write my essay for me tik tok

Another Word

From the writing center at the university of wisconsin-madison.

#essayhack: What TikTok can Teach Writing Centers about Student Perceptions of College Writing

By Holly Berkowitz, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

There is a widespread perception that TikTok, the popular video-sharing social media platform, is primarily a tool of distraction where one mindlessly scrolls through bite-sized bits of content. However, due to the viewer’s ability to engage with short-form video content, it is undeniable that TikTok is also a platform from which users gain information; whether this means following a viral dance tutorial or learning how to fold a fitted sheet, TikTok houses millions of videos that serve as instructional tutorials that provides tips or how-tos for its over one billion active users. 

That TikTok might be considered a learning tool also has implications for educational contexts. Recent research has revealed that watching or even creating TikToks in classrooms can aid learning objectives, particularly relating to language acquisition or narrative writing skills. In this post, I discuss  the conventions of and consequences for TikToks that discuss college writing. Because of the popularity of videos that spotlight “how-tos” or “day in the life” style content, looking at essay or college writing TikTok can be a helpful tool for understanding some larger trends and student perceptions of writing. Due to the instructional nature of TikToks and the ways that students might be using the app for advice, these videos can be viewed as parallel or ancillary to the advice that a Writing Center tutor might provide.

A search for common hashtags including the words “essay,” “college writing,” or “essay writing hack” yields hundreds of videos that pertain to writing at the college level. Although there is a large variety in content due to the sheer amount of content, this post focuses on two genres of videos as they represent a large portion of what is shared: first, videos that provide tips or how-tos for certain AI tools or assignment genres and second, videos that invite the viewer to accompany the creator as they write a paper under a deadline. Shared themes include attempts to establish peer connections and comfort viewers who procrastinate while writing, a focus on writing speed and concrete deliverables (page count, word limit, or hours to write), and an emphasis on digital tools or AI software (especially that which is marked as “not cheating”). Not only does a closer examination into these videos help us meet writers where they are more precisely, but it also draws writing center workers’ attention to lesser known digital tools or “hacks” that students are using for their assignments.

“How to write” Videos

Videos in the “how to” style are instructional and advice-dispensing in tone. Often, the creator utilizes a digital writing aid or provides a set of writing tips or steps to follow. Whether these videos spotlight assistive technologies that use AI, helpful websites, or suggestions for specific forms of writing, they often position writing as a roadblock or adversary. Videos of this nature attempt to reach viewers by promising to make writing easier, more approachable, or just faster when working under a tight deadline; they almost always assume the writer in question has left their writing task to the last possible moment. It’s not surprising then that the most widely shared examples of this form of content are videos with titles like “How to speed-write long papers” or “How to make any essay longer” (this one has 32 million views). It is evident that this type of content attempts to target students who suffer from writing-related anxiety or who tend to procrastinate while writing.

Sharing “hacks” online is a common practice that manifests in many corners of TikTok where content creators demonstrate an easier or more efficient way of achieving a task (such as loading a dishwasher) or obtaining a result (such as finding affordable airline tickets). The same principle applies to #essay TikTok, where writing advice is often framed as a “hack” for writing faster papers, longer papers, or papers more likely to result in an A. This content uses a familiar titling convention: How to write X (where X might be a specific genre like a literature review, or just an amount of pages or words); How to write X in X amount of time; and How to write X using this software or AI program. The amount of time is always tantalizingly brief, as two examples—“How to write a 5 page essay in 2 mins” and “How to write an essay in five minutes!! NO PLAGIARISM!!”—attest to. While some of these are silly or no longer useful methods of getting around assignment parameters, they introduce viewers to helpful research and writing aids and sometimes even spotlight Writing Center best practices. For instance, a video by creator @kaylacp called “Research Paper Hack” shows viewers how to use a program called PowerNotes to organize and code sources; a video by @patches has almost seven million views and demonstrates using an AI bot to both grade her paper and provide substantive feedback. Taken as a whole, this subsect of TikTok underscores that there is a ready audience for content that purports to assist writers in meeting the deliverables of a writing assignment using a path of least resistance.

Similarly, TikTok contains myriad videos that position the creator as a sort of expert in college writing and dispense tips for improving academic writing and style. These videos are often created by upperclassmen who claim to frequently receive As on essays and tend to use persuasive language in the style of an infomercial, such as “How to write a college paper like a pro,” “How to write research papers more efficiently in 5 easy steps!” or “College students, if you’re not using this feature, you’re wasting your time.” The focus in these videos is even more explicit than those mentioned above, as college students are addressed in the titles and captions directly. This is significant  because it prompts users to engage with this content as they might with a Writing Center tutor or tutoring more generally. These videos are sites where students are learning how to write more efficiently but also learning how their college peers view and treat the writing process. 

The “how to write” videos share several common themes, most prevalent of which is an emphasis on concrete deliverables—you will be able to produce this many pages in this many minutes. They also share a tendency to introduce or spotlight different digital tools and assistive technologies that make writing more expedient; although several videos reference or demonstrate how to use ChatGPT or OpenAI, most creators attempt to show viewers less widely discussed platforms and programs. As parallel forms of writing instruction, these how-tos tend to focus on quantity over quality and writing-as-product. However, they also showcase ways that AI can be helpful and generative for writers at all stages. Most notably they direct our attention to the fact that student writers consistently encounter writing- and essay- related content while scrolling TikTok.

Write “with me” Videos

Just as the how-to style videos target writers who view writing negatively and may have a habit of procrastinating writing assignments, write “with me” videos invite the viewer to join the creator as they work. These videos almost always include a variation of the phrase— “Write a 5- page case analysis w/ me” or “pull an all nighter with me while I write a 10- page essay.” One of the functions of this convention is to establish a peer-to-peer connection with the viewer, as they are brought along while the creator writes, experiences writer’s block, takes breaks, but ultimately completes their assignment in time. Similarly to the videos discussed above, these “with me” videos also center on writing under a deadline and thus emphasize the more concrete deliverables of their assignments. As such, the writing process is often made less visible in favor of frequent cuts and timestamps that show the progression toward a page or word count goal.

One of the most common effects of “with me” videos is to assure the viewer that procrastinating writing is part and parcel of the college experience. As the content creators grapple with and accept their own writing anxieties or deferring habits, they demonstrate for the viewer that it is possible to be both someone who struggles with writing and someone who can make progress on their papers. In this way, these videos suggest to students that they are not alone in their experiences; not only do other college students feel overwhelmed with writing or leave their papers until the day before they are due, but you can join a fellow student as they tackle the essay writing process. One popular video by @mercuryskid with over 6 million views follows them working on a 6000 word essay for which they have received several extensions, and although they don’t finish by the end of the video, their openness about the struggles they experience while writing may explain its appeal. 

Indeed, in several videos of this kind the creator centers their procrastination as a means of inviting the viewer in; often the video will include the word in the title, such as “write 2 essays due at 11:59 tonight with me because I am a chronic procrastinator” or “write the literature essay i procrastinated with me.” Because of this, establishing a peer connection with the hypothetical viewer is paramount; @itskamazing’s video in which she writes a five page paper in three hours ends with her telling the viewer, “If you’re in college, you’re doing great. Let’s just knock this semester out.” One video titled “Writing essays doesn’t need to be stressful” shows a college-aged creator explaining what tactics she uses for outlining and annotating research to make sure she feels prepared when she begins to write in earnest. Throughout, she directly hails the viewer as “you” and attempts to cultivate a sense of familiarity with the person on the other side of the screen; in some moments her advice feels like listening in on a one-sided Writing Center session.

