It was curiosity that hooked me at first: the scroll-stopping curiosity that has turned TikTok from a singing-and-syncing fun time app to 2022ās shadowy overlord. āCheck out this huge frog!ā the caption said, accompanying a video of a horseās hoof. A frog? Of significant size? Inside a horseās hoof? This I gotta see!
The time was 2.23am, the light of my phoneās screen a beacon of betrayal in the otherwise pitch black of my room (and, nestled as I was in a sleepy village in East Yorkshire, it really was dark: no streetlights shining in from the outside world like back in London.) I was having trouble getting to sleep, for no particular reason other than being a brain on a stick.
Iām generally lucky that I donāt have too much trouble drifting off, but like many people I sometimes canāt switch off as easily as Iād like. Over the years, Iāve found a method that usually sorts it out, a distraction of sorts to lull me out of my head and into the warm embrace of sleep: pimple-popping videos.
There are two types of people in this world: those who love Dr Pimple Popperās videos, and those who despise them (please donāt worry if youāre squeamish: this newsletter is safe for both.) While some people find them repellent, even nauseating ā especially considering her more grotesque move over the years from banal blackheads into cysts and growths the size of small countries ā Iām in the first faction, and find the videos supremely soothing.
However, as well as being a part-time āpopaholicā (a term coined by Dr Pimple Popper to describe her millions of fans and followers), Iām also someone who lives with OCD and relatedly dermatillomania; in other words, compulsive skin-picking to the point of causing damage. Last week, in the perineum period of the year when I simultaneously try to rest and do nothing whilst also sorting out my entire life, a realisation that had lain dormant suddenly reared its head: perhaps watching these videos wasnāt a great idea. Perhaps, even, it was indulging and encouraging behaviour Iād rather leave behind. Fine, I thought, Iāll lay that particular habit to rest. But what could I watch to help me sleep instead?
And so we return to frogs. Or, more accurately, horses, because as it turns out, the frog in farriery (equine hoof care, a bit like a cross between blacksmithing and veterinarian-ing) is the bit of the hoof that forms a āVā shape. Thus despite a distinct lack of amphibians, oversized or otherwise, I spent the next three minutes transfixed, watching the farrier transform a hoof intoā¦well, a better hoof.
As someone whoās not only never expressed an interest in horses but is actively wary of them, I donāt know why the algorithm thought Iād enjoy the video(other than, as above, TikTok being our overlord and therefore inside our brains), but I did. Watching the cutting, chiselling and plying in real time was practically meditative. The moment he pulled out the horseshoe (which Iād never had occasion to really think about before, but is nailed into their hoof), I knew I was in for a ride: something in my brain fired a similar signal, a tug of recognition that it was time for a change. And each time he scraped a bit of the frog off and it fell away, I felt something similar happen to my stress; so that by the time the video finished on a milky clean hoof, my brain felt similarly fresh. I fell asleep in minutes.
Though I havenāt needed it since, I now know thereās a number of farriery accounts I can call upon next time I canāt get to sleep; the one Iād stumbled upon, for example, didnāt post the videos as ASMR, but to educate young and wannabe farriers across the globe.
And farriery is just one example out of hundreds of thousands: thereās a corner of TikTok for everything. Of course, this has negative ramifications, such as the ~25,000 cores which we cycled through this year, which not only make me feel old as hell (wtf is a coastal grandmother?) but encourage consumption at a terrifying and unsustainable rate. But it also has positive implications, too, so that whatever your niche, you can find more to enjoy. You can find people that get you (when I just went to grab the link to embed it, the farrier video in question had 3m likes.) Itās even helping some endangered crafts live on.
So next time youāre on the clock app, take a few minutes to decompress. You could even make your way to farriertok, if you feel so obliged. Just donāt expect to hear any ribbets.