When TikTok Met the Social Dilemma: A Tale of Unexpected Fame and Conspiracy Theories in 2020

get ready with me
while I tell you about the time my TikTok got added to a documentary
in the world hated me for a couple days
the story never gets old
if y’all can’t tell already
lots of weird situations happen to me back in 2020
I was really into conspiracy theories
like the ones about pyramids being built by aliens
and mostly alien conspiracy theories I really loved
I was also like 19 or 20 years old
so I was still kind of a baby at the time
and this was like week one of Covid
week one or two it was like March 2020
nobody knew what was going on
it hadn’t been deemed a lockdown yet
like it hadn’t
like it wasn’t even a pandemic yet at this point
we were being told to stay in our houses and not to go outside or whatever
and so my little 19 year old conspiracy theory brains wheels started spinning
I was like I’m gonna do
I’m gonna do some research on figure out what’s going on
so a couple days into my research
I found out that there is a lab
500 feet away from the epicenter of where Covid started
in Wuhan so I posted something along the lines of
there was a lab 500 feet away from the upper center of where Covid started
or they were testing stuff on bats
I bet whatever’s happening is like a lab made thing
I wonder if they’re trying to keep us all inside
because something bigger is going on now
this video got like
maybe 10 views before my mom was like
Chelsea Sophia
you take that video down right now
it’s that’s not okay
I took the video down and I really didn’t think much of it honestly
till nine months later I’m back in Nashville and like
things were kind of opening up a little bit
but like
he’s outdoor seating like
everyone is still wearing masks
obviously that continued on for a long time
and I’m sitting in my online songwriting class when my professor goes oh
I saw you on the Social Dilemma last night
and I kind of just like
brush it off I was like
I have what is she talking about
that doesn’t I don’t even know what that is
then all of a sudden I started getting text from like
random people throughout different eras of my life
being like oh
I saw you on the social dilemma
I saw on the social dilemma
and I was like what are these people talking about
what is the social dilemma
and I asked my roommate and she was like oh
that’s the new Netflix documentary
I opened my Instagram and my DMs were being flooded
my comment section was being flooded by people telling me like
you should unalive yourself
you’re a terrible person blah
what’s wrong with you and I’m like
what what
what is happening what is going on the pause for a second
I’m gonna just do my hair
so I decided that I should go and watch this documentary
and see what all hype was about
and apparently
the social dilemma had found my TikTok video that I had posted nine months ago
I don’t know if they were one of
the 10 viewers that saw it or if they had access to all of the deleted Tik Toks
and they put my TikTok in the documentary
but they cut it so it was only just this one little piece of it
and they like
lumped me in with all these people that were kind of saying crazy things
and kept my TikTok handle in
so all of these people were seeing my handle in this documentary
seeing me talking about conspiracy theories nine months into Covid
and they were like who is this girl
why like what
she’s crazy and to be totally honest
like at this phase in Covid
if I saw that in the documentary and didn’t know that person
I would be like dude
what the hell like
we’re in a global pandemic
this is not the time to be talking about conspiracy theories
so uncool no chill
what the heck but I had made that video like
literally before it was even classified as a pandemic
here’s where it gets like
even crazier so I posted a TikTok about it because I was like
I was like what is happening
I don’t know what to do and that TikTok went viral
and then the social dilemma ended up blurring my handle in the documentary
I did not know that once a movie was released
people could go back in and edit it and like
change things and then that got me thinking
I was like well
maybe like
all these Mandela effects about movies and stuff actually aren’t Mandela effects
maybe they’ve just been like
back in and changing them
I take that back I’m done with conspiracy theories y’all
I’ve gotten myself into too much trouble with them
especially now that this like
random man online is trying to turn my
my actual life into a conspiracy theory
also kind of crazy that like
the conspiracy theory that I had created at that point in time ended up like
a lot of people ended up actually believing that as like
the truth not for me
but like that obviously came out on online later
and some people still believe that it was created in a lab
was definitely like
a crazy eye opening experience for me to like
the hive mind that is humankind
and I’m still baffled that like
people saw me in this documentary
and then went to my Instagram to tell me to analyze myself
like I don’t know
like if I saw that
I wouldn’t even thought I would have
I would never think to do that
it’s so crazy like
I think we just see people on a screen and like
we don’t register that they’re
like a real person maybe
anyways the threats stopped coming to me after they blurred my handle
so I was all I was all set
it’s a crazy story let’s go meet Elise and Dylan for brunch
I’m on a work trip in LA right now