A second aspect of these “with me” videos is an intense focus on the specifics of a writing task. The titles of these videos usually follow a formula that invites the viewer with the writer as they write X amount in X time, paralleling the structure of how-to-write videos. The emphasis here, due to the last-minute nature of the writing contexts, is always on speed: “write a 2000- word essay with me in 4.5 hours” or “Join me as I write a 10- page essay that is due at 11:59pm.” Since these videos often need to cover large swaths of time during which the creator is working, there are several jumps forward in time, sped up footage, and text stamps or zoom-ins that update the viewer on how many pages or words the writer has completed since the last update. Overall, this brand of content demonstrates how product-focused writers become when large amounts of writing are completed in a single setting. However, it also makes this experience seem more manageable to viewers, as we frequently see writers in videos take naps and breaks during these high-stakes writing sessions. Furthermore, although the writers complain and appear stressed throughout, these videos tend to close with the writer submitting their papers and celebrating their achievement.

Although these videos may send mixed messages to college students using TikTok who experience struggles with writing productivity, they can be helpful for viewers as they demonstrate the shared nature of these struggles and concerns. Despite the overarching emphasis on the finished product, the documentary-style of this content shows how writing can be a fraught process. For tutors or those removed from the experience of being in college, these videos also illuminate some of the reasons students procrastinate writing; we see creators juggling part-time jobs, other due dates, and family obligations. This genre of TikToks shows the power that social media platforms have due to the way they can amplify the shared experience of students.

To conclude, I gesture toward a few of the takeaways that #essay and #collegewriting TikTok might provide for those who work in Writing Centers, especially those who frequently encounter students who struggle with procrastination. First, because TikTok is a video-sharing platform, the content often shows a mixture of writing process and product. Despite a heavy emphasis in these videos on the finished product that a writer turns in to be graded, several videos necessarily also reveal the steps that go into writing, even marathon sessions the night before a paper is due. We primarily see forward progress but we also see false starts and deletions; we mostly see the writer once they have completed pre-writing tasks but we also see analyzing a prompt, outlining, and brainstorming. Additionally, this genre of TikTok is instructive in that it shows how often students wait until before a paper is due to begin and just how many writers are working solely to meet a deadline or deliverable. While as Writing Center workers we cannot do much to shift this mindset, we can make a more considerable effort to focus on time management and executive functioning skills in our sessions. Separating the essay writing process into manageable chunks or steps appears to be a skill that college students are already seeking to develop independently when they engage on social media, and Writing Centers are equipped to help students refine these habits. Finally, it is worth considering the potential for university Writing Center TikTok accounts. A brief survey of videos created by Writing Center staff reveals that they draw on similar themes and tend to emphasize product and deliverables—for example, a video titled “a passing essay grade” that shows someone going into the center and receiving an A+ on a paper. Instead, these accounts could create a space for Writing Centers to actively contribute to the discourse on college writing that currently occupies the app and create content that parallels a specific Writing Center or campus’s values.

Holly Berkowitz is the Coordinator of the Writing and Communication Center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She recently received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also worked at the UW-Madison Writing Center. Although she does not post her own content, she is an avid consumer of TikTok videos.

• Book Marketing

Ultimate TikTok Guide for Authors

Clearly, social media has reshaped and influenced how we communicate and interact. Information, whether personal or public, has become so conveniently shared online through different social media platforms.

It is a widely adopted tool insofar as communication is concerned, and it is hardly surprising that social media has blown to become one of the major marketing channels.

As a writer, you can use social media to reach as many potential readers as possible and create a fan base for your work.

One particular social media platform that has taken the world by storm is TikTok. This platform has gained popularity during the 2020 pandemic, and it is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world.

What is TikTok though? What makes it unique? How will you use TikTok to expand your influence as a writer? This article is meant to answer these key questions.

Here is the ultimate TikTok guide for authors.

How do writers use tiktok.

TikTok is a video-sharing-focused social networking service owned by a multinational tech company, ByteDance. It was first released in 2016 but only managed to gain popularity around 2020.

As a writer, it might seem strange to use TikTok in book marketing. However, the platform hosts a variety of short videos with a genre that spans from dance to education. It is a very potent channel to put forward and promote your work.

TikTok is a fun and vibrant platform that is geared towards what is hip and new, whose users are predominantly a younger demographic. Recently, older users have also been getting into the TikTok craze.

As a writer, the challenge is making a rapport with your potential readers. Take the time to identify your target market. This will make it easier to curate your TikTok content according to their tastes.

Strategy for authors

It is rather commonplace that popularity and competition are closely associated. Literally, millions of TikTok users are posting content on a daily basis. If you want your own content to do well, you should have a set strategy.

If you are going to create video content for TikTok, you should make sure that your content is as interesting as possible. Even if your content is informative but it is not fun or eye-catching, it won't really do well in TikTok.

Remember that you have only a few minutes at most to catch your viewers' attention. If your video does not get their attention within that time, then your potential viewers will just move on to another video.

The best thing about TikTok is that there is a myriad of subjects that you could make content for.

Here are some tips for marketing your book through TikTok.

• Do a quick video about your book cover

Your book cover is one of the first things that your potential readers will see of your book. Take a short video of your book cover. Show off the art being used on your book cover.

• Read excerpts from your book

You could also post a short video of you reading excerpts from your book. This will give potential readers a sample of your writing style. You could also add captions and graphics to the video to make it more visually pleasing.

• Use trending songs in your content

Take the time to check what songs or sounds are trending in TikTok. Check how many videos used these songs or sounds. If they have thousands of users, then you should use them. Just make sure that using this song or sound does not break any copyrighted songs.

• Use trends to your advantage

If you take a look at other writers' TikTok videos, you would see some of them using trends in their videos. Check the current trends and try to incorporate them into your videos as well. It could be a new dance move or challenge. What's important is that you could effectively use them in your content, which should relate to your book.

• Give Out Book Recommendations

One of the best ways you could use TikTok as a writer is by giving out book recommendations. Remember that many book lovers usually look to TikTok for book recommendations, and you will be providing them a service with your recommendations.

How writers on TikTok can make money

While your first reason for uploading content through TikTok is to create a following for your work as a writer, you could in fact also make money through your TikTok channel as well.

Why do you think there are so many TikTok stars out there? They are posting content because it earns them money, and so could you. Here are some tips on how to make money as a writer, through TikTok.

• TikTok Ads

One way you could make money through TikTok is through ads. Some companies will pay a good amount of money if you mention their products in your videos.

• Creator Fund

When it comes to getting money for your TikTok account, one of the most efficient is the Creator Fund feature . Through the Creator Fund, you will be rewarded in monetary form for your content. The main condition is that your content gets as much viewer engagement as possible.

• TikTok could act as an online store

You could post examples of your work through TikTok. You could put the payment and delivery details in your video's captions.

How to Create an account

If you are serious about using TikTok as a platform for your work, you should know how to make an account. It is relatively easy and fast. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a TikTok account.

• Download the app

The TikTok app is free and very easy to download. Just go to your preferred app store and click download. It usually does not take too long to download. Once you have finished downloading it, open the app and sign up.

