I have a skill issue when it comes to looking good.
Hair? Hopeless.
Fashion? Forget it.
Make-up? Put it this way: of all “The Onion” headlines I've laughed at, this is the one that speaks to me on a spiritual level:
So it’s a bit out of character, but my one induglence in beauty stuff is that I'm a bit of a skincare girlie.
It's less out of interest and more out of necessity. I have naturally difficult skin - acne, prone to redness and rashes, and reactive to harsh ingredients. Not bad enough that I've ever sought professional advice, just enough to annoy me. So the idea of fixing it has always been a dream of mine.
I went through a phase around 2022-2024 where I watched a bit of TikTok. Skincare content on that platform is the perfect storm of engagement: it taps into powerful appearance-based insecurities, offers lucrative product tie-ins, features attractive people showing off their faces, and invites oversharing in ways that feel both vulnerable and aspirational. Naturally, the algorithm started showing me skincare content. I started watching with mild curiosity and – surprise! – the algorithm fed me more.
Unlike the usual social media rabbit holes that leave you feeling worse about yourself, I was actually seeing sensible, evidence-based content. Dermatologists and beauty clinicians explaining ingredients. Practical, grounded advice.
The key here is that I wouldn't have sought out this information myself. It was just being fed to me, which made it accessible. Unless you go to a professional yourself, or are really dedicated, online research about skincare will leave you confused. There’s conflicting information out there. Some of it is crap, some of it is advertising, some of it is a matter of opinion or different personal experiences. But the bite sized, entertaining format of short-form video being spoon fed to me made it a much less frustrating way to gather information. I passively noticed patterns emerging around what worked, what was overrated and overpriced, and what was total snake oil.
The more I watched, the more I formed what felt like a consensus about the best approach for my particular needs. The algorithm, for once in its cursed existence, worked for someone. Being a 30-something librarian helped: I know how to sort good information from nonsense, I have a bit of wisdom, and I wasn’t about to blow my budget chasing miracle cures.
With Skintok's help, and a bit of trial and error, I developed a simple, low-cost routine based on the following principles:
- Using a basic, gentle cleanser. I wash my face in the shower, but turn down the temperature so it’s cool first. Unlike dishes, faces don