I’m Spending the Holidays Watching Cabin Builders on TikTok—While I Still Can

A wooded area. A roaring fire. A spot of mildly falling snow. This is my blessed place. Except, it’s not retired my window; it’s connected TikTok.

For months I person “taught” TikTok to service maine this content: people, usually dudes, gathering shelters by manus successful the wilderness. Most of them are ultra-sped-up timelapses that commencement with a spread successful the ground, an axe, and a heap of wood. Once, I watched a guy physique a hobbit spread that looked similar the, uh, entranceway to a Dune sandworm. I landed connected cabin-in-the-woods TikTok by mode of outdoor-cast-iron-cooking TikTok, and I ne'er privation to leave. Of course, I mightiness person to.

No 1 truly knows what volition hap to TikTok successful the adjacent fewer weeks. Back successful April, US president Joe Biden signed a bill into instrumentality ordering the app’s owner, ByteDance, to divest and merchantability TikTok’s US operations to a non-Chinese institution by January 19 oregon beryllium blocked. TikTok sued, and—as of close now—the Supreme Court plans to hear the case connected January 10 and perchance contented a ruling connected whether oregon not the instrumentality violates escaped code rights earlier the deadline.

So, betwixt present and then, I’m going to beryllium watching each of the cabin-building TikToks I can.

Let’s beryllium real, I’d beryllium doing this anyway. Dissociating connected societal media is practically a vacation tradition, and with 11 days near successful 2024, watching TikToks—or scrolling Bluesky, oregon thumbing done Instagram, if those are much your jam—is astir the champion mode to reset one’s brain. But TikTok rules for this. Sub-subgenres connected the platform, similar animal-fostering TikTok oregon furniture-refurbishing TikTok, stay 1 of the astir effectual forms of intelligence soothing around.

Even if TikTok prevails, nary warrant exists that my FYP volition proceed to supply woodsy endurance content. While it’s inactive mostly a level for popular civilization junk nutrient and lip-sync videos, a increasing fig of Americans usage TikTok arsenic a caller source. Since 2020, the stock of adults who regularly get quality from the level has accrued from 3 percent to 17 percent, according to Pew Research Center. “No societal media level we’ve studied has seen faster growth” successful news, the study’s authors wrote.