7/10/23 - Musings

Hello dearest Patrons.

It has been quiet on most of my socials this week. I decided to give my brain a rest until this coming Wednesday.

One of the videos I posted last week was called “Preventing my partner from being attracted to other people this summer.” In it I explain that I replaced my partner’s bug spray with sugar and honey dissolved in water to attract airborne pests so they are too physically distracted to find anyone else attractive in a bathing suit.

If you’re a fan of The Parent Trap, you might be saying, “Wasn’t that in The Parent Trap?” Yes! I had this pointed out to me in my original version within 5 minutes, so I quickly deleted it.

Usually if a video ends up being too similar to an existing premise in popular culture I delete it. But this time I was pretty pissed, because I had spent a lot of time and resources on this video and thought it was technically different enough from the bit in the movie that I could use it.

So I came up with a very quick and easy solution— I reshot a portion of the narration to clarify diagetically I watched The Parent Trap with my partner and that’s how I was inspired to come up with this hack.

The fix worked—now I wouldn’t get hundreds of comments accusing me of stealing the idea, and I wouldn’t feel creatively dishonest for passing off an existing idea as purely original on my part. I got to have my cake and eat it too.

Inner Circle members will notice today I posted another deleted video from the past that was removed for violating the community guidelines.

Interestingly, this used to happen to me all the time. And it was infuriating.

But one tidbit you might find interesting is that at some point, I want to say around Jan/Feb of this year, I changed up the style of how I present TikToks.

Previously, I had always explained a “hack” using the second person. I.e. “Here’s how YOU can get this to happen. You need to do x and y.”

But earlier this year, I switched to using first person. “Here’s how I did this.” It might seem like a subtle difference, but it changed everything.

The most important difference this made was that I haven’t had a video removed for violating the community guidelines since then. Not one. I suspect this is the case because I am not directly telling people they should do something. Even though the implication is there that it’s advice, it’s presented as more of a story I’m telling of something that happened to me.

This also made a huge difference creatively. Because the hacks were originally supposed to be instructions, it imposed restraints on what the audience would accept. Framing the videos in this way made the audience more critical, because they’re imagining themselves having to do it. So they’re more likely to point out flaws, say “This would never work,” etc.

But, when I say to the audience, “I did this. It worked for me.” They are instead picturing me doing it and getting away with it. This freed me up to be more absurd, outrageous, and illogical. And it started to build a character. The audience started to accept going to darker places.

So anyway, that’s all I have for today. As always thank you for subscribing and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see going forward. Have a blessed Monday.