I’m what they call a late-adopter. I remember learning once that new technologies spread through the market in an “s-curve”, with a slow rate of early adopters, then a boom when it hits mainstream, and finally a drip-feed of the unaware, hesitant, and cynical. I’d say I’m a little of all three. In the summer of 2024 I found myself with a lot of free time and not much to do. My prospective long-term girlfriend had become markedly less prospective, and I had finished enough automated analysis pipelines that my work pretty much did itself. So, I was bored, and decided to check out TikTok.

At first the short-video platform was overwhelming and overstimulating, but soon enough the mysterious forces of the algorithm decided that I would prefer low-key content about my local area, wildlife, and fun facts. An aside, I must say as someone who works with machine learning in some capacity, “mysterious” and “decides” should not be taken literally, and are used for poetic flourish only. Anyway, one day I found myself browsing on a sunny afternoon in July, when I came across the user “Manitobolio”. Their debut (to me) was a long walk along a winding creek in the city where I lived. Past old neighbourhoods, warehouses, and the train tracks. They spoke only a mild commentary on the surroundings in a soft, almost childlike, voice. “Look, the water is smooth here.” or “Wow, did you hear that bird?” It was indelibly relaxing, and a fantastic first impression.

This was a great discovery, and it made me ask why I took so long to download the video-sharing platform in the first place. The days went by languorously as I watched the clouds float past on the little rectangle of sky I could see from my apartment window. In the evenings I enjoyed sharing a serene walk with Manitobolio, choosing to re-watch their previous videos on the days they didn’t post. In August, a big client asked our group to make an analysis suite for his data, so I got busy again. When things settled down, it was already midway through October.

In the winter, with grey skies and frost occupying my window, I found myself bored again. It was too cold to walk, and browsing my phone took an increasing sum of my time. Then I remembered Manitobolio, and felt a surge of excitement. Like reconnecting with an old friend, I thought. My heart sank when I went to their page, and saw they hadn’t uploaded since August first. There was only one video that I hadn’t seen, so I clicked with bated breath, anticipating some grand or tragic news to explain their disappearance. Instead, it was much the same. Yet, as I watched more of this final entry, it became clear that something was different. The same trail, once wondrous and filled with life, was now drab, surrounded by thick silence under the cover of mosquitoes in that stifling summer heat. The same commentary, once imbued with childlike innocence and tranquility, now sounded trite and pandering. I checked the comments looking for some kind of explanation, or maybe just another user who noticed the change, but like the previous videos, none of those twenty or so viewers had bothered to comment.

Feeling irritable, I decided to go for a walk. With layers, the cold wasn’t so bad. I began to wonder what had happened to Manitobolio? The magic was gone, and it coincided with their last post. They had left such a good first impression, and such a sour final. I figured something must have happened, something in the life of the person behind Manitobolio. I resolved to find out. At that moment I realized I had been too deep in thought, and had walked myself in a strange part of town. I pulled out my phone to check the directions and saw that the fastest way home would be to cut through a wooded area. So I set off.

The light of distant streetlamps cast an eerie glow, setting the forest and snow-covered ground in black and white. There was a footpath, trodden by a handful of people before me, and I followed it. As I made my way along the path, I began to notice it curve back and forth. Squinting in the dim light, I saw there was a frozen river some meters to my left, and the path seemed to trace it’s curves. I passed a group of warehouses, my map showed me this was the exit. Then I walked up a set of wooden stairs, through an opening in the chain-link fence, and across a set of train-tracks. This put me on a familiar street. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized that was the same path Manitibolio had been following.

I stayed up all night, watching and re-watching Manitobolio videos. I noticed the strange feeling was present in some of their older videos too, and so I made a spreadsheet to track which posts had the strangeness, and which did not. By the time I woke up, the sun was already beginning to set. I looked at my laptop, left haphazardly on my bed beside me, and saw that my spreadsheet was completed. The first three columns contained the post title (always “walk in the woods”), the date, and the location (that river path). The final column, isWeird, was filled entirely with True. Blearily, I reached for my phone and saw it was out of battery. When I plugged it in, work emails came flooding into my inbox.

By the time I had responded to all the emails, it was nearly 1:00 am. I made myself “dinner” and sat down at the table with my phone now fully charged. I reflexively opened TikTok and searched for Manitobolio. There were no results. I put my phone down, locking it, and had a couple bites of dinner. When I unlocked it again, I opened TikTok and searched for Manitobolio. There were no results. I blinked rapidly and tried searching again, no dice. Just like that, it was gone. I knew the person behind Manitobolio had a a full human experience with stories and complications, and I knew their account was merely an image, a shallow representation of that deeper complex existence. Yet, somehow, I felt a strange sense of loss, even though I’m not sure exactly what it was for, or even if I had lost anything at all.

With the energy of dinner and a few hours of wakefulness left, I decided to go for a walk and think. Maybe it was unfair of me to feel loss over Manitobolio. I didn’t actually know who they were, and they didn’t owe me anything. They just put an image of themselves online for people to see, and one day they removed it. Would I fault a painter for destroying their own painting? Or a musician for deleting their recording? It’s hard to say, since all the paintings and music I knew was, well, finished. Released for the public to make copies of. Images of images. That gave me an idea, so I pulled out my phone and scrolled through TikTok. There weren’t any re-uploads. I checked YouTube and Googled Manitobolio, but, nothing.

Why did I feel so attached to this image of a person anyway? Really, it was nothing more than a first impression. The kind of congeniality you might show to a stranger. No... it was more than that. Maybe to a new friend you might say “hey, let’s walk together for a while”, but as I thought about it, I realized that you would certainly ask questions to the new friend. You would try and get to know them better. A close friend? Sibling? Parent? Lover? Who could be intimate enough to simply walk in silence, enjoying the presence of nature. Who could you call upon for that feeling at any time, in any mental state? Perhaps, in a way, the stranger is the most intimate of connections.

But then I thought, no, that can’t be right. A stranger could turn out to know your co-workers and gossip about you, or they could rob you, or worse. At the very least they have a physical presence, a body which needs space, space which needs acknowledging. No, the unknown of a stranger might invite a deeper comfort sometimes, but it also necessitates a deeper caution. Online strangers though... Well, they don’t need physical space, but they could leave abusive comments. They could track down your real-life information and dox you. They could copy your work and make so many sham imitations that the real is drowned out in the noise.

Then I thought of the viewers of Manitobolio. Those silent watchers who never spoke, never objected. Those invisible strangers who took up no presence at all, yet continued to watch. I thought of myself, and how I had spent all this time thinking about Manitobolio. So how was I different than one of those silent strangers? I had not left any comments. I had not tracked down this person and appeared in their life. I had not done a single thing, good nor evil toward this strange account, this image of a person. I had no way to impress upon them, whether I worried about their absence and made spreadsheets of their posts, or whether I viewed one video and continued swiping along, they would never know the difference. I was a single digit in a sea of digits, a snowflake in the snow. Yet, they impressed upon me. Something about this account, this pale image of a human soul had affected me, and I had no clear way of expressing how, never-mind why.

So, standing there in the cold, in the middle of the night, with my hands starting to hurt, I clicked on my own account page on TikTok. It was blank. I stared into the reflection of nonexistence behind the glowing rectangle. Then, not knowing why, and still not quite understanding it now, I clicked “record” and began to walk. “It’s cold” I said, “the snow crunches under my feet”, and “look at the snowflakes under that street lamp.” When I reached the train-tracks, I pressed “post”.

You might not believe me when I say this, but it was only a short time later that I vanished completely.