I took my current job because I’m very irresponsible with money. For a while I’ve known, but the Amanda Bynes thing was the tipping point.
It may not seem like it because I’m so blase and coy but I’m a protector. I protect. When I was jobless and CashApped the last $64 in my checking account to someone I personally believe was Amanda Bynes using a fake name and phone number, I was protecting her. I had to. I was reading Jennette McCurdy’s book and felt so bad because I hadn’t protected these child actresses, not at all. I’d enabled their abuse. I let it happen because I watched so much Nickelodeon. Hours a day. And I subscribed to Nick Mag. And I was always visiting Nick.com. Once a day to play games, and instinctually, when I had just looked up something bad and needed to fill the gap in my cleared search history.
I had to atone. I don’t regret it, even if it wasn’t Amanda. But I needed to make rent.
Now, at the top of every week, I’m responsible for compiling a trend sheet, a Google Doc which hyperlinks sounds and trends popular on TikTok. Like this:
Dumb Ways to Die
Uses: 68.6k
Concept: Use the sound and its accompanying CapCut template over a video of your near death experience
I almost got hit by a car while out on a run. I don’t talk about it much because I’ve almost hit a lot of people myself and I’m concerned about jinxing something, somehow. Knock on wood. Of course, it wasn’t personal or anything. It so rarely is.
A little while ago, I decided to run the LA Marathon. I trained two consecutive days (one of those days being when I was almost hit) but then I found an article from the Adam Ruins Everything guy about how the Marathon used to start at Dodger Stadium and end in Santa Monica, at the beach, but now it starts at Dodger Stadium and ends in Century City, at the mall. All because Frank McCourt wanted to stay in the good graces of the traffic-averse residents of Santa Monica. If I were a citizen of Santa Monica – a homeowner, even – I’d be far more concerned with the unsightly design of my local street signs.
I mean, I was watching I Am Sam the other day and the city’s horrible blue and yellow branding nearly ruined the entire thing for me. Great flick, though.
According to the billboard at the end of my street, Frank McCourt is also one who wants to build the gonjala. The billboard says: Stop the gonjala! No, the gondola. The gondola. Stop the gondola. Smoke the gonjala.
But I haven’t seen the billboard in a while because I’m house sitting in Inglewood. The owners have one little dog, Mishu, whom I walk twice a day. They had a second little dog the last time I housesat, but between then and now she ran out the front door and got hit and killed by a car.
“Whoa, that’s awesome! That’s awesome!”
Uses: 27.7k
Concept: Use text on screen to describe something disturbing/shocking/interesting you watched happen on the internet or in real life
On our first walk of the day, Mishu and I see an unleashed dog in the distance. Huge but a Golden Retriever, so I’m not that worried. Not to be problematic. I mean, if he felt so inclined and put in his best effort, he could eat the dog I’m walking. Closer, I see he has a collar with an engraved Apple tag attached. He’s such a good boy his owner lets him walk himself.
He chases after a man running by; half-assedly gives up at the corner. Then he sees me, and then he’s harassing me. I turn the other way to avoid him, but he wants to play or be pet or something. So I’m pacing up and down the street, stepping behind trees, throwing sticks and grass, moaning, clapping, anything to confuse him. I hate him and I’ll say why: ‘cause he’s fat. It hurts, will leave bruises, when he jumps on my legs and torso and he’s old so he’s getting slobber everywhere. He’s scaring Mishu, who hides behind my feet. I keep yelling stop and no but it’s like he doesn’t understand English. A kindly neighbor escorts me home in a car; he’s seen this dog before and knows how intense his attention can get. And that fat dog is actually kind of smart, he finds the front porch and plops there, whining like a little bitch. Maybe she’s a girl, I guess. Twenty minutes later, two white women in a red SUV arrive to wrangle her. I see them through the kitchen window. Idiots. Animal neglecters. Gentrifiers. Maybe they’re a worse kind of thing: maybe they came all the way to Inglewood to kidnap a Black family’s dog. In which case, I love the dog, and I should’ve let her inside. Mishu misses having a friend anyway.
I struggle to describe my job to people. I think about TikToks all day. Music managers commission us to ideate and strategize and execute on behalf of their clients, most of whom do not have record deals. We’re creating viral moments and building followership, yes, but we’re also telling stories about the music and what it means. Because, for us, the point of TikTok is to sell music. Well, no the point of TikTok is to drive presaves. For unsigned artists hoping to start careers on social media, presaves demonstrate to labels that artists have fans, fans willing not only to stream their music but to buy merch and tickets to see them on a tour.
