Pimples, Horse Hooves, Hazel,& Sheep Shearing 

Darla McCorkle/Columnist

My algorithm is at a sweet spot right now. For a hot minute it was not the relaxing relief of fun reels I needed it to be, because the nation was on fire. As we all know, all it takes is a few news videos and all your reels are doom and gloom for the next month, with the occasional cooking video. 

Back before TikTok and Facebook reels I would watch pimple popping videos. Shut up! Don’t you dare judge me! Not only did I watch pimple popping humans, I eventually branched out to pimple popping grooming videos and even spent a brief period on the jigger removal medical videos. The systematic removal of anything was my guilty pleasure and didn’t stimulate me in anyway. I didn’t have to think I just had to watch the mind numbing systematic progress. 

Then, TikTok and Reels came on the scene and I’ve discovered a great many things about myself. Look, I know we all watch the chocolate maker guy that makes Amazon boxes out of chocolate, the cooking videos from My Barefoot Neighbor, and of course, the dogs that were good again this week, Top 5 from Tell Your Dog I Said Hi. All of us watching is how they have managed to quit their day jobs and hire editing teams. 

What I’m talking about are the ones that get pitched to you and you click that creator’s page and you proceed to watch every video they have. Make-up girls will understand this. If you watch just two make-up videos, by the end of a four day weekend you’ll know every make-up influencer. Only I’m not into make-up so while they may have 10 billion followers and release two videos a day I don’t know it because that’s not my cup of tea. 

But I just can’t get enough of are creators I’ll watch all their videos every time, even if I’ve seen it before. If your algorithm hasn’t pitched them to you, allow me to light your path to what I like to call, “Did I really just watch two hours of that?” You could’ve watched a movie, but instead you’re watching Nate the Hoof Guy clean the hooves of milk cows. You could finish a book, but instead you watch a lesbian couple from Right Choice Shearing shear all kinds of sheep and llamas. You could actually cook, but instead you watched Dead Greg’s videos where he cooks recipes from his roommate’s dead alcoholic uncle Greg. You could go feed your kid, but instead you give them McDonald’s while watching NomNom Tiana of Little Tiana, an Asian toddler, eat her lunch/dinner. The amount of food and the things she eats is incredible, not to mention her cute hair bows. You could go walk your dog, but instead watch every video of Tommy Gauthier from Quebec as he trains his adopted Malinois, Jackson. Jackson is still a puppy and often will snatch sticks out of the fire pit and run off or misjudges his leaps and destroys whatever Tommy is working on. You could do your own laundry, but instead you know every trick Bill at Yale Cleaners is going to use to restore that 1920s wedding dress Margie mailed into him after a leak in the attic stained it. You could fix that squeaky door, but instead you watch Jenna Phipps take an abandoned ocean view home down to studs and rebuild it. Footage of the failed inspections and fines can be found on YouTube.  

But the big one that had me rechecking every hour or so all last week was our very own local, Darcy Smith. Well not so much Darcy, but her beautiful brown cow named Hazel. Hazel’s belly sways like she is trying to catch a man. Her eyelashes are on point. And she is an escape artist. I couldn’t stop rooting for her being able to go visitin’ while poor Darcy tried to find every point of escape on the property. 

Like I said, my algorithm is bringing me so much joy right now. #gohazel