The Weirdly Refreshing Honesty of the Oscars of TikTok

For the longest time, I kept myself from joining TikTok. Social media, I figured, was already kind of a problem for me. I was heavily hooked on Instagram, reaching for my phone and clicking into the app as soon as I woke up in the morning, and then continuing to scroll my feed and swipe through stories and check my D.M.s many times through the day in a kind of fugue state, even though, rationally, I knew that seeing everyone else’s seemingly perfect, fulfilled, and happy lives often made me feel like shit about myself.