As TikTok video essayist Rayne Fisher-Quann wrote in her Substack essay on “micro-individuality”, “everyone seems to be more obsessed with individuality and differentiation than ever before, while simultaneously participating in one of the most intoxicating lifestyle reproduction mechanisms in human history.”
Here’s a stunning stat: more than 39,000 accounts on TikTok now have at least 1M followers. This creates “niche fame” where within a specific following, a creator may be a rockstar, but more broadly, that same creator may be completely unknown.
Some of the fantasies in Want are moving - the bereaved woman who craves touch and mourns the secondary loss of sexual relations. “I do wish there were more discussion of grief and spouse loss and sexuality,” she writes.