TikTok viral: Hot or Not?
When you need a wee study break, want to waste four hours scrolling listening to sped-up sounds that would have been shit if they weren’t sped up, or want to recreate some slightly questionable transitions, there is one app that fits the brief.
TikTok is a name familiar amongst young and old alike. Known for its whack creations and weird obsessions with video creators (Charli D’amelio, I am looking at you), the app has truly taken the world by storm. But looking past the 2020 renegade phase and the hype of the Hype House, the latest side of TikTok seems to be focused on the latest and greatest new products. Influencers take to their phone screens to flaunt the latest smoothies, mascaras, and pasta dishes. All with the goal of convincing you, the lucky consumer, that you should “run, don’t walk” to snaffle up cosmetics, or to get crafty in the kitchen.
But do these various viral TikTok thingmabobs really live up to all the hype? Canta gets amid the mayhem to let you know where you should drop your dollar, and where you should pocket your pennies.
Hailey Bieber Smoothie
When it comes to ‘It girls,’ Hailey Bieber is certainly a name that springs to mind. Socialite, model and face of her makeup brand, Rhode Beauty, the blonde beauty’s talents have even managed to extend into the culinary word. Anyone that has been on TikTok for five seconds probably knows about Bieber’s infamous “Strawberry Skin Glaze smoothie.”
Made with strawberries, almond milk, vanilla collagen, and sea moss; the magic pink drink promises to give your skin a much-needed ‘boost’- maintaining a strong skin barrier, plumping the skin, all whilst being delicious. Sounds like a great purchase, right? That is, until you find out this skin-saving smoothie comes at the crippling cost of $20 USD (or $33.95 NZD).
So, we scoured the internet in efforts to recreate the iconic beverage ourselves. That is when we stumbled upon everyone’s favourite internet clusterfuck……Buzzfeed. It was time to get cracking
Our legendary attempt at the Haley Bieber smoothie… pretttty good if I say so myself.
We combined almond milk, frozen strawberries, dates, coconut cream, vanilla essence and frozen avo in a blender. Unfortunately, sourcing sea moss and collagen was not within the budget, but we move. We whizzed the ingredients we had on hand, careful to the ensure all the bits were blitzed so we could achieve a smooth consistency. The overall result…. a solid smoothie.
Although we couldn’t try the real Hailey Bieber smoothie, we think our one is a pretty good alternative. Save yourself the splurge, dust off the Nutri-bullet and get blending.
Sunset Lamp
For a while, my for you page was the most colourful it has ever been. The main culprit; the sunset lamp. Now me, I am an absolute sucker for a bit of mood lighting. When I saw I could recreate the beauty of a sunset from the comfort of my own home…well, I was sold.
The journey to finding a sunset lamp took me to my favourite place on earth…. Kmart. I found the lamp nestled in between the fairy lights and lava lamps, and with a few swipes of the credit card, I was a happy customer headed back to my room to give the lamp a go.
This is where I hit a wall. Connecting the lamp up to my iPhone was, quite possibly, one of the most frustrating technical moments of my life. Upon asking other sunset lamp owners about their struggles, I was quick to find that my experience was common.
The sunset lamp was a technological mystery.
This is where some ingenuity had to come in. I found my tech-whizz of a friend, Joe, and off to work we went. Within 10 minutes, the lamp was up and running, and boy oh boy was I excited.
Finally, I shone my sunset lamp upon my wall……and, wow, it was a sight to behold.
The perfect mood-setter when you want to kick back and relax.
The lamp truly captured the essence of a sunset – I was able to create any colour of the rainbow, make it flash and, even, make it sync up to the sound of my favourite tunes. The lamp was simultaneously a source of calm lighting and a tool to bringing the vibes to a personal in-house rave.
The sunset lamp loses points for its difficulty of set up but does gain points for the result. Our opinion, buy the lamp and do your future self a solid. Bring the beach to your bedroom.
The Sky-High mascara
Back in the day, if you wanted to get any make-up recommendations, you would dust off your laptop and search up James Charles profile on YouTube. Nowadays, TikTok’s chaos of cosmetics has influencers bringing up product after product that you need to add to your kit.
Maybelline could be considered the ‘Mamma of Mascaras,’ with their iconic pink-tube-green-top mascara marinating away in every single millennial make-up bag. When their Lash Sensational Sky-High Mascara hit the shelves, TikTok was overcame with the mascara mayhem. The pink tube promises to deliver full volume and limitless length. The Exclusive Flex Tower mascara aims to simultaneously volumize and extend each lash.
So, what did I do? Well, I simply had to try this mascara to see if my lashes really would get as sky-high as it seemed to suggest. I swiped a tube from the local chemist warehouse and hurried back to try it on.
The tube in all its glory…. little did I know this was about to rock my world.
Now, a mascara could be considered as unique as a fingerprint. Everyone wants their mascara to achieve different things. To make sure that I rated it as accurately as possible, I set a criteria to check it against.
The criteria included:
- Clumpiness – we do NOT want this, the more separated and fanned the lashes are, the better.
- Volume – we DO want this, the more drama and volume the better
- Length – we DO want this, gimme that long and luscious lash.
The before and after are below:
After one coat, my lashes were well separated and fanned, with a nice subtle amount of volume and a fantastic amount of length. At this point, I was fizzing with the thought of what it might look like with the addition of a second coat.
When the first had dried, it was time to shine.
The second coat saw the beginnings of some proper dramatic volume. The mascara still seemed to maintain the justice of a thick set of lashes without any sort of dry clumpiness aka ‘spider lashes’ (omg, even the thought of it sends proper shivers down my spine). I was flabbergasted.
Could this be my new holy grail mascara?
Throughout the course of the day, I wore the product to test the longevity. I was determined to find a flaw.
By the end of the day, my lashes were still long, luscious, and beautifully fanned out. The mascara truly had done wonders…. Run, don’t walk, you will not regret it.
Ice face rollers
For a second there on TikTok, I was being absolutely bombarded with an array of frozen tools. Ice rollers, jade rollers, gua sha’s and crystal sticks promise a snatched face and a defined jawline.
Again, I consulted BuzzFeed for benefits of this ice rolling phenomenon.
This includes de-puffing properties, reducing redness and swelling, tightening skin, soothing irritation, and lessening puffiness. Even experts are getting on the frosty trend, with dermatologists even endorsing the product. One dermatologist, Dr. Stacy Chimento, loves how the product “reduces muscle tension.” Another one mentions that “the cooling action constricts the blood vessels, which aids in achieving a fresher and brighter appearance.”
So, I was on the hunt for an ice roller and fast. Lucky for me, my friend and neighbour, Isla McKay, was the connoisseur of icy instruments. She not only did she have an ice roller, but she also had a gua sha. Well, well, I was ready to get my beauty influencer on.
Ready to rumble; Gua sha on the left and roller on the right.
I challenged myself to gua sha and ice roll for a week, using the communal hall fridge (which pretty much contained milk and old mouldy food), to keep my products nice and chilled.
The results…. well, I don’t really know. To be honest, a week of this arctic treatment was probably not enough to know whether these products were able to achieve the definition for which I was aiming. However, I can confirm that adding a roller to my routine made me feel bougee as fuck, so maybe it is just worth the purchase for how it makes you feel.
Screeds and screeds of products seem to flash up on our little phone screens each day. With TikTok’s new obsession with showing the latest and greatest, it can be easy to take any influencer’s opinion as gospel. However, after putting some of these viral products to the test, maybe some things are a little more glorified than they deserve to be.
So, will you splurge, or will you save? That is the real question.