Complex Numbers

So Low

Sometimes, I can relate to the things I share here.

This is not one of those times.

How I Learned to Eat Alone and Not Be Lonely  
What two years of solo dinners taught me

You just... eat. That's how.

But I guess that's not enough for extroverts.

In the spring of 2020, as my world shrunk to the square footage of my apartment, food became a mode of injecting pleasure and delight into an otherwise bleak and lonely period of my life.

Oh great. A pandemic whine.

As time passed, I wondered when, or if, I’d get to dine with friends and family again. I entered a state of despair.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy sharing meals with friends and family. But for me, the despair would be if I didn't know when I'd get to eat alone again.

I relied on books, Netflix, and even work to distract myself at dinner.

The horror.

Eventually I downloaded TikTok, and then that became my new dining companion.

The horror! (This time it's not meant sarcastically.)

I began seeing myself mirrored on my “For You” page, which served up videos of other people eating alone. In the videos, creators talked to their presumed audiences in animated voices: “I’m so proud of you for eating today,” “No matter what, you deserve to nourish your body,” or “I’m going to take a bite, and then you take one.” Why were these people filming an ordinary, solitary experience and sharing it online? And why were millions of strangers, myself included, watching them every night?

At this point, I got the feeling that even if the article answered those questions, I still wouldn't comprehend. How do you go about "not eating?" My entire day, no matter what else I'm doing, is taken up with one of four things: Preparing food, eating food, thinking about the next meal, and, while sleeping, dreaming about food.

Even if I decide something like, "I need to not eat for the next twelve hours," I'm still thinking about what breakfast will be.

Many of these videos are designed to encourage viewers, especially those with eating disorders or mental-health diagnoses, to eat in tandem with the creator.

Okay. Okay, I can accept that some people have mental health issues about it. By no means am I trying to minimize those; I have my own, different issues. But, as with people who are gay or who enjoy anchovies on pizza, I can't fully understand; I can only accept.

They found me, in the strange way that the TikTok algorithm knows you better than you know yourself.

Which, right there, is enough reason for me to avoid that platform like poverty. ("Like the plague" is overused, clichéd, and it turns out people don't avoid that.)

One account that I visited frequently was @foodwithsoy, run by Soy Nguyen, a food influencer based in Los Angeles.

I did have a nice laugh at that aptronym, until I got to the "influencer" part and nearly puked.

It would be pronounced like "Soy Win."

The videos can also balance out messages pushing diet culture and weight loss, says Jaime Sidani, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Pittsburgh. There are real concerns that apps like TikTok can serve as a conduit for harmful eating behavior and poor body image.

Okay, so... that much I can appreciate.

In conclusion, while I felt no affinity to the article, I'm posting it here in the hopes that it might help someone else. Unless you're already using DikTok, in which case there's no hope for you.