Signing up is a very fast and efficient process. Just give them core details such as your full name, e-mail address, and other online addresses you are using.

• Edit your profile

Once you have finished signing up, it is now time to edit your profile. When you edit your profile, you should make sure that you design it with your branding in mind.

• Test-film your first video

After you finish editing your profile, you should now test-film your first video. While you make your first video, you should take the time to check all the features that TikTok offers. With these features, you will be able to create a video that meets your standards.

• Upload the video

Once you feel that your video is ready, you could upload your video. It is easy to upload, and you could schedule when your video will be posted.

• Connect with other users

One of the best things about TikTok is that the more you engage with other TikTok users, the wider reach you will have. You could share another user's video through your account. You could also direct message other users to give them your well-wishes or if you want to collaborate with them.

TikTok hashtags for authors

If you are going to use TikTok as an author, it is important that you know how to use hashtags. Like any other social media tool, hashtags are capable of giving your videos as much visibility as possible. This will also make your content a lot easier to find and amplify the reach of your content.

Using hashtags is relatively simple. All you need to do is to type the hashtag symbol (#) and add a keyword that could lead potential viewers to your video. If you want to make your hashtags more efficient, you could also use hashtag generators.

#authors #author #books #writers #bookstagram #writing #writer #book #authorlife #writingcommunity #writerslife #amwriting  

Authors on TikTok

While TikTok might not be a likely platform for writers, a good number of authors have used TikTok and are doing quite well. Here are some great TikTok author accounts that you could use as inspiration.

• John Green @literallyjohngreen .

John Green is already established as an author and has written a bevy of best-selling works such as Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska. His videos are quirky and fun and give insights into his life as an author.

• Great Valley High School Library @gvhslibrary

The account was founded and run by the school's librarian Ms. B. Here, the videos are fun, informative, and show a unique perspective on the literary world that an experienced librarian could bring.

• Cait's books @caitsbooks .

This popular TikTok account is run by a long-time book lover known as Cait. She gives out detailed and fun book recommendations for bibliophiles all over the world.

How Could Writers on TikTok Boost Their Careers?

If you want to boost your writing career through TikTok, it is best that you find a hook. A good number of authors have made an impact in TikTok. You should remember, though, that these writers are usually established and already have a following.

If you are just starting out as a writer, it could be a bit difficult to create a rapport with your potential fan base. Take the time to think up a core concept for all your videos.

You could create a character or alter ego. It could be a bibliophile or a quirky book lover. Your character could be practically anything. What's important is that your core ideas will get your videos noticed.

How often you should post on TikTok?

If you want your TikTok videos to do well, it is important that you have a set schedule for all your posts on TikTok. The main question though is how often should you post on TikTok? There is no set number of times that you should post on TikTok.

Take the time to experiment on how many times you should post. Post videos at different intervals. In one week, you could post videos just once. In another week, you could post three times.

Observe the amount of engagement that your videos got. Which posting times got more engagement? By doing so, you will be able to gauge how many times you should post.

In the past few years, TikTok has become one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world. It gained full steam during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and now, a multitude of people is using it to create fun and original content.

As a writer, you could also use TikTok to spread the word about your work and enhance your influence. With these tips, you could use TikTok in the most efficient way possible.

Become a Self-Published Author in 3 Simple Steps

Powered by Experts, Published by You. Reach 40,000+ Retailers & Libraries Around the World. Concierge Service. Tailored Packages. BBB Accredited Business. 100% Royalty Program.

Related Articles

If you are just starting out as a writer, it is very important that you make your content as easy to discover as possible. One of the best options...

If you are writing a book for the very first time, you should be aware of two very important things. First, it will be a very fulfilling experience, and second you will have a hard time...

Get started now

Privacy Policy: Writers Republic will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages.

Privacy Policy

Privacy commitment to our authors, effective date:.

Writers Republic abides to every author’s personal information being entrusted to us. And with that, we have stipulated a privacy policy that will show the processes of our ways in collating our clients’ personal details as needed in the publication process. As an established publishing company, our prohibitions strictly includes sharing, selling, or any illicit transactions of personal information from our clients.

Personal Details Needed:

• b) E-mail Address
• c) Phone Number(s)
• d) Physical/Billing Address
• e) Book Information

Authors can find our privacy policy through all forms of compiled and submitted information to either the company’s employees, through e-mail and phone, or from our website www.writersrepublic.com.

Information Usage

The use of the author’s personal information will take place in completing registrations, necessary materials to be used in publication arrangements with our specialists, and payment transactions that will be accomplished from our services and packages.

Registration Process

Users must fill out and complete any registration form before they can access anywhere in the Site as they wish to. These include the services, promos, blogs, and rest of the facets they can explore once they are registered to the system. The authors are entitled to a free publishing guide to give you a brief idea about self-publishing. Relevant features also include the Authors’ Lounge that teaches you some publishing tips you will be needing during the procedure.

Providing the user’s contact information like his/her name and email address during the registration will be necessary for our specialists in keeping in touch with the client anytime in regards to the manuscript submission, publishing, and finally, expanding his/her book’s publicity by any means. Our registered authors are free from accessing the website with his/her personal data or they may reach our customer service representatives through telephone or e-mail for further information and updates on our services. Aforementioned, all of the author’s personal data submitted to us will be kept confidential.

Information Sharing

Sharing of the client’s personal data to third parties is considered a violation unless it is conducted in a way it is indicated strictly in the privacy policy. Authors must understand that we are required to provide their personal data to other businesses that will to provide the required assistance in succeeding the publishing procedure, the following involves payment processor or a third party vendor benefit. These associated firms has established the consent to use the client’s personal data for necessary purposes of providing a quality service to Writers Republic.

In any case that Writers republic will conduct a union with associated companies, procurement, or sale of all or a share of its properties, authors will be notified through a notice in our website or sent through email of any ownership change or the utilization of the user’s personal data, in addition to the selections provided regarding his/ her personal information.

The company solely shares the collected information to the firms we do business with to acquaint them with the services or assistance needed for the publication. The data required plainly comprises with order completion, payment transactions, and the rest of the necessary processes. We can guarantee our users that the submission of these information will not be concomitant to any confidentialities that will identify a person’s identity. Privacy rules include prohibitions of sharing, or keeping of any private information for unrelated businesses to our company.

Data Protection

Our authors’ confidentiality comes first all the time. We follow the widely accepted preference in safekeeping the user’s personal data during its transmission and by the moment it is stored in our system. Writers Republic ensures both online and offline security of all information provided by our authors through the website. Any electronic transmittal over the internet may not be overall safe, hence the company cannot commit to an absolute protection.

The client’s agreement entails his/her responsibility in sustaining the account access, any personal information, benefits, company’s services, logins, and passwords. The author’s adherence to these sanctions include acquainting Writers Republic through phone, e-mail, or any means of communication, should there be any inadmissible access to the author’s account and all the applicable company data and services. Any direct, involuntary, minor, or distinctive damages caused due to client’s failure to adhere and/or inefficiency in utilizing the company’s site, services, and transactions will not be held liable to Writer’s Republic.

Any messages received or consequences resulted due to the user’s technical unfamiliarity or insufficient knowledge will not be held accountable to Writers Republic. Furthermore, any damages incurred due to negligence to the information entered or impermissible access will leave no liability to the company. These reparations may denote to but not restricted to revenue loss or reduced profit from the entire process.

