the bleak world of eating disorder tiktok

+ 2024's word of the year? Phoenixing.

Happy Valentine's Day to all my valentines (you!!) I do not celebrate this day because I am 1) heartless and 2) always alone, but I thought I would share it with you today, as the people that give me the most love out of anyone in the world. Cringe? Maybe. Bothered? Not me. ILY XXXXX

☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★ ON THE WEB ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧★

The bleak world of eating disorder TikTok

Content warning: In this section I’m gonna be talking about how social media influences disordered eating which I know can be quite a difficult subject for a lot of us. Please scroll on if this isn’t for you xxx

“Gotta leave it all behind and face the truth” sings a sped-up Freddie Mercury - I bet he never imagined his hit song would one day be used as a backing track for users on TikTok to post the food they were ‘leaving behind’ (cake, ice cream) for their new diet (raw vegetables and black coffee.)

I was served one of these videos - one with 5.7 million views and was immediately taken right back to that 15-year-old girl scrolling on Tumblr in her bed, reading Kate Moss tell her that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ (not somewhere I wanted to be teleported back to on a random Tuesday.)

I shit you not, I spent literally only a few seconds on that first video before scrolling down and getting this:

bleak

And then this:

bleaker

There are a few things about these TikToks that worry me. One of them is of course that they exist, but I’m not naive - I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that this type of content hides in the shadowy spots of whatever platforms we (especially young women) hang out on. What really worries me is just how quickly I was recommended more and more of this type of stuff (weirdly feels like the quickest the algo has ever cottoned on to something), and the amount of saves each video is getting.

Let me be clear: saving a video is different to a like or a comment. In my opinion, a save is the most valuable metric of a post. It’s Gen Z’s bookmark. When you save something it means you really want to refer back to it. You couldn’t possibly lose it. You might even put it in a collection and turn it into your bible. The fact that two of the above videos have 76k and 46k saves means that many people are probably using these as ‘thinspiration’ and that breaks my heart.

And then there’s the comment sections of people egging each other on, giving each other tips, and getting 15k likes for saying things like ‘I would die for a fast metabolism.’

The thing that really gets me is that we’re at a point where I just expect nothing to be done about this kind of content anymore. That if I wasn’t 26 and slightly wiser now I could imagine myself getting sucked right back into all this. Breaks my heart.

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✿⊰𖡼𖥧𖤣❀ BEL CHIMES IN ❀𖤣𖥧𖡼⊱✿

This section is written by my all-time crush - and co-author of our debut book Make It Make Sense - Bel Hawkins. Each week Bel comes here to chime in about the things she’s been loling at, yearning for, or totally mystified by. Luckily for us, she also writes our Sunday advice column ‘Wait, But What?’ for all our paying supporters who want to make sense of the world!! Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!

2024’s word of the year? Phoenixing

A thousand years ago (aka nearly two years), Luce and I had just started hanging out (why do I feel like I'm beginning the story to pitch a romcom right now? J'adore) and were in the courtyard of a pub near where we worked. I was just resurrecting from heartbreak and she was soaring in the SYSCA universe and over a gulp of sugary cider, Luce was like, "Belll how are you?" and I replied, "I was very bad, but now I'm very good - I think I'm phoenixing."

And thus, (I love using this word; it reminds me of trying to sound intelligent at high school) Phoenixing was born. The term for any period in your life after everything feels like it's burned down and you've taken flight again. But you can only get there once you've been through something terrible, felt like you've lost everything, and out the other side is something magical. It's what I'm predicting for you this year if you can believe in it. Just you wait. 

Other witch predictions for this year:

• Ambition is out. Let's all just go prioritise making our lives as good as we can at as little expense to our wellbeing as possible

• Romance is in in IN but not just in making out, like, the tiny tangible ways you can make your own and other people's life seem sweet

• Buying an ergonomic shoe and making it cute 

• This is the year for going offline intermittently and being harder to get a hold of and people ~ getting used to that ~

• Red

• Sending the thumbs up emoji as passive aggression or genuine nonchalance

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Over on Close Friends:

• WE WATCHED THE SUPERBOWL TOGETHER

• I took you to a Jlo press conference

And in the Book Club chat: We’ve been deciding WHO would play the characters in a movie of Dolly Alderton’s ‘Good Material’

What Bel’s talking about in What But What? This weekends newsy is all about how to deal with losing friends 𓆩♡𓆪

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PS, if you wanna chat to me about anything I’ve written today, your latest crush, or if you just want a pen pal, reply to this email and we can be friends 𓆩♡𓆪