Why I Sat Through an Hour Watching 100 TikToks in a Movie Theater

One hour, 100 TikToks, one big screen.

That’s how I spent my lunch break on Wednesday.

Max Zavidow, a New York-based content creator with 1.4 million TikTok followers, booked the historic Cherry Lane Theatre to screen more than 300 of his TikToks. Perched in the front row with a camera livestreaming his reactions, Zavidow watched (almost) every single video he’s made in the past five years flash before his eyes.

He cringed, laughed, and reflected on his career.

Max Zavidow

“It is hard to watch your old work,” he told me. The screening was, in part, a parody of Shia LaBeouf’s “#ALLMYMOVIES,” in which the actor livestreamed himself for 72 hours watching his films in 2015.

Zavidow, who started posting TikToks at the end of 2021, wanted the screening to “paint a complete picture” of what it means to have a career as a content creator and “evolve on the internet.”

“I wanted people to feel the agony of me having to look back,” he said.

The whole ordeal took four hours. I stayed for one. Meanwhile, TikTokers and creator-economy peers popped in and out of the dark theater. The event was free and invitation-only, done in partnership with the theater, which is owned by A24, and produced by Love Letter.

“I had six days to pull it together,” Zavidow said.

Michelle Paradis

My viewing experience may not have been as groundbreaking as sitting through Nathan Fielder’s “You Can See Everything.” Still, I walked out of the theater with more thoughts about TikTok, entertainment, and the creator’s career arc.

Here are three lingering takeaways.

1. TikTok and Instagram on the TV may not be a bad idea after all

I’ll be honest, I’ve been skeptical about social media coming to TV. That’s partly because I don’t use a TV to watch TV. I usually watch HBO and Netflix on my iPhone.

Watching Zavidow’s TikToks on the screen, however, was great. Who would have thought watching TikToks while sitting at a 90-degree angle would be pleasant?

Michelle Paradis

“Getting it on a big screen was a way to say, ‘I take this really seriously, and you guys are saying that the big screen is serious. Great. Let’s put our TikToks on the big screen,'” Zavidow told me.

There was an added cinematic effect to watching videos one would usually watch alone with headphones, on a big screen in the company of dozens of other people.

2. Doing the same thing again and again — sometimes — pays off

Zavidow’s 316 TikToks were split up into chapters, starting with “See What Sticks.” Then, there was the era of “Walk and Talk,” “Still Talking, Less Walking,” a brief moment of shanties and comedic rhymes, and eventually, “Really Short Films,” where Zavidow zeroed in on more narrative fiction.

Michelle Paradis

At certain points, we watched pretty much the same video slightly tweaked. A new angle, a different setup for the joke.

“It was so hard to watch all my old videos and be like, ‘Oh my God, dude, another one?'” he told me.

Making it as a creator requires testing out formula after formula.

“At a certain point I found something that worked,” Zavidow said. “So I did that for a while.”

3. I love screen time — it’s the ads and distractions that give me dread

When I walked out of the theater to a sunny corner in the West Village, I felt … at ease.

Sitting through an hour of uninterrupted short clips designed to make me laugh felt almost as satisfying as a nasal rinse.

There were no ads. No buttons to press. No comments to read. No need to move my thumbs.

My mind was still — empty. Peak brain rot. Maybe that’s OK.