Blind Items and Maskfishing

I won't talk about West Elm Caleb I won't talk about West Elm Caleb I won't talk about West Elm Caleb I won't talk about West Elm Caleb

Hello and welcome back to the weekly paid edition of After School.

Today, I’ll be digging into everything I bookmarked in my brain about youth culture this week…which was a weird one. So many bonkers trends and headlines and truly off-the-wall content. Is it because everyone’s going on month 24 of staring at the walls of their apartments? Is it because our brains haven’t recovered from omicron? Is it because it’s 10 degrees for the tenth day in a row in NYC? I’m not sure! One thing I do know: I’ve never in my life seen more TikTok backlash than I saw in the last few days.

BW @BRYNNTRILL2

Tiktok is a disease and if ur actively scrolling that platform its too late for u (especially if ur over the age of 30)

Taylor Lorenz--- ON BOOK LEAVE @TaylorLorenz

TikTok was like, what if we took the worst elements of Twitter and combined them with YouTube

Dan Brooks @DangerBrooks

I learned about West Elm Caleb and that was pretty much it for my assessment of TikTok, a machine for making people into monsters.

What are the larger implications of that, if any? Time will tell! Speaking of time, it’s Saturday morning and I’m wasting yours so let’s get into it. Here’s what we’ll be covering:

• TikTok: mid, pushin p, NDAs

• Tech: Snapchat, Shazam-for-your-thoughts, Spotify-for-porn

• Trends: poufs, sluffers, techcessories

• Dating: divorce registries, maskfishing, GTA

---

TikTok

• “Mid” is suddenly everywhere on TikTok. While it can be “used to insult or degrade an opposing opinion, labeling it as average or poor quality,” it also means overrated or — worse, imo — just fine.

• Another three-letter word that’s everywhere: “The”, as in, The Photo which means, well, The Photo - you know, the photo you use for all of your profile pics, the photo that captures your true essence, etc.

• And “pushin p,” which you are about to see on every single Instagram and/or TikTok caption thanks to a song on Gunna’s (very good!) new album, is a regional phrase that means keeping it real.

  WUNNA @1GunnaGunna

  Jumpin n a person beef or situation when u dk wats goin on Not 🅿️

• “Thank you in advance 😊” isn’t trending yet, but it will be.