So I’m sure someone out there is going to tell me to watch Sabrina Wallace, and yes, I know who Sabrina Wallace is. But hear me out for a moment.
A couple of days ago, my big white pit terrier jumped up on me in the morning and woke me up on a Saturday. Pit terriers have a tendency to be in your face with absolutely no concern for your personal space. Anyway, I was giving her a good dose of love and petting her head, especially behind her ears where she seems to like it.
And I had this very specific thought: I wonder if she actually likes this, or if she just lets me do it because she likes the attention? Am I actually annoying her by petting her ears?
It was a very specific thought at a very specific moment.
Within seconds she jumped down, and I thought, well, it’s Saturday morning, so let’s doom scroll a little. I opened TikTok.
The very first video — and I mean the VERY FIRST VIDEO — was a pit terrier that looked somewhat like mine, with a guy explaining how pit terriers like having their ears petted and how you should do it to help calm them down.
I even did a screenshot because of my shock..
Now, I never vocalized any of this. I didn’t search anything. And I don’t remember ever specifically wondering about petting her ears before that exact moment.
So there are two ways to look at this.
On one hand, it could obviously be coincidence combined with an algorithm that already knows way too much about me. My phone probably knows I have a pit terrier because I’ve searched for them before, watched dog videos, taken pictures, whatever. And if that exact video had appeared on some random Tuesday while I was sitting alone on the couch, I probably would have scrolled right past it without giving it a second thought.
The only reason it meant anything to me was because I had literally just been sitting there petting my dog’s ears and wondering whether she liked it.
Or…
Someone will say Sabrina Wallace is right, we have some bizarre connection going on, wavelengths are bouncing around in our brains, our devices are picking up more than we understand, and TikTok just read my damn mind.
I’m not saying that’s what happened.
I’m saying it was weird.
And I think almost all of us have a story like this. Probably more than one.
This is just the most recent one for me.
