\nAAAAAAH AAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!<\/span><\/p>\n
After talking about it with my psychologist and a psychiatrist, I realized that I am terrified of getting older, not the fear of physically aging or dying (which I also feel) but the fear of losing my ability to play. The idea of becoming Squidward terrifies me. A character who desperately wants to be an artist but does nothing but fail in his attempts because he doesn’t know how to play, Squidward doesn’t know how to let himself go, he only knows how to follow to the letter the instructions he reads in art manuals, and that makes him one unhappy, bitter and envious squid.<\/p>\n
*Me taking my 7th shot of vodka*<\/span> I don’t want to be Squidward, I want to be SpongeBob.<\/p>\n Please don\u2019t make fun of me\u2026<\/span> I have nothing against adults (well maybe a little), but nothing seems more depressing to me than seeing people who have lost their ability to learn by having fun. The kind of people who think that intelligence resides in serious things, in the solemnity of high culture. Those people who have annihilated their childish part thinking that this makes them more erudite. This, I think, is being condemned to a living death.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so h*rny I told the local indie band\u2019s bassist im underage<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s because of this that I am obsessed with keeping sight of what younger people are doing. I need to keep a bridge with them in order to keep in touch with my childhood self and, as much as I\u2019m embarrassed by it, with my adolescent self, as well. My battle is to ensure that we don\u2019t end up like Boomers, watching the world change with prejudice and fear.<\/p>\n Ok, this is a new song, it\u2019s called \u2018if you see a quiet kid then don\u2019t call them quiet because it will ruin their whole day\u2019, it goes like this:<\/span> Like most people over the age of 20, I downloaded TikTok during the pandemic lockdown and was completely blown away. One of the first videos I saw was of a very young girl saying something like this: WOW. *Like.* I liked all the lesbian videos that appeared on #ForYou so TikTok assumed I was a lesbian and that\u2019s how I earned a front row seat to queer Tik-Tok (which, in case you didn\u2019t realize it, is the part of TikTok you want to be on). A place somewhere between funny, rough and sexy, free from hetero-cringe, in which mainstream narratives are collectively dismantled and where traditionally marginal voices take on a never-before-seen prominence. We are talking about an infinite number of videos with millions of likes and reproductions made by geeks, asexuals, and fat, racialized, non-neurotypical, poor, transgender people, as well as adolescents. Lots of adolescents.<\/p>\n Me on a horror movie knowing that i\u2019m going to die first:<\/span> All those people expelled from the world of acceptability and condemned as monsters suddenly have their own loudspeaker, and for the first time it seems that they have a wide audience with which to dialogue.<\/p>\n And all those adolescents, they\u2019re wonderful. Okay, so most of the content created by teens on the app is still very normative and mostly super problematic. Okay, so idealizing them would also be somewhat condescending due to ageism. But still, they\u2019re wonderful.<\/p>\n I have transformed myself into the clitoris\u2026 now the man can never find me here<\/span><\/p>\n As voyeurs, we can access their most intimate universe, we can enter their rooms, see them express themselves in their own codes and discover what matters most to them. TikTok is essentially transforming the forms of entertainment as we know it, and adolescents have found in this place the opportunity to regain control of their own representation, a space in which they can build a counter-narrative outside of labels created by intergenerational prejudice.<\/p>\n \uff65\uff9f: * It\u2019s time to brush my teeth before i go to bed but first i\u2019ll check that there are no monsters in the shower * : \uff65\uff9f\u2727<\/span><\/p>\n A space to generate content but also to find and discover an affinity of discourse, and we know just how important that is for people on the margins. TikTok is a source of alternative references that builds bridges and allows us to create communities and understand each other.<\/p>\n Everyone tells me… You\u2019re cool, faggot<\/span> Nobody takes teenagers seriously, but oh, the things they say! The infantilization and condescension towards teens deprives us of an invaluable story of people who are experiencing the same chaos as us but from positions that the rest of us cannot access. Isn\u2019t their experience and opinion valuable?<\/p>\n People be like: \u201cCapitalism is the best, socialism NEVER WORKS\u201d<\/span> During confinement, many of us, from the isolation and delirium of our own homes and minds, found a common ground on TikTok that somehow allowed us a catharsis. A connective catharsis to share the fear and anxiety of the situation, often intimately and crudely but also with humor and absurdity. \u201cEverything reminds me of him,\u201d said one teenage girl, as she took a cucumber out of the fridge.