’s TikTok content is CRINGE. Of course it is; everything marketable and digestible to general audiences is. HOWEVER, who cares? Cringe is not real. Real is joy, real is love, and real is laughter. Let’s put our guards down and just laugh a little bit at the silly videos. YOLO.
Lastly, building into the second point, life becomes so much better when we start really picking our battles. This school has many things we can complain about; trust me, I’ve written about some. However, a silly TikTok account run by students that occasionally posts cringe, digestible content, is not one of them. Putting so much energy and thought into bashing it is just unhealthy, as at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Most of the things we complain about don’t matter, including most social media stuff. None of it is real. Maybe we aren’t real. Who knows? I’ll laugh at the Jorge post. And I’ll frolic on the unblocked part of Skinner Green as I do so.