Electronic Tracking Tools and Site Traffic Usage

Writers Republic website collects SSI (Standard Statistical Information) about the site visits and keeps a record of it as much as other websites do. Please be advised that the IP addresses, browser information, its timestamps, and referred pages are tracked for the sole purpose of maintenance and to construct the site noticeable and valuable as it can be. No accumulated data is joined routinely to other information we collect from our users.

The site server gathers fundamental technical data from our site visitors which include their IP address, domain label, and referral information. Alongside with the said above, the site also tracks the total count of the site activity from our online visitors for the intention of analyzing the flows of our site traffic. For our statistic intents, we may incorporate the information from one visitor with another into group facts, which will probably be shared on a cumulative base.

The technologies in particular: beacons, cookies, tags, and scripts are utilized by writersrepublic.com, our publishing & marketing associates, publicity service providers. These innovations are used in examining trends, website managing, tracking users’ navigation anywhere on the site and to collect public data about our user in entirety. We may obtain news founded on the utilization of these innovations by these firms on an individual as well as on an accumulated basis.

Writers Republic affiliates with third parties to offer positive features on website or to exhibit advertising based upon your web navigation activity also uses Local Storage Objects (LSOs) such as HTML 5 to gather and keep some data. Browsers may provide their own administrating tools in taking out HTML LSOs. To manage LSOs please click the link provided: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

Removing or Updating Your Information

Don’t hesitate to reach us directly anytime when you want to delete, update, or correct information you give over the phone or e-mail. For safety purposes, Writers Republic takes functional regulations in authenticating your identity before we grant you the access in changing and updating personal details. Your personal record and other data will be kept so long as you stay active as our site user or as necessary to offer you services. Please note that we’ll be using your information for necessary compliance of lawful commitments, imposing of agreements, and determination of disputes.

Contributors

Writers Republic will be requiring your contributors’ names to be indicated in the book publication when you opt to add them as contributors for your book publishing service. We will store your contributors’ personal details for the sole purpose of fixing their names on one of the pages of your book. Your contributors may reach us at [email protected] to request for removal of personal information from our system.

3rd Party Sites Link

Our company recommends you to carefully go over to the privacy policy of any website you visit or send personal information to. Our website comprises links to other sites whose norms and privacy regulations may contrast to ours. Accordingly, providing of personal data to these websites is administrated by their privacy rules and not ours.

Social Media Features & Widgets

Writers Republic website involves social media features such as: Facebook “Like” button and widget, such as the interactive mini-programs that run on our site or the “Share This” button. Please note that these features may set a cookie to allow the feature to appropriately function. It may also collect your IP address and which page you are visiting on our site. Your interactions with these features are either presented directly on our website or by a third party.

Announcements and Newsletters

Writers Republic will be inquiring your e-mail address if you’re interested to subscribe from our self-publishing updates, newsletters, articles, or periodic product and service announcements. You may choose to unsubscribe by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” button at the end part of the mail sent to you should you no longer want to receive emails from us.

Discounts and Promos

We offer promos and special deals on out publishing and marketing services from any given point of time. Thus, we may request for your contact details that includes your name, shipping address, demographic data, and educational attainment which will be utilized to inform the winners and prizes. Participation in any contest and promo is voluntary. The purpose for our promos, discounts, and contests, will be employed to assess and enhance eminence of or services to our clients.

Policy Changes

Any modifications or changes to be applied in our Privacy Policy will oblige Writers Republic to provide a notice on the website or by email before the change will take effect. Therefore, we recommend you to go over this page for any probable alterations and updates on our privacy norms. You may send us an email at [email protected] for all concerns, queries, and updates of personal details such as your email and mailing address. This also serves as your alternative to reach us if you want to withdraw your service or if you no longer want to receive any updates from our end.

Writers Republic will not be held accountable for any check payment issues, apart from the checks that are delivered to the address indicated below.

Writers Republic Publishing 515 Summit Ave. Unit R1, Union City, NJ 07087, USA

Why this Harvard-bound Brockton student's college admissions essay went viral on TikTok

BROCKTON — Abigail Mack lost her mother, Julie, to cancer when she was just 12 years old.

The Cardinal Spellman High School valedictorian used that experience to write her college admissions essay, which went viral on TikTok for her heartfelt words. It also got her into her dream school, Harvard University.

Mack, a Bridgewater resident, wrote about the challenges she faced growing up with one parent and living in a world constructed for two-parent families.

"I hate the letter 'S,'" Mack started her essay. "Of the 164,777 words with 'S,' I only grapple with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use 0.0006 percent of the time sounds statistically absurd, but that one case changed 100 percent of my life.

"I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the 'S' in parents isn't going anywhere. 'S' follows me. I can't get through a day without being reminded that while my friends went out to dinner with their parents, I ate with my parent. As I write this essay, there is a blue line under the word 'parent,' telling me to check my grammar; even Grammarly assumes that I should have parents, but cancer doesn't listen to edit suggestions."

Mack read the introduction to her Common App essay in a May 3 TikTok video . The initial video has been viewed 17 million times as of Thursday. It has been "liked" 4.7 million times.

"I see why you got in," one TikTok commenter wrote.

"WOW," another user wrote.

Mack went on to share additional parts of her essay in a four-part video series.

The 18-year-old said she tried to abandon "S, " because the world wouldn't. Mack tried to stay busy because "you can't have dinner with your 'parent' (thanks again Grammarly) if you're too busy to have family dinner."

Mack filled all her spare time and said she became known as the "busy kid." She played volleyball, took dance classes, participated in theater and did other after-school activities. Mack said certain themes — academics, theater and politics — kept coming up in her life and she found her rhythm and embraced it .

"I stopped running away from a single 'S' and began chasing a double 'S' — paSSion," Mack wrote. "Passion has given me purpose. I was shackled to 'S' as I tried to escape the confines of the traditional familial structure."

Mack was also accepted into other prestigious colleges, including Dartmouth College, Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame.

Her viral TikTok video has now gained national attention, with a trending BuzzFeed story about her essay reaching more than 725,000 views as of Thursday morning.

"Despite all obstacles, Abigail has found incredible success at Cardinal Spellman High School and outside of it as well on the stage in Boston Theater and even as part of the re-election campaign for Senator Ed Markey," Cardinal Spellman said in a statement. "She continues to excel in sports and academics here at Spellman, earning the title of Valedictorian for the class of 2021. Her recent success and acceptance into Harvard comes as no surprise to her friends, family and Cardinal Spellman mentors!"

Mack's father, Jonathan, continues to run Julie's Studio of Dance in West Bridgewater, which Julie Mack opened just months before her death at the age of 39 in 2014 . Julie Mack had battled cancer since she was 14 years old.

Mack will enter Harvard in the fall as an undecided major, but she's considering pursuing a focus in foreign policy.

Enterprise senior reporter Cody Shepard can be reached by email at  [email protected] . You can follow him on Twitter at @cshepard_ENT . Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Enterprise today.

Kyle Chayka Industries

Essay: How do you describe TikTok?

The automatic culture of the world's favorite new social network..

Hi! This is a 3,400-word essay about a technology that was totally new to me as of a few weeks ago. You can click the headline to read it in your browser. It’s a total experiment, so please let me know what you think.

This newsletter is a running series of essays on algorithmic culture and work updates from me, Kyle Chayka . Subscribe here .

