I'm not an early adopter, meaning I don't grab at the latest and greatest. While I might want to, and I usually do, I wait and read reviews. I talk to people in the know. Tik Tok was no different. In my opinion, the former Musica.ly app that was rebranded into a social media darling was something that I did not need min my life. Watching students do the dances and all of the pop culture references that I was not remotely interested in just failed to spark me. We had even allowed our daughter to have an account that we checked, and as her videos were good and clean, I started getting the itch, but between school and home, I had no time for such frivolity.
Enter Covid.
They say that an idle mind is the devil's playground. If that is indeed the case, Tik Tok shows the best and worst of what can happen on that playground. When I created my account, I waded slowly into the waters of making videos, usually with Kaila, our oldest daughter, or the rest of the kids. Looking at the content made my stomach churn mostly. So many underaged girls being way too adult in their dancing and dress. The more that I saw the possibility for catfishing and immoral behavior, the more my heart hurt, and I eventually left after just a few days on the app.
What I realized was just how self righteous I had been. Because I would not make a video dancing to some secular song, that doesn't necessarily speak ill of someone else who would. I had to understand that, in relation to this new generation, they want to stand out. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. Tik Tok is the perfect platform for that. Whether I condone the songs or the clothes is not of consequence. What matters, as I discovered, is how to take the landscape and tailor my experience to what I want to contribute to the community. As I scrolled through users and videos, I found churches and people who made videos where they only talked about the Bible. As I watched more and more of these, and watched the viewership counts increase, it occurred to me that I had been a very late adopter into something that God could redeem as well as anybody else. The kid who dances to a song where the "n-word" is used copiously doesn't care that I'm offended, but he might care that I have access to someone who could make him feel loved. That young girl, the same age as my daughter, who dances in a risque manner and dresses like a character off of "Player's Club" doesn't need my derision. She needs my care and concern. And as so many were doing, these users were being ministered to in 60 second bursts that were wildly popular and full of Gospel truth. When I moved passed my own judgmental ignorance, I was able to truly see that the harvest in plentiful, but the workers are too busy sneering and being too proud to go grab it.
I decided that I wanted to brand myself as a source of encouragement, which is who I am to my core in real life. I wanted to bring content that would encourage and inspire anybody to see themselves in the light of who Jesus is. My first video idea came as I was walking through a grocery store and observed the frantic angst of the people there. It got 64 views. 64 people who watched and received encouragement from something that I had to say, which God wanted me to convey. My next few videos, usually about 3 per day averaged about 190 views, followed by a spike of 513 views. I watched as my follows jumped from 17-30, then 50. And now, I sit at a "robust" 187 followers with 3 videos that have eclipsed the 1000 view mark. While this is chump change when compared to the Charli's, and Addison's of the Tik Tok world, I'm encouraged that every person who clicks on my videos has an encounter with God. Ladies and gentlemen, that jazzes me!
If you would have asked me 2 months ago if I would have ever become a Tik Tok'er, I would have scoffed in your face. However, what I am finding, is that for what I like to do, and who I like to do it with, (encouraging high schoolers), this is the perfect medium. It keeps in up to date with relevant, though often inaccessible trends while enabling me to sow seeds into the world that might otherwise have just been kept in my satchel.
Yes. I'm still very uncomfortable with the content of most of the videos and I scroll with a maddening pace more often than not, but I'm learning how to reach them. Jesus would have done this. I'm sure of it.
Maybe we all should spend a little more time outside of our comfort zones.