TikTok is how I get my Twitter news now. —Kate

@tellthebeees#greenscreensticker #greenscreen #twitter #twitterdrama #discourse

I’m a believer in the separation of church and state: I like to keep my TikTok separate from my Twitter. One is a place for zoning out in hopes of finding peace, the other for sinking into the dismal abyss. But, occasionally, Twitter delivers with some bonkers, chronically-online, chef’s kiss discourse that it would be unfair to limit to just one platform. That’s where Joshua of tellthebeees comes in. He’s been growing his 18,000-strong TikTok following with his thoughts on literature, culture, and fandom since May, but his most popular videos by far are the ones that bring Twitter’s latest main characters to voyeurs on the FYP. 

But Joshua is not just gleefully sharing the goss. He valiantly attempts to find a larger meaning in these touch-grass blow-ups. 

“I've been on the internet since 2002, so I just grew up online and I've seen the way that society and culture has changed,” he tells me over Zoom. “I also come from an academic background. I was a sociology major in undergrad, I went to grad school and I got my masters in social research. So I combine all of these things. I think I'm looking at it through an anthropological or sociological lens where I'm like, ‘Oh, people are being nuts on Twitter. Let's think about why this is going on.’ And just seeing the shifts in the way that people communicate over the last ten years especially has just been jarring.”

While Joshua isn’t in media—he works in entertainment—most of the dust-ups he covers tend to involve media types or the literature adjacent. This is so he can combine the discourse with his love of books, and feel confident he actually has something to say about what’s happening, rather than contributing to Twitter’s “dogpile” culture. 

In this interview, Joshua and I talked about the mechanics of Twitter drama, what makes it so successful on TikTok, and why YA Twitter might be the scariest place on earth. 

How would you describe your TikTok?

I think I definitely intended to start out with the BookTok angle. I think that the space is a little saturated, which is interesting now that I'm kind of moving into this space. In one comment I got, someone called me their favorite internet historian, which is very sweet. I don't consider myself an internet historian—I tried to put it in my bio and I ran out of space [laughs]. So it's one of those things where it's like, I think it's cool that I'm able to take this knowledge that I've never been able to do anything with. I'm just watching people tear each other apart on Twitter six hours a day and I'm like, “What can I do about this?”’ So I would describe my account as kind of a combination of general thoughts about books, book recommendations, which I still do, and taking a bird's eye view of the internet and how, I guess, society is affected by the internet and how people are affected by the social media that they consume.

That's so interesting. I actually stepped back from Twitter for that reason where I'm like, What am I doing with my time? Just watching people be horrible to each other all day? And so that's such an interesting way to put it. What was the first Twitter drama you remember covering? And what about it made you want to bring it to TikTok?

So I originally was covering a lot of the literary Twitter drama, which is just as chaotic as all of the other Twitter drama. I think the first one that really blew up was the one where that 20-year-old girl made the list of problematic authors. And that just kind of exploded both on Twitter and on TikTok. I thought it was interesting because it's something that I've talked about a lot, like cancel culture, the Tumblr effect on the rest of society and the rest of the internet, especially this chilling effect that call out culture has had on the way that we interact with one another online. And so I just thought it was really funny where I was like, "Oh, this girl is trying to cancel Shakespeare." And so once I saw that got a little bit of traction, I thought this can be my beat, as it were, on TikTok, where I'm talking about literature, Twitter drama, and then it's kind of expanded into just overall drama. I try not to do just a copy and paste where I green screen myself in front of the tweet. I try to always include analysis because I have a lot of opinions and I don't think that anything is what it is. There's always a larger meaning, there's always like a macro level thing going on and a micro level thing going on.

I also try to make it not as negative. I did make fun of the 20 year old girl, but I didn't include her name. The dogpiling thing that happens on Twitter, I try not to let that happen on TikTok. I try to make it more just like a bemused thing where it's like, "Oh look, something crazy is happening." This week especially, I've been making a lot of videos about the negativity and the way that people are kind of interacting with each other. So for me it's more like bringing it over so we can see, "This is what not to do. This is how we shouldn't behave. This is how we shouldn't talk to one another and look at the mess."

How do you choose what discourse you think would be good for TikTok, or your TikTok specifically?

I think there's a lot of discourse that happens every day that I just do not involve myself in. There's just so much that happens that I genuinely feel doesn't affect me at all, or it's not really about society, it's just about someone being petty or something. So I try to only choose ones that a) I feel actually a I'm able to analyze and say something thoughtful and I don't just, again, wanna say, "Oh look, people are fighting." Or b) that actually is reflective of a larger societal shift that I've maybe mentioned in another video or that I have a series on. I try to patch it into a larger framework versus kind of pacing it wholesale and saying, "Oh, this thing that I've never talked about before is going on."

Twitter drama and I think the drama that you choose to highlight, it seems linked a little bit with book drama because it's either from authors or just kind of in that space. How did you get involved in the book side of things?

