#205: My TikTok Shop purchase history
A confession
When TikTok Shop launched in November 2023, I knew I’d never go near that place. A quasi-Amazon experience integrated with a social media app exclusively featuring brands that sound made up by a Captcha robot? I’ll pass! I made my first purchase about three months later, and over the next year, proceeded to make nine more. Since TikTok partnered with Shopify to become a retailer, it’s facilitated over $11 billion dollars in sales. Two hundred and seventy five of those dollars were mine. Today, at the risk of my reputation and in honor of the (temporary?) American demise of TikTok, I am going to review the 10 purchases I made through the app which, as you will see below, basically became QVC for the scrolling generations. This newsletter is a cautionary tale.
1. February 2024: The “viral criss-cross chair,” $55
My gateway drug. Danny had just installed a desk under my bedroom window and I needed a chair for it. The chair would be tucked away behind the bed—not a hero piece. Mainly I needed it to be comfortable despite sharing no qualities with an ergonomic office chair (ugly). Mind you, the chair I ended up buying is no beauty, but I love to cross my legs when I work, which TikTok intuited due to my being 35 and postpartum (weak core), and so served me videos of this chair over and over. The “viral criss cross chair,” people called it—a chair wide enough to accommodate crossed legs, a detail repeated so frequently and exuberantly you’d think this chair was the first to do it. Afraid I might buy an inferior copycat elsewhere, I opted to buy straight from the source, upon which I discovered TikTok Shop was startlingly easy to use: about 12 seconds elapsed between decision and purchase confirmation, and the chair arrived five days later.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5
The chair is in fact very comfortable, sturdy, and inviting, but after one year of use the seat is starting to pill like an old sweater, a nubby little reminder that I purchased a piece of “fast furniture” and now have to keep the godforsaken thing for at least 10 years as penance.
2. March 2024: The “3-in-1” sink strainer, $26
The dented mesh basket in our kitchen sink was always full of mushy food particles we had to scrape into the trash, which I found annoying but considered normal until someone on TikTok asked what I was doing with that old thing. The slick 3-in-1 strainer-stopper combo made our drain catch look pathetic. The videos kept popping up: Guys dumping cans of beans (and the like) down their sinks, only for the liquid to drain easily past the particles, no stoppage whatsoever. How did the drain still work with food in the way? Some might say magic. I was sold.
⭐️⭐️ out of 5
Initial euphoria. I felt like an actor in an infomercial installing this thing and testing it out. So shiny and clean, I basically punted our old drain stop out the window. Avi was impressed—the water was flowing mysteriously easily, no matter how much food was built up in the catch. Several months later and our sink fills with water at the slightest obstruction, the source of this problem as mysterious as ever.
3. May 2024: “It’s a Bad Day to Be a Hot Dog” trucker hat, $24
Last Spring my nanny went to Costco for the first time and couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved it, specifically the hot dogs. She’d gone three times in two weeks. All of us thought this was very funny, and so when some loser tried to sell me this hat on TikTok that same week, I caved immediately, then gave it to our nanny on her birthday.
⭐️⭐️ out of 5
This is one of those gifts that reads as thoughtful but is ultimately pretty wasteful. Have I ever seen her wear this hat? Of course not. It feels like it’s made of oil. (Sorry Megan.) She did laugh though.
4. May 2024: Glycolic acid toner, $15
I was sold on this toner in a low moment. I was six months postpartum and was barely even washing my face, so when a stern esthetician in a white coat that gave her a scientist vibe* told me glycolic acid was the only skincare product a 30+ woman needed to promote cell turnover, whatever that meant, I listened.
*The reason beauty and care products are the highest-grossing category on TikTok Shop
⭐️ out of 5
To be fair, this rating concerns user error more than anything—I’ve never touched the bottle as I’m afraid to use it incorrectly. When I sent a photo of it to my cousin (who went to esthetician school) asking her how and when to use it, she said, “Is there a specific reason you’re wanting to use this?” And I had to reply that, honestly, I had no idea what it was.
5. July 2024: 30-pack of mouth tape, $12
My mom has been an avid mouth-taper since something like 2017, which I think makes her an influencer. I mentioned this the other week, but when I developed an intermittent snoring problem while pregnant (that persisted), I thought I might try taping. For a while I kept forgetting to buy some, but the non-stop videos advertising them to me on TikTok were like a little alarm clock, badgering me into submission. Lots of people like to pretend mouth-taping snatches your jawline (the fudged before-and-afters are great for virality), but I don’t believe it.
⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5
Honestly I love to tape my mouth shut at night like a little freak, it’s weirdly comforting, but in the end I credit my mom (and her dentist), not TikTok.