For someone who writes about technology, I’m not really an early adopter. I don’t use virtual-reality goggles or participate in Twitch streams. Like everyone on the internet, I heard a lot about TikTok — teens! short videos! “ hype houses ”! — but for a long time I didn’t think I needed to try it out. How would another social network fit into my life? Don’t Twitter and Instagram cover my professional and personal needs at this point? (Snapchat I skipped over entirely.) What could TikTok, which serves an infinite stream of sub-60-second video clips, add, especially if I don’t care about meme-dances, which seemed to be its main purpose? 

Then, out of some combination of boredom and curiosity, like everything else these days, I downloaded the app. What I found is that you don’t just try TikTok; you immerse yourself in it. You sink into its depths like a 19th-century diver in a diving bell. More than any other social network since MySpace it feels like a new experience, the emergence of a different kind of technology and a different mode of consuming media. In this essay I want to try to describe that experience, without any news hooks, experts, theory, or data — just a personal encounter. 

The literary term “ ekphrasis ” usually refers to a detailed description of a piece of visual art in a text, translating it (in a sense) into words. Lately I’ve been thinking about ekphrasis of technology and media: How do you communicate what using or viewing something is like? Some of my favorite writing might fall into this vein. Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay “ In Praise of Shadows ” narrates the Japanese encounter with Western technology like electric lights and porcelain toilets. Walter Benjamin’s 1936 “ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ” shows how the rise of photography changed how people looked at visual art. By describing such experiences as exactly as possible, these essays become valuable artifacts in their own right, documenting historic shifts in human perception that happened as a result of tools we invented. 

We can’t return to the headspace of buildings without electric lights or a time when photography was scarce instead of omnipresent, but the texts allow us a glimpse. So this is my experiment: an ekphrasis of TikTok, while it’s still fresh.  

When you begin your TikTok journey, you are not faced with a choice of accounts to follow. Where Twitter and Instagram ask you to build your list yourself (the former more than the latter) TikTok simply launches you into the waterfall of content. You can check a few boxes as to which subjects you’re interested in — food, crafts, video games, travel — or not. Then there is the main feed, labeled “For You,” an evocation of customization and personal intimacy. Videos start playing, each clip looping until you make it stop. You might start seeing, as I did, minute-long clips of: 

— Gravestones being scraped down

— Wax being melted to seal letters

— An animated role-playing game

— Firefighters making shepherds pie 

— Tours of luxury apartments

— Students playing pranks on their teachers

— Dogs and cats doing funny things

The videos are flashes of narrative, many arduously constructed and edited, each self-contained but linked to the next by the shape of the container, the iPhone screen and the app feed. It’s like watching a montage of movie trailers, each crafted to addict your eye and ear, but with each new clip you have to begin constructing the story over again. Will the cat do something funny? Will the couple break up? Will this guy chug five beers? Or it’s like the flickering nonsense of images and text as a film spool runs out . 

The mechanism to navigate the TikTok feed is your thumb swiping, like a gondolier’s paddle, up to move forward to new content, down to go back to what you’ve already seen. This one interaction is enough to allow For You to get to know your content preferences. You either watch a video to completion and then maybe like or share it, or you skip it and move on to the next. 

The true pilot of the feed, however, is not the user but the recommendation algorithm, the equation that decides which video gets served to you next. More than any other social network, TikTok’s core product is its algorithm. We complain about being served bad Twitter ads or Instagram not showing us friends’ accounts, as if they’ve suddenly stopped existing, but it’s harder to fault the TikTok algorithm if only because it’s so much better at delivering a varied stream of content than its predecessors. 

A Spotify autoplay station, for example, most often follows the line of an artist or genre, serving relatively similar content over and over again. But TikTok recognizes that contrast is just as important as similarity to maintain our interest. It creates a shifting feed of topics and formats that actually feels personal, the way my Twitter feed, built up over more than a decade, feels like a reflection of my self. 

But I know who I follow on Twitter; they are voices I’ve chosen to incorporate into my feed. On TikTok, I never know where something’s coming from or why, only if I like it. There is no context. If Twitter is all about provenance — trusted people signing off on each other’s content, retweeting endorsements — TikTok is simply about the end result. Each video is evaluated on its own merits, one at a time. 

You can feel the For You feed trying subjects out on you. Dogs? Yes. Cats? Not so much. Rural Chinese fishing? Sure. Scooter tricks? No. Skateboarding? Yes. Fingerpicked guitar outside a cabin? Duh. And through the process of trial and error you get an assortment of videos that are on their own niche but put together resemble something like individual taste . It’s a mix as quirky as your own personal interests usually feel to you, though the fact that all of this content already exists on the platform gradually undercuts the sense of uniqueness: If many other people besides you didn’t also like it, it wouldn’t be there. 

A like count appears on the right side of each video, reassuring you that 6,000 other people have also enjoyed this clip enough to hit the button. Usually, the higher number does signify a better video, unlike tweets, for which the opposite is usually true. You can click into a comment section on each TikTok, too, which feel like YouTube comment sections: people jockeying to write the best riff or joke, bonus content after you watch the clip. There are no time stamps on the main feed. Unlike other social networks, it’s intentionally difficult to figure out when a TikTok video was originally posted, and many accounts repost popular videos anyway. This lends the feed an atmosphere of eternal present: It’s easy to imagine that everything you’re watching is happening right now , a gripping quality that makes it even harder to stop watching. 

Over the time I’ve been on TikTok the content of my feed has moved through phases. I can’t be sure how much the shifts are baked in to the system and how much they are a result of me engaging with different content (I’m not reporting on the structure of the algorithm here, just spelunking). There was a heavy skateboarding phase at first, but the mix has evolved into cooking lessons, clips of learning Chinese, home construction tips from This Old House, art-making close-ups, and early 2000s video games. If you search for a particular hashtag, hit like on a few videos, or follow an account, the For You algorithm tweaks your feed, adding in a bit more of that type of content. 

(A note on content mixture: “The mix” is famously how Tina Brown described the combination of different kinds of stories in Vanity Fair when she was the magazine’s very successful editor-in-chief in the ‘80s. Brown’s mix was hard-hitting news, fluffy celebrity profiles, glamorous fashion shoots, and smart critical commentary, all combined into one magazine. TikTok automates the mix of all these topics, going farther than any other platform to mimic the human editor.)

A sense emerges of teaching the algorithm what you like, bearing with it through periods of irrelevance and engaging in a way that shapes your feed. I barely look at the tab that shows me videos from people I actually follow, but I still follow them to make them show up more often in my For You feed. The process inspires patience and empathy, the way building a piece of IKEA furniture makes you like it more . It’s easy to get mad at Twitter because its algorithmic intrusions are so obvious; it’s harder with TikTok when the algorithm is all there is. The feed is a seamless environment that the user is meant to stay within. 

I didn’t tell TikTok I was interested in sensory deprivation tanks, but through some combination of randomness, metrics, and triangulation of my interests based on what else I engaged with, the app delivered a single video from a float spa and I immediately followed the account. Such specific genres of content are available elsewhere on the internet — I could follow a sensory deprivation YouTube channel or Instagram account — but the TikTok feed centralizes them and titrates the niche topic into my feed as often as I might want to see it, maybe one out of a hundred videos. After all, one video doesn’t mean I want dozens more of the same kind, as the YouTube algorithm seems to think. 