I will say one thing that someone, I don't remember who said this to me, but it's "the smaller the community or the more niche the community, the bigger the drama," which I always found so fascinating. Because before I was on TikTok, YA author Twitter—they were always going at it. They were always fighting, they were canceling each other. And it was this thing of, I guess the stakes were so high for them. This is their life's work. They're trying to sell these books, they're trying to get agents. And so their solution to it was to call each other names twenty-four hours a day. I would love to have covered that, but it's ancient history now. So for me, I'm just a big reader. I don't work in publishing. I've gotten like three free books through the account. I read a hundred books a year. I'm just like a huge reader. I always wanted an outlet to talk about the books that I was reading and things that I liked about them and to analyze them. I don't have a huge following on Twitter. Tumblr is just like a weird space where if you're not kind of generating fandom content, people don't care about you. So that was out. I think TikTok is the first platform where I knew that there was this kind of built in niche. And there is a thing like BookTube or Bookstagram, but that's so focused on aesthetics and I just don't have the time to make 20 minute long videos. I can't do it. So I thought TikTok was perfect because I can do it on my phone. It's two to three minutes. I can say, "This book was great. I like the story. I love the author." And be done with it.

Why do you think BookTok and book Twitter can be such fraught places?

Honestly, I mean it's kind of similar to what I I said where it's like, these people have invested so much time. Writing a book takes so long. That's why I try not to actively bash books, besides A Little Life, on my BookTok because I know how long it takes and I just would never wanna be that person that's disparaging someone else's work. Again, I try not to be an actively negative person. I think that there's a difference between like, polite judgment on someone's choices versus active disparaging of their life. I try not to do the latter. I just know how long it takes. They've invested so much time into it. They're trying to build this platform. They're trying to build their brands, unfortunately, because it's 2022.

I think that something that I've talked about before is how people self-identify with the media that they consume. And I think as authors it's the opposite, where they're self-identifying as "I'm an author, I'm a YA author, this is my life." And their identities and their personal identities are so intertwined with the act of creation and the act of bringing this book into the world, or books, or series, or whatever, that any perceived slight or negative interaction is seen as incredibly threatening. And so they lash out in these really negative ways. And it's honestly kind of unfortunate. You see the same thing on regular Twitter where there's this dogpiling effect, but it's almost worse because the community is small. Like imagine if everyone in your field of 30 people or 300 people turned on you on the same day. It would be incredibly jarring. It'd be horrifying. And so I don't understand why they do this, but I think it's just unfortunately a natural part of social media now, this impulse to kind of destroy and denigrate and dogpile.

TikTok is a discussion app as much as it is a comedy app or a dance app. It can serve the function that Twitter serves. But I've used TikTok sometimes to say my opinion, and I'm not used to reaching that many people. And so it has been a learning curve to understand that I'm more likely to reach people who have a totally different reaction to something than I do. How have you found the analysis and discussion culture on TikTok?

There definitely has been a learning curve. I think there's this impulse, whenever you transition from one platform to another, there's always that weird Venn diagram moment where you're using it like the other one, right? So the LiveJournal to Tumblr to Twitter to TikTok pipeline where you're kind of still figuring it out. I definitely agree that the algorithm is bizarre, the way that you can reach so many people that you never would've interacted with otherwise—in a good way and a bad way, of course.

I think that I'm just kind of an opinionated person. All of my friends will admit to this. I think an app where I could just look into the camera and say what I think was kind of a perfect fit for me. I don't think that Twitter is necessarily built for discussion as much. I've been on it since the beginning. There's so much nuance that gets lost. You can't do much in 280 characters. And I think that on Twitter, especially, people come in in such bad faith. They always assume the worst, and they always interpret your argument in the worst way, which I haven't found on TikTok yet. There's always the occasional person who takes something that you say and just completely flips it in their mind. And I will call them out and I'm like, "You're arguing with yourself. Because I didn't say that."

There's definitely a learning curve where you're still trying to figure out how it can be accessible and engaging without being didactic, without you preaching. And so I think that my personal mix of just kind of generalized detachment, bemusement, while still having analysis is kind of working for me because again, I have many thoughts and I'm able to kind of hear them and say, "Okay, this is what I think, what do you think?" And I have learned not to get into the comments. I'll like a few and I'll respond if someone interprets something in super bad faith, but I'm not going back and forth with someone. Unfortunately, I am a veteran of Twitter wars. There's never been a time where you can change someone's mind by going back and forth with them in the comments.

Have you found that there's a certain type of video or type of book or type of drama that your audience on TikTok tends to really respond to?

So I have the series that I do on fandom drama that I think is really engaging. It doesn't necessarily blow up in the way that some of the Twitter drama videos blew up. I think there's just a more natural kind of ... people want to like gawk and point, versus fandom drama, which is so specific and so niche, but I love because it's my world. I [was on] fanfiction.net. And so those get so many comments. People love digging up their old history, their experiences with fandom, things that they have been through. There's these kind of looming personalities that everyone remembers 20 years later, like Cassandra Clare, who crawled outta the trenches to become an actual published author with incredible success.

So that's been kind of what I appreciate the most, that I can kind of talk about things that I care about that were important many years ago. I think there's recency bias on TikTok and BookTok especially where people, if the book didn't come out in the last month, people are like, "What is that?" And I say, "The book exists forever. Just because it came out in 2014 doesn't mean it's not good." Old fandom drama or fandom history is something that I just care so much about and I'm glad that I get to shepherd it to a new generation.