<\/p>\n The strange limbo that the pandemic put us in normalized exposing ourselves to the world in pajamas, completely unkempt or crying. Just like in the Exterminating Angel, the rules we had been socialized with began losing their meaning and one could stop taking showers as a kind of animal experiment (my record was 4 days, and I truly enjoyed them), nor was there any reason not to spend the day walking around the house rolled up inside of a quilt.<\/p>\n (crying) I wanna be a GIRL and I wanna have FRIENDS that are girls I\u2019m so TIRED of being a BOY and being so worried that i have to like BASKETBALL and FISHING\u2026 This is BULLS*IT I wanna make a PUZZLE<\/span><\/p>\n I think, fortunately, many adolescents are no longer comfortable with the culture of perfected self-representation, the selfie culture. Paris Hilton has nothing for them. On TikTok it is very common to see unknown users or celebrities like Doja Cat dress in pajamas without filters and from an unflattering angle (something that, if you think about it, is almost impossible to see on Instagram), a kind of intimate realism I truly appreciate.<\/p>\n When I give a pink marker to a classmate:<\/span> A similar trend is to share the before and after of a total look<\/em>. The more distance there is between the before and after, the more successful the video will be. From this perspective, the act of putting on makeup is a ritual, a process, and performativity takes center stage on TikTok. This is how the illusionism of the selfie culture is broken, because yes, the final look is FABULOUS, but nobody tries to convince you that it is not a disguise. In fact, it is the disguise itself and the ability to dress up that is being celebrated.<\/p>\n It all started with my mom, and then my dad. And then they had ME. And then they didn\u2019t want me. \u00a1So now I have white parents!<\/span><\/p>\n The glow up<\/em>is a trend that interests me a lot and that also reflects this paradigm shift of self-representation on social networks. Users put together a video of photos arranged chronologically from their childhood to the present. These videos obviously include childhood photos that you would NEVER show anyone. That photo where you were wearing braces, a haircut that was clearly a mistake, and the one where your arms were visibly too long compared to the rest of your body, or your ears were huge compared to the size of your head, or the photo in which you hadn\u2019t yet transitioned. Childhood and adolescence are terrifying times for many people and it is a relief to be able to share them and see that they are a universal experience.<\/p>\n L. is for the way u leave me on read<\/span> If adolescents have taught us anything, it is that we must accept and embrace our own vulnerability. For some reason the Z\u2019s\u00a0spiritual animal\u00a0<\/em>is the frog: a small, googly-eyed, slimy, funny frog. A little frog who doesn\u2019t want to be disturbed. It seems that, fortunately, the younger generations have learned their lesson and no longer want to be, as Shrek says, an onion with a thousand layers. Accepting one\u2019s own vulnerability is a characteristic of childhood that we should not have discarded in order to define the adult experience. Why the hell does being an adult mean pretending that we\u2019re not living in a sea of \u200b\u200bterrifying doubt?<\/p>\n My dad waking me up for the 5th time<\/span> What kind of society ignores the wisdom of an entire generation? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I finally managed to officially enter adulthood, and I\u2019m not talking about the day I turned 30 but rather the day in which thanks to a permanent job (albeit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2759,"featured_media":35962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6163],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6717],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMy head: What are you doing?<\/span>
\nMy liver: What are you doing?<\/span>
\nMy belly: What are you doing?<\/span>
\nMy dignity: What are you doing?<\/span>
\nMe to my ex: What are you doing?<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncause i\u2019m actually really \u2727 \uff65\uff9f: * F R A G I L E * : \uff65\uff9f\u2727<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/tiktok-1-copia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n\u00a1\u00a1\u00a1\u00a1STOP IT!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMy father: Engineer
\nMy mother: Professor
\nMe: An anxious lesbian<\/p>\n
\n\u2727 \uff65\uff9f: * i\u2019M bLacK\u2026 I\u2019m neGroOooOO* : \uff65\uff9f\u2727<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/tiktok-2-copia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nBut no asks me\u2026 Hey faggot, you cool?<\/span><\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m 16 and this is the 2nd global economic crisis i\u2019ve suffered<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/tiktok-3-copia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT I DON’T LIKE VAGINAS!?<\/span><\/p>\n
\nO. is for o sh*t i\u2019m gonna die alone<\/span>
\nV. is for very very scared for my f*king future<\/span>
\nE. is even less because i am a whole ass mess<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/tiktok-4-copia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nMe: Oh hi, thanks for checking in \u2727 \uff65\uff9f: * i\u2019M StiLL A pEaCe oF gArBagE* : \uff65\uff9f\u2727<\/span><\/p>\n
\nRepeat with me:
\nI will not be like Squidward,
\nI will not be like Squidward,
\nI will not be like Squidward.<\/p>\n