Before the 2010s we used to watch cable television, sitting on the couch with the remote pointed actively at the screen. If the show on one channel was boring, we changed it. If everything was boring, we engaged in an activity called channel flipping, switching continuously one to the next until something caught our eye. (On-demand streaming means we now flip through thumbnails more than channels; platform-flipping is the new channel-flipping.) TikTok is an eternal channel flip, and the flip is the point: there is no settled point of interest to land on. Nothing is meant to sustain your attention, even for cable TV’s traditional 10 minutes between commercial breaks. 

Like cable television, the viewer does not select the content on TikTok, only whether they want to watch it at that moment or not. It’s a marked contrast to how, in the past decade, social media platforms marketed themselves as offering user agency: you could follow anything or anyone you want, breaking traditional media’s hold on audiences. Instead, TikTok’s For You offers the passivity of linear cable TV with the addition of automated, customized variety and without the need for human editors to curate content or much action from the user to choose it. (Passivity is a feature; Netflix just announced that it’s exploring a version of linear TV .) Like Facebook , and unlike streaming, TikTok also claims to offload the risk of being an actual publisher: the content is all user-generated. Thus it’s both cheap and infinite.

The passivity induces a hypnotized flow state in the user. You don’t have to think, only react. The content often reinforces this thoughtlessness. It’s ephemera, fragments of the human mundane; Rube Goldberg machines are very popular. Sure, you can learn about food or news, but the most essentially TikTok thing I’ve seen in the past few days is a video of a young man who took a giant ball he made of beige rubber bands to an abandoned industrial site and bounced it around, off ledges and down cement steps, in the violet haze of early dusk. The clip is calm and quiet but also surreal, like a piece of video art you might watch for 15 minutes in a gallery. It has no symbolism, no story arc, only a pleasant absence of meaning and the brain-tickling pleasure of the ball gently squishing when it hits a surface, like an alien exploring the earth, unaccustomed to gravity. 

I’m biased in favor of such ambient content, which is probably why I get so much of it. But numb immersion — like a sensory deprivation tank — seems to be the point of the platform. On Twitter we get breaking news; on Instagram we see our friends and go shopping; on Facebook we (not me personally) join groups and share memes. On TikTok we are simply entertained. This is not to discount it as a very real force for politics, activism, and the business of culture, or a vehicle to create content and join in conversations. But for users, pure consumption is encouraged. The best bodily position in which to watch TikTok is supine, muscles slack, phone above your face like it’s an endless tunnel into the air. 

Sometimes a TikTok binge — short and intense until you get sick of it, like a salvia trip — has the feeling of a game. You keep flipping to the next video as if in search of some goal, though there are only ever more videos. You want to come to an end, though there is no such thing. This stumbling process is why users describe encountering a new subject matter as “finding [topic] TikTok,” like Cooking TikTok or Tiny House TikTok or Carpentry TikTok. There’s a sense of discovery because you wouldn’t necessarily know how to get there otherwise, only through the munificence of the algorithm. A limiting of possibilities is recast as a kind of magic. 

What is the theory of media that TikTok injects into the world? What are the new aesthetic standards that it will set as it becomes even more popular, beyond its current 850 million active users? It seems to combine Tumblr-style tribal niches with the brevity and intimacy of Instagram stories and the scalability of YouTube, where mainstream fame is most possible. The startup Quibi received billions of dollars of investment to bet on short-form video watched on phones. The company shut down within eight months of launch, but it wasn’t wrong about the format; it just produced terrible content (see my review of the service for Frieze ). TikTok is compelling because it’s so wide, a social network with the userbase of Facebook but fully multimedia, with the kinds of expensive-looking video editing and effects we’re used to on television. The platform presents media (or life itself?) as a permanent reality TV show, and you can tune in to any corner of it at any time.

TikTok isn’t limited to power users or a particular demographic (as in the case of the mutual addiction of Twitter and journalists), and that’s largely because of the adeptness of its algorithmic feed. There is no effort required to fine tune it, only time and swiping. Though the interface looks a little messy, it’s actually relatively simple, a quality that Instagram has abandoned under Facebook’s ownership in favor of cramming in every feature and format possible. (Where do we post what on there now — what’s a grid post, a story, or a reel, which are just Instagram’s shitty TikTok clone?) In fact, just surfing TikTok feels vaguely creative, as if you move through the field of content with your mind alone. 

Even if you are only watching, you are a part of TikTok. Internet culture has always been interactive; part of the joy of Lolcats was that you could make your own, using the template as a tool for self-expression and inside jokes. In recent years that kind of creative self-expression via social media has fallen by the wayside in favor of retweets, shares, and likes, centralizing authority around a few influential accounts and pushing the emphasis toward brands (which buy ads and drive revenue) and consumerism. TikTok returns triumphantly to the lowbrow, the absurd, the unimportant. 

The culture that it perpetuates are memes and patterns, like the dance moves that users assign to specific clips of songs. Audio is a way to navigate the platform: You can browse all the videos made to a particular soundtrack, making it very potent for spreading music. Users also create reaction videos to other videos, showing a selfie shot next to the original clip. Everything is participatory, and the nature of the algorithm makes it so that a video from an unknown account can go as viral as easily as one from a famous account. (This is true of all social networks but particularly extreme on TikTok.) The singular TikTok is less important than the continued flow of the feed and the emergence of recognizable tropes of TikTok culture that get traded back and forth, like the “ I Ain’t Seen Two Pretty Best Friends ” meme. The game is to interpolate that phrase into a video, sometimes into an otherwise straight-faced script: the surprise of the meme line, which is more absurdist symbol than meaningful language, tips you to the fact that it’s a joke. 

In his aforementioned essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin wrote that “aura” was contained in the physical presence of a unique work of art; it induced a special feeling that wasn’t captured by the reproducible photograph. By now we’ve long accepted that photographs can be art, too; even if they’re reproductions, they still maintain an aura. The evolution that I’m grasping for here — having started this paragraph over many times — is that now, in our age of the reproducibility of anything, the meaning of the discrete work of art itself has weakened. The aura is not contained within a single specific image, video, or physical object but a pattern that can be repeated by anyone without cheapening its power — in fact, the more it’s repeated, the more its impact increases. The unit of culture is the meme, its original author or artist less important than its primary specimens, which circulate endlessly, inspiring new riffs and offshoots. TikTok operates on and embraces this principle. 

Could it be that we’re encouraged to assign some authorship to the algorithm itself, as the prime actor of the platform? After all it’s the equation that’s bringing us this smooth, entrancing feed, that’s encouraging creators to create and consumers to consume. I don’t think that’s true, though, or at least not yet. We have to remember that the algorithm is also the work of its human creators at Bytedance in China, who have in the past been directed to “suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform” as well as censor political speech, according to The Intercept . Recommendation algorithms can be tools of soft censorship, subtly shaping a feed to be as glossy, appealing, and homogenous as possible rather than the truest reflection of either reality or a user’s desires. In Hollywood, a producer tells you if you’re not hot enough to be an actor; on TikTok, the algorithm lets you know if you don’t fit the mold. 

As it is, TikTok molds what and how I consume more than what I want to create. I feel no drive to make a TikTok video, maybe because the platform’s demographic is younger than I am and it still requires more video editing than I can handle, though it can also algorithmically crop video clips to moments of action. But when I switch over to Instagram and watch the automatic flip of stories from my friends and various brands, it suddenly feels boring and dead, like going from color TV back to black and white. I don’t want to only get content from people I follow; I want the full breadth of the platform, perfectly filtered. The grid of miscellany of Instagram’s discover tab doesn’t stand up to TikTok’s total immersion. 

