A week ago I threatened to make some TikToks. I set a personal goal to make one TikTok a day, just simple basic daily vlog stuff of whatever I was already doing.
And now it's been a week and I've done it. I now have a modest following and a TikTok profile page (@radiatoryang) with a full grid of videos. I feel a lot more capable with the video editing tool now, and sometimes I even have a little fun when making videos.
Here's a recap / post mortem of my first 7 videos and what I've learned from making them...
Vlog 1 was a straight vlog of my day walking around Auckland, the modest New Zealand city where I live. It was OK but maybe not terribly interesting. Not even kiwis care for Auckland much, honestly.
For Vlog 2, I decided to try documenting one of my chores -- pruning the banana trees in our backyard. I don't think of myself as much of a gardener, but I imagine most millennials haven't had the opportunity to fiddle with their very own home garden, so maybe there's a vicarious / exotic component to it. This is also the video where I figured out my personal tone as a narrator, explaining things in an upfront yet slightly strange way, and using cheeky video titles to slip past censors.
In Vlog 3, I stayed with the outdoor chore theme, documenting our wood pile. This too probably felt a bit exotic to the average urban millennial, who likely hasn't stacked firewood for survival. If you told me back in 2020 that this would be my life, I wouldn't have believed you, but now 5 years later I'm a guy who cares about his wood. This is also where I've started saying stupider / sillier things in my videos, a natural byproduct of improvising without a script while also awkwardly trying to time my narration to each shot, channeling a bit of John Wilson / Nathan Fielder in the process.
Vlog 4 is a return to the city, where I went to Antony Maday's talk at Auckland Makes Games, our local community indie game dev meetup group. Antony's talk was good and useful, maybe too useful, so I edited the clips into a silly absurd nonsense talk that reflects contemporary indie dev malaise about money. This one has been my most popular video, perhaps reflecting a local NZ interest in game dev, or maybe it's just been my funniest / weirdest one.
Then Vlog 5 was about Pippi, a dog whom I adore. Unfortunately it was hard to get good shots with Pippi, she'd rarely look at the camera and she almost seemed actively suspicious / allergic to my promises of TikTok fame. Working with animals is actually really hard! It made me appreciate all the pet TikTokers a lot more. I probably won't try to make another dog video again, I'll leave it to the professionals.
So for Vlog 6, I went the opposite direction and I made a video about rocks. Rocks wouldn't run away from me! I think my love of the rocks is a bit too pure though, I didn't have anything interesting to say besides, "I like these rocks, look at these rocks." In a perfect world, that would be enough, but unfortunately we don't live in that perfect rock loving world. It's much better to talk about this stuff from a position of expertise, as I did in Vlog 2 and Vlog 3.
... And now Vlog 7 just happened to me this morning! I was putting on some gumboots to do some more outdoor chores -- when a fucking wētā (a large native cricket) hidden inside the gumboot bit me on the toe! To be fair, I was sticking my foot into its home, but still, I was quite distraught and I made a scene. However I'm told finding a weta in your gumboot is a quintessential New Zealand experience, so as a public service, I'm sharing my amusing pain on video.
This last video came together pretty easily until I uploaded it... and TikTok flagged it for moderation. When this happens, they don't tell you why, you just get a vague scary error popup about the video being unavailable and "under review." If I had to guess, it was because I say the words "don't kill [the wetas]", and the word "kill" is forbidden by the automated moderation system. Eventually it seemed to get approved... but at what cost? Both the crime and punishment are secret.
I've seen other TikTok videos where they use strange coded language like "unalive" and dismissed it as teenage nonsense, but it turns out, sometimes the teenagers are correct. The stakes for getting flagged seem somewhat high: if they deleted my video, would I have to re-edit it from scratch? Or even if they give you a second chance, is this video stained forever / shadow banned? Their goal is a chilling effect -- for you to police and censor yourself -- and it works. I'm now much less likely to say the k-word again. I guess this is what being a teenager today feels like.
***
Overall, I've enjoyed this week. Making short little videos has been a welcome distraction.
But the fast pace of making a video every day felt a bit unsustainable in the end. I found myself working overtime for TikTok, wasting my lunch hours wondering what my next video should be, and yet I'm also an old person whose life doesn't even revolve around this app. I hear the real TikTokers have to post 4+ videos a day? Yikes.
For the next month or so, I'm going to ramp down to a more relaxed rhythm of 2-3 vlogs a week. I'll blog about it again around then.
Also, if you happen to despise TikTok for whatever reason, I also cross-post my videos (for now) on Bluesky (click the "Videos" tab) and Instagram too.
