Down The Rabbit Hole: How TikTok Stole My Evening (Again!)

It always starts innocently.  I open TikTok for a “quick scroll” before bed – just 10 minutes I tell myself – and somehow, two hours later, I’m fully invested in the daily routine of an Upper Eastside mom named Blair who colour-codes her fridge, buys matching bows for her daughters and somehow makes the school run look like a Ralph Lauren campaign.

The TikTok rabbit hole is REAL.  One moment I’m on BookTok, scrolling through moody videos of annotated novels and emotional soundtracks and the next I’m knee-deep in EverestTok – learning about ‘Green Boots’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and how climbers’ layer thermal gear and ration oxygen at 8,000 metres.  I don’t even like the cold or heights, but suddenly I’m convinced I could summit a mountain if I just had the right North Face puffer jacket!  TikTok is like the one friend who knows you too well.  It serves you what you want, what you didn’t know you wanted, and what you swore you’d never be into (hello, medieval bread recipes at 2am in the morning!).  It’s both genius and slightly terrifying – like being psychoanalyzed by an algorithm wearing lip gloss.

It' a strange and beautiful place, TikTok.  My For You page has become a surreal collage of micro-worlds that have nothing to do with my real life but everything to do with the fantasy of it.  I’ve been to Nantucket SummerTok, where every frame looks like a Nancy Meyers film – striped deck chairs, lobsters on everything, matching Ralph Lauren sweaters with the American flag on them and perfectly tousled blue and white linen.  Then there’s Ralph Lauren ChristmasTok (side note: I clearly have an underlying obsession with Ralph Lauren it seems!), where it’s forever December in Connecticut and every living room glows in firelight with cable-knit cashmere and matching tartan in traditional Christmas red and green.

By the time I look up, my phone battery is dangerously low, and I’m emotionally attached and invested in a family in Vermont I’ll never meet.  TikTok doesn’t just show you content – it builds universes, one aesthetic and niche at a time.  Each scroll opens a new portal; Clean GirlTok, PerfumeTok, CottagecoreTok, EuroSummerTok, Corporate RebrandTok, Pilates PrincessTok – all whispering, ‘this could be your life if you just buy that serum, that candle, that lobster t-shirt, that pair of vintage Levi’s’.

And that’s the thing, it’s not just entertainment.  It’s aspirational anthropology.  You watch how other people live, eat, decorate and dress and somehow, your own life starts to shapeshift.  I find myself craving homemade granola after Coastal GrandmotherTok or googling ‘espresso machine with vintage aesthetic’ because of Italian CaféTok.  My personality is now 30% TikTok subcultures, 70% curiosity.

Somewhere between “five more minutes” and “wait, how is it 1am in the morning?”, I realize TikTok has done it again – stolen another evening, pixel by pixel when I should be asleep.  But the truth is, I don’t even mind.  There’s comfort in these tiny hyper-specific worlds.  You find your niche, your people and your oddly specific interests. They offer a kind of gentle escapism – a window into lives more curated, calmer, sometimes funnier, sometimes just beautifully ordinary.

So yes, I may never climb Everest or host a Nantucket clambake, but for a few scrolls, I get to visit.  And honestly…. that’s part of the magic.  In a city like Dubai, where life moves fast and perfection is practically a lifestyle, sometimes zoning out in someone else’s living room – virtually – feels like a little digital exhale.