TikTok’s feed is finely tuned and personalized, but I think what’s more important is how it automates the entire experience of online consumption. You don’t have to decide what you’re interested in; you just surrender to the platform. Automation gets disguised as customization. That makes the structure and priorities of the algorithm even more important as it increasingly determines what we watch, read, and hear, and what people are incentivized to create in digital spaces to get attention. And TikTok absolutely wants all of your attention. It’s not about casual browsing, not glancing at Twitter to see the latest news or checking your friend’s Instagram profile for updates. It’s a move directly toward an addiction that will be incredibly profitable for the company. And the more we trust that algorithmic feed, the easier it will be for the app to exploit its audiences.

This was an interesting experiment to write because I had no formal constraints from an external publication and of course no editing or feedback before publishing it. I wrote it just to document an obsession, and as with many obsessions, it’s fading a bit as I write it all out. At this point I’ve documented all the thoughts I have currently, in a fairly loose way. 

I would really like messages about this piece! Did it work, did it not work? Is this productive or not? There are more essays I’d like to write like this, without the pressure to fully compel public readers. But its main utility is to share ideas and start conversations, so it needs to accomplish at least that. 

Please comment, email me by replying, tweet about this, post it on your LinkedIn, or whatever platform you choose. Make a TikTok reaction video.

If you like this piece, please hit the heart button below! It helps me reach more readers on Substack. Email me at [email protected] or reply. Also:

— Follow me on  Twitter

— Buy my book on minimalism,  The Longing for Less

— Read more of my writing:  kylechayka.com

Ready for more?

We use cookies. By browsing the site, you agree to it. Read more »

Finished Papers

Sophia Melo Gomes

A standard essay helper is an expert we assign at no extra cost when your order is placed. Within minutes, after payment has been made, this type of writer takes on the job. A standard writer is the best option when you’re on a budget but the deadline isn’t burning. Within a couple of days, a new custom essay will be done for you from the ground up. Unique content, genuine research, spot-on APA/MLA formatting, and peerless grammar are guaranteed. Also, we’ll provide you with a free title page, bibliography, and plagiarism check. With a standard writer, you can count on a quality essay that will live up to all your expectations.

How Do I Select the Most Appropriate Writer to Write My Essay?

The second you place your "write an essay for me" request, numerous writers will be bidding on your work. It is up to you to choose the right specialist for your task. Make an educated choice by reading their bios, analyzing their order stats, and looking over their reviews. Our essay writers are required to identify their areas of interest so you know which professional has the most up-to-date knowledge in your field. If you are thinking "I want a real pro to write essay for me" then you've come to the right place.

The various domains to be covered for my essay writing.

If you are looking for reliable and dedicated writing service professionals to write for you, who will increase the value of the entire draft, then you are at the right place. The writers of PenMyPaper have got a vast knowledge about various academic domains along with years of work experience in the field of academic writing. Thus, be it any kind of write-up, with multiple requirements to write with, the essay writer for me is sure to go beyond your expectations. Some most explored domains by them are:

• Project management

Andre Cardoso

What if I can’t write my essay?

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

4 reasons to write my essay with us!

You are always welcome to check some of our previously done projects given on our website and then judge it for yourself. Apart from that, we can give you 4 significant reasons to be a part of our customer base:

• Only professional ‘my essay writer', who are highly qualified and a master in their academic field, will write for you
• Quality control is rigorously maintained by us and is thoroughly aligned with the given question brief and instructions.
• We will also provide you with a thorough Plagiarism report by the Turnitin software which will ensure the originality of the draft
• You are free to revise your draft with us till you are contented with the subject matter.

Support team is ready to answer any questions at any time of day and night

We suggest our customers use the original top-level work we provide as a study aid and not as final papers to be submitted in class. Order your custom work and get straight A's.

Finished Papers

receive 15% off

As we have previously mentioned, we value our writers' time and hard work and therefore require our clients to put some funds on their account balance. The money will be there until you confirm that you are fully satisfied with our work and are ready to pay your paper writer. If you aren't satisfied, we'll make revisions or give you a full refund.

What is the native language of the person who will write my essay for me?

Customer Reviews

There are questions about essay writing services that students ask about pretty often. So we’ve decided to answer them in the form of an F.A.Q.

Is essay writing legitimate?

As writing is a legit service as long as you stick to a reliable company. For example, is a great example of a reliable essay company. Choose us if you’re looking for competent helpers who, at the same time, don’t charge an arm and a leg. Also, our essays are original, which helps avoid copyright-related troubles.

Are your essay writers real people?

Yes, all our writers of essays and other college and university research papers are real human writers. Everyone holds at least a Bachelor’s degree across a requested subject and boats proven essay writing experience. To prove that our writers are real, feel free to contact a writer we’ll assign to work on your order from your Customer area.

Is there any cheap essay help?

You can have a cheap essay writing service by either of the two methods. First, claim your first-order discount – 15%. And second, order more essays to become a part of the Loyalty Discount Club and save 5% off each order to spend the bonus funds on each next essay bought from us.

Can I reach out to my essay helper?

Contact your currently assigned essay writer from your Customer area. If you already have a favorite writer, request their ID on the order page, and we’ll assign the expert to work on your order in case they are available at the moment. Requesting a favorite writer is a free service.

Copyright © 2022. All Right Reserved -

Women Talk Through Their Abortions on TikTok

At a time of heightened confusion and legal battles over access to abortion, women are looking to social media for answers.

Supported by

• Share full article

By Emily Schmall

• Published April 17, 2024 Updated April 18, 2024, 7:36 p.m. ET

“Have an abortion with me,” a single mother from Brooklyn named Sunni says as she twirls around her kitchen to light jazzy piano, before walking TikTok viewers through the steps she took to end her pregnancy at home.

With states expanding restrictions on abortion and the issue likely to be at the forefront of the presidential election, women are creating videos on social media describing their own abortions and sharing practical information on how to obtain one.

Sunni explained to viewers that she was craving information when she was planning her abortion. “This is the video I was looking for,” she said.

The reaction to her video, which has been viewed more than 400,000 times and has drawn comments of both commiseration and condemnation, shows how deeply personal and divisive the issue remains in the run up to the November elections.

One viewer, a campaigner with the group Protect Life Michigan, remixed the video on the group’s own TikTok account, criticizing Sunni for her lighthearted tone and for making the video at all.

“I just don’t understand how we are making a video, and we are laughing and joking about going through the abortion process,” the campaigner said.

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 led to a cascade of abortion bans and restrictions across large parts of the United States. Twenty-one states now ban or restrict the procedure earlier than the standard set by Roe.

In response, there has been an explosion of social media content related to abortion — some of it overtly political, some informational and some testimonial as women seek answers, seek support, or simply seek to share.

The landscape for abortion access is changing rapidly. Last month, the justices heard arguments over whether to curtail access to a widely used abortion pill, with a decision expected this June or July. This month, Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.

Former President Donald Trump has taken credit for a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, but has since distanced himself from the idea of a national abortion ban. President Biden, meanwhile, sees advantage from pinning the narrowing landscape for abortion on Republicans.