I’ve never presaved a song before.
The foundation of our strategy is the storytime post. Storytime posts are 40 to 70 seconds long, cinematic in the sense that they feature a voiceover and montage, and always begin in tragedy and end in triumph. Like this: a year ago, I was selling meat in Lithuania and now I’m 6th place at Eurovision. OR My situationship blocked me, and now I have a song with David Guetta.
Few of our content ideas work, and lately it feels more like none do. It’s very difficult to manufacture personality and charm. Plus, people on the internet are Very Smart and they understand when something is fake AF.
Today, I’m going to an in-person shoot with our client Sophie. Sophie lives in Nashville full time, but right now she’s staying in an 8 bedroom mansion in Malibu, all by herself. She used to live here, but her parents sent her to Tennessee because they were worried about the outcome of the midterm elections and the homelessness. Sophie wears a cross necklace and says cuss instead of curse. I get the sense her father has an important job because no one is presaving her songs but she assembles her dinner at the Erewhon hot bar every night. She was dating an actor from Outer Banks but it turned out he was cheating on her the entire time. All of her songs are about him.
Since Sophie and those in her social circles are saving themselves for marriage, cheating means making out. Of course, cheating can always mean just making out, if that’s happening in a devious way.
We’re aren’t shooting in Malibu, though. We’re at Sophie’s friend Rebecca’s house in Santa Clarita. We’re here because Sophie wants photos and TikToks taken of her walking into a pool with a long dress on. There’s a pool at her place in Malibu but you can see the ocean in the back. She wants the photos to look more normal.
Rebecca’s house is a one-level McMansion. The interior design postures the historicity of an centuries-old European family estate. There are photographed portraits of Rebecca and her three siblings hanging on the wall in the living room. In the portraits, the children wear early 19th century clothing and hold antiquated sporting tools. There’s armor hanging on the wall, a family crest, and some African things, like masks and spears. There’s a framed document too. I don’t recognize the language written on it; it’s not Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai. So I don’t know what it is. In the dining room, thick velvet blackout curtains cover the floor to ceiling windows. Rebecca says her dad takes meetings there.
There’s a family tree engraved in marble on one of the walls in the kitchen. The patriarch of this family was born in 1941 and his wife in 1978.
In addition to Rebecca, Sophie’s friends Brayley, Tess, and MJ are here.
When I’m with these girls, I feel so crazy. They’re all much hotter than me, at least technically. Everything about them is so polished and palatable, but it’s all for naught. What’s the point of being sexually alluring if you can’t really use it until you’ve committed the rest of your life to someone you only half know. Because how do you really know anyone, especially a man, until you know how he’ll treat you once you’ve had sex?
I wonder if my attitude towards sex is inherited, if that’s why my white ancestors never moved past relative serfdom. There was too much fun, too many mouths to feed.
Sophie is really constipated. Plus, she’s really good at distending her stomach, which she keeps doing. So she looks pregnant. I don’t say this out loud. MJ does. Sophie’s eyes flash with horror, and then everyone laughs. Tess tells her to take a picture and send it to the Outer Banks actor. She goes to the mirror and snaps it, but of course she doesn’t send.
I go mute. How do you banter about an undesired pregnancy in the company of evangelical Christian virgins? Brayley is trying to make her stomach as big as Sophie’s. Tess asks when the baby was conceived and Brayley says the fourth of July and everyone falls out of their chairs. Like they know something they can’t tell me.
I realize I haven’t eaten yet today. I ask for an apple from an expansive fruit basket on the kitchen island but I call it an abortion instead.
“Can I have one of these abortions?” I realize my mistake quickly. Since I don’t laugh, no one else does either. And that’s the end of the big belly jokes.
“Girl, f*** them kids and f*** you too” (EXPLICIT)
Uses: 65k
Concept: Use text on screen to describe an instance where children were an afterthought. (OR, use text on screen to list out three options: one involving kids, one involving the band U2, and a third thing you’d desperately choose over both the kids and U2.)
Back in Inglewood, I Google Rebecca’s dad. He’s the son of the founder and President of a large private Christian university down the street from their house. Recently, he was charged by the SEC for his involvement in a $16 million investment scheme.
“Sometimes you gotta not give a f***, trust God, and do you”
Uses: 18.5k
Concept: Not yet attached to a specific trend
My friend from high school’s dad was a crook. That’s a harsh word maybe. He’d prescribe certain medications or treatments, or maybe referred his patients to specific specialists? I can’t remember. Whenever it was explained to me, I didn’t understand how what he’d done was wrong. It seemed like something bankers and lawyers got to do all the time. That’s why I feel uncomfortable calling him a crook. What I remember most of this story was that the police raided my friend’s house in the middle of the night to arrest her dad. And then someone’s mom forwarded everyone else’s moms the Times article just so we’d all be on the same page. I find the article without even remembering his first name.