6. August 2024: French retinol cream, $29
Once again I was suckered into a skincare product after enough rave reviews. This product gets extra viral points for being French, and for rumors of inferior American dupes lending the original an air of distinction. This purchase was nearly coerced—one can only read so many comments from people saying it’s the only thing they use now before you say, fine, GOD.
⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5
I will admit, this shit rocks. Was featured in my 2024 favorite things list.
7. September 2024: Anti-choking vacuum, $40
The problem with being told a product could save your child’s life is that if your child’s life becomes endangered and you don’t have said product on-hand you will never be able to live with yourself. As soon as I saw this thing I knew I was cooked. Later, when my algorithm served me a toddler heimlich tutorial, I was relieved to hear the guy (what guy?) say these vacuums are a great option. Truly a coin toss with this stuff.
⭐⭐️⭐️ out of 5
It actually does make me feel somewhat better to have this in the house, but of course that’s the sales pitch isn’t it? I say this having just this morning stored my new “fire blanket” right next to it (gift from my mom, I imagine from a similar marketing scenario).
8. October 2024: Talking flash card toy, $19
One of my more shameful purchases, as it truly looks, feels, and sounds like a piece of junk (although it does work, technically speaking). The passion with which several children’s occupational therapists recommended this was genuinely moving—they wished they could have gone back in time and given it to their own children! Or every single of their clients! That’s how well-designed it is!
⭐⭐️out of 5
I am giving an extra star for the possibility that Sunny falls in love with this once it’s age-appropriate, but so far my impression is: clunky, loud, too many moving pieces, animal sounds too realistic. Considering Sunny was in her “eating cards” phase when I purchased this, I probably could have held off.
9. November 2024: Sensory fabric circles, $26
This one’s really giving QVC. It is literally 16 circles made of various fabrics…. One video of a toddler enchanted with the sensory experience of these and I was a goner; they’d hit a nostalgic weak spot—I was obsessed with soft fabrics as a child. Surely these circles would be able to provide Sunny with something special that fabrics around our home could not?
⭐⭐️out of 5
These are cute but totally unnecessary. Sixteen circles. I felt unusually bad about this one, like I’d bought packing peanuts for a landfill. Going to make myself find alternate uses for these out of guilt. We’ve got enough diorama material for a whole class.
10. December 2024: Handheld kids microscope, $29
Something about this product feels so 1995—you can hold it up to anything and see it in sickening detail. Very Honey I Shrunk the Kids. I would have played with this thing for an hour at the Sharper Image in Valley Fair Mall, begged my parents to buy it then forgotten about it 10 minutes after they said no. Anyway, I purchased this for my six-year-old nieces for Christmas.
⭐⭐️⭐️out of 5
This thing is actually crazy. My nieces were excited about it for three minutes and when the novelty of looking at the individual fibers of the carpet wore off, the adults in the room used it to look at our disgusting pores for about 45 minutes. I loved it actually, but can also recognize it does not need to exist.
When I asked the readers of this newsletter about their thoughts on the TikTok ban last month, I was amused by how many people who identified as frequent users said they’d relish its disappearance, because I agreed. And why was that? The more I read about the ban, the less I agreed with it politically, and yet I couldn’t deny the thought of it going away felt on par with opening my front door and letting the sun rest gently on my face. Of course now that it actually is gone, I feel a bit sentimental about its more charming aspects. But maybe it’s good I wrote this postmortem then, to remind myself that TikTok was (is), at its most tangible, a supremely well-executed marketing machine.
In these purchases there is almost no evidence of the filters I’ve established in recent years to be a more thoughtful consumer; there is only appetite, endless appetite. Like a hoarder watching the home shopping network, scrolling on TikTok felt like being advertised to by friends who had infinite solutions to problems I didn’t realize I had. But as time’s worn on and my purchases have revealed the catch of their low prices (low quality) and accumulated the detritus of shoddy utility and unmet expectations, or even if they haven’t, what’s become clear is I really didn’t need any of that stuff. With a haul like that I could have just gone to the mall—at least there I wouldn’t have been alone, staring at a screen, watching a world I wasn’t living in. Goodbye for now, TikTok.
My favorite thing I consumed last week was this amazing 1991 NYC Sanitation commercial directed by David Lynch, RIP. Last Friday’s 15 things also included the perfect paper towel replacement (opposite of landfill packing peanuts!), Nosferatu thoughts, a new way to think about humanity, and more. The rec of the week was cutting boards.
On the podcast this week, Harling Ross Anton and Crystal Anderson are back to follow up on the postpartum podcast we recorded last February. A kind of one-year-later check-in on toddler life. Thanks for submitting so many good questions for us to answer. Ep’s out on Wednesday!
Take care everyone,
Haley