With the laws in flux state by state, Sunni and others have made TikToks to explain how to obtain abortion pills and have the procedure at home. In other videos on the site, women have grappled with their own experiences, expressing everything from relief to regret. These personal videos have become fodder for political campaigns, which have used them to argue either for an expansion of abortion rights or for further restrictions.

Confused over where and what forms of abortion are allowed state to state, young people seeking to end their pregnancies are increasingly turning to social media for guidance, researchers have found.

“The chaos and the confusion and the stigma is the point with abortion bans and targeted regulations,” said Rebecca Nall, the founder of an online database, I Need an A, that directs users to abortion resources.

“More and more people are going online with their most personal questions,” she added, “and more and more people are offering information.”

Before Roe v. Wade, desperate women called Jane, an underground abortion network , for advice on what to do about unwanted pregnancies. Later, campaigns encouraged women to talk about their abortion openly .

With women now turning to TikTok for information and as a vehicle for self-expression, the app has also become a forum for discussion. On some videos, viewers posed practical questions about procuring abortion drugs or finding a provider. They shared fears of physical pain and anxieties over the logistical complexities of arranging one. Other viewers expressed regret for having had abortions.

Some voices were critical, faulting women for having abortions and for speaking openly about it, without remorse.

The women sharing their stories — and the viewers who write to them asking for advice — are engaging in conversations that could be at risk. Some states’ attorneys general have expressed an appetite to prosecute those who “aid and abet” abortions, including those who provide information, and to subpoena online messages.

Sunni, 30, who asked that her full name not be used out of fear that she could be further targeted by abortion opponents, said in an interview that she became interested in reproductive health justice when she was pregnant with her daughter in 2021.

She had become active on TikTok and was alarmed to find videos of people recommending herbal remedies like parsley to induce an abortion. When she was pregnant last year, after experiencing a difficult childbirth the first time, she decided to have an abortion and to share the experience with her followers.

With TikTok awash in activism from anti-abortion campaigners and proponents of abortion rights, Sunni said she wanted to focus on the practicalities of a medication abortion, the most common form in the United States. That included the order that the mifepristone and misoprostol pills must be taken, and the creature comforts — like Totino’s frozen pizza — she relied on to help with pain management and recovery.

“It’s something that so many people go through,” she said in an interview. “There are people walking around you going through this thing and until they feel normal and accepted, they’re not going to be able to heal.”

The video she made received more than 1,000 comments. Sunni said she received hundreds of messages from girls and young women seeking direction on how to obtain the pills and manage pain.

“You do have to navigate it,” she said, “and nobody shows you how.”

Another testimonial came from Mikaela Attu, a Canadian who said in an interview that she was shocked by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, particularly because abortion care was not difficult to access in Canada.

In a TikTok video, she took viewers along to multiple hospital visits near her home in Vancouver, from an ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy to a shot of her feet in stirrups at the beginning of a procedure to terminate it.

@mikaelaattu Having an abortion was honestly such a peaceful experience for me, the staff were so kind and supportive. The whole procedure I didn’t feel any physical pain and after the medication wore off I felt completely fine other then feeling a little loopy. My husband and I went for a walk after to go get some food and just talked threw how we were feeling about the whole experience.(Highly recommend taking time to bond with your partner if your lucky to have that support) I ended up having the surgical abortion btw. You are not alone 🤍 time for the healing to begin #abortionawarenesss #abortion ♬ Get You The Moon - Kina

In another video, viewed 7.5 million times, Ms. Attu talked about the heartbreak of getting pregnant with a man she loved, but not being able to go through with it.

Ms. Attu and her husband plan to have children, she said, but she was dealing with mental health issues when she got pregnant last year and did not feel prepared to start a family.

“I wanted to show that abortion is complicated,” she said.

Other women have made TikToks to express their grief over having an abortion.

One viewer of another woman’s abortion video commented that it reminded her of the pain she endured as a 16-year-old, going through her own abortion.

Desireé Dallagiacomo, 33, a writer and poet in California, recorded a video as she got ready for an abortion appointment.

“I’m fine and stable,” she told viewers, “and I just don’t want a child.”

Ms. Dallagiacomo, 33, said in an interview that she wanted to share her story, in part, to challenge the prevailing narratives about why people have abortions.

With abortion rights increasingly targeted, what women share about their abortions on social media has come into focus.

Attorneys general in Texas, Alabama and Louisiana have indicated an interest in prosecuting abortion providers and other groups that coordinate them, creating uncertainty over whether those who share information online could be held liable.

“There’s a movement afoot to criminalize information,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about abortion.

In July, a teenager in Nebraska was charged with concealing a death, her aborted fetus, and sentenced to 90 days in jail. In the case, prosecutors subpoenaed Facebook messages she had exchanged with her mother, in which the two discussed abortion pills.

The case in Nebraska suggests the conversations that people have about abortion can be used against them, Professor Ziegler said.

“In the post-Dobbs era, there’s an interesting and tricky trade-off,” she said, between sharing stories to destigmatize the experience “and the fact that speaking out could create unintended legal risks.”

The specter of punishment for sharing information about abortion was just one of the ways Ms. Dallagiacomo said she found her abortion experience “isolating.”

“There is just so much keeping us from honestly telling our story,” she said.

Emily Schmall covers breaking news and feature stories and is based in Chicago. More about Emily Schmall

Advertisement

Scaredy-cat goes ‘flying’ across the room in viral TikTok

(CNN) - Cat videos are big on the internet, but one Chicago-area Bengal cat has gone viral with over 50 million views on TikTok.

Remi is being called the “Michael Jordan of cats.” That’s because of the way he went flying over a couch when something startled him.

There have been stories of enormous cats and a slap-happy cat slapping a judge at a cat show, but this one is a blur.

“This is the flying cat,” Julia Amidei said, introducing her cat, Remi.

Two-year-old Remi hid behind some hanging coats as his housemate Luci the cat decided to come play.

But when Luci knocked a coat off the hook, Remi went bonkers.

“What the (expletive) just happened?” Amidei’s boyfriend Nick is heard saying in the video.

Those immortal words escaped Nick’s lips as Remi flew across the room, completely clearing the couch where Nick sat.

“My cat has wings,” Amidei said.

Amidei said Remi is fine.

“He landed on this,” she said, showing an interactive cat toy.

Commenters were awestruck. They called him “the Michael Jordan of cats.”

“But I’ve never seen him get air like that in my life,” Amidei said.

The dog of the house, Maggie, was singled out online for her chill reaction.

“And then just looks at my boyfriend like, ‘There they go again,’” Amidei said, talking about Maggie’s reaction.

The stratospheric leap went explosively viral and many labeled Remi the very definition of a scaredy cat.

But Remi took being jumpy to a whole new level.

Copyright 2024 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

VSP responds to fatal crash in Rockingham County on Tuesday

House in Rockingham County is a total loss after fire

Augusta County man taken into custody after barricade incident

SVEC line worker injured on duty

Weyers Cave man sentenced to 43 years in prison for murdering brother

Latest news.

Death Valley opens nearly 200 miles of previously damaged roads, wildflowers in bloom

Chesney navigating last week of spring practice while monitoring transfer portal

Here’s how you can get free fries every Friday at Wendy’s starting this week

Dogs rescued from war-torn areas near Israel up for adoption

12 jurors have been picked for Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Selection of alternates ongoing