The next morning, my boss calls. She asks if I have a minute to talk. I’m let go. But Sophie really loves me and is wondering if I’ll work freelance for her in the next few months. I’ll think about it.
I take a personality test from Twitter to determine which path to follow in the life that feels newly mine. The test is made of pairs of adjectives with a slider between them. For each pair you must drag the slider to where you fall on the spectrum between them. I decide that I am 85% fresh and 15% stinky. 70% Feminine and 30% Masculine. 95% Protector and 5% foe. The test determines that I am
attractive (not repulsive)
anti-genocidal (not genocidal)
flourishing (not traumatized)
🌟 (not 💩)
f***-the-police (not tattle-tale)
treasure (not trash)
feminist (not sexist)
egalitarian (not racist)
fresh (not stinky)
I am 89% Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Which is a compliment because she’s the hot one.
Why do I, and everyone I love, choose people who treat us like we’re nothing?
We accept the love we deser – no, we accept the love we think we deserve. We accept the love we think we deserve.
I don’t want to think about that.
The second on the list – coming in at 83% – is Emma Stone’s character in Superbad, who apparently has a name: Jules. A better fit, I think.
I’m Jules. It’s good to know this with certainty. Unfortunately Jules’ personal interests and career aspirations are not discussed in the film Superbad.
I go out with my friends. They feel bad about me getting laid off. I tell everyone I’m going to be an actress. So that I have to be.
Whenever I do a lot of cocaine, I want nothing more than to sit alone in a room and write. That’s how Stephen King finished the child sex orgy chapter in IT. And all his other books.
“What is your drug of choice?” “Alcohol”
Uses: 24.2k
Concept: Lip sync to Oprah Winfrey’s question, then use text on screen to describe the specific thing you just can’t get enough of when Lindsay Lohan replies “alcohol”
I read a short story set in 1993 wherein a young girl hears of Charles Manson, and not knowing who he is, asks her parents. I think about life before the internet. Mom and dad, what’s blue waffle? Felching? Who’s Ed Gein?
I’m on TikTok again. “Yo yo yo you already know who it is. Benny heeerre. We’re just going to talking about some things. My merch just dropped so check it out at bennysmerch.com. So let’s feel for a vibe baby gurrll. Sheeesh”
Benny, who is 13 and 4’4 tall backs up from the camera to sit down on the couch next to his mom, between his uncle and his dad. His uncle and his dad are bald and have many tattoos. Everyone on the couch is wearing his merch, which says “FEELING ZEST”
Benny’s mom says, “Let’s start with this comment right here. You will load a clip into my son?”
When she says the “load a clip into my son” part, Benny’s uncle, who has a long red beard and face tattoos, makes a gun with his hand. He doesn’t blink for the rest of the video.
“You want to end my son’s life because he sings, because he dances? Because he’s theatrical? For what? To me, that is the most disgusting, hateful thing anyone could say. For no reason.”
Everyone in the comment section calls Benny zesty and some ask him to sing Kay Flock. I think zesty means gay.
I think of Amanda and Jennette.
I delete TikTok from my phone. I won’t be needing it anymore. It’s my last day housesitting, my last walk with Mishu. I didn’t even bring headphones this time. Because I’m liberated from my devices now.
At first it’s very dull and I wonder if I’m crazy, but there’s music coming from an expensive outdoor sound system somewhere in the neighborhood. All through the interlocking cul de sacs, you can hear it. Maybe a school concert, or a local radio station’s party. It’s not that I need to know where, that’s not driving me insane. It’s that I can’t figure out the song. It sounds like the kind of song you make up in your room when you’re six. You’ve heard a few Whitney Houston ballads and you give it a go, you know. Grand, dynamic, unending. The song’s been sung for 10, 15 minutes now. It’s all around me, and somehow loudest when I’m standing still.
And the fat fucking Golden Retriever has found me again. I guess I’m in front of its house again. This kind of thing would happen to me twice. I consider every option from before and toss them out. I want to bash in the windshield of the red SUV, damn the two white women to hell, teleport Mishu back home. Nothing is going to work unless I injure or drug this dog. I remember the jogger from last time, how the dog gave up following him because he realized he couldn’t keep up. So I grab the dog and I run too. Fast. Even faster. Down the street, past the other street, around the corner, until we’re all the way back home.