1405 TikTok Star

86% of high schoolers want to be TikTok stars, more so even than wanting to be a professional athlete or pop star, because it doesn’t take anything special to do it. It’s passe for older generations to point out that becoming a fireman, teacher or businessman would be a better goal, and it falls on deaf ears. To a kid who has had pictures taken of them their whole lives, and are inundated with other kid’s pictures, they naturally assume that their level of fame among family & friends expands outward into the world via social media. In a sense, it’s only a phase, something that kids grow out of or something more glamorous takes its place, but it’s hard to think what that might be; what’s more alluring than being the center of attention simply by being alive? Young women are especially susceptible to this because young men are too immature, or too overconfident, to know their supplicant remarks on Instagram are simply one among thousands. The dopamine that a beautiful woman gets just by looking at her Likes in the morning is at cocaine highs; who would want to go to a job if posting provocative photos will bring in dates and money; but even if they receive neither, everyone wants to be famous regardless if it doesn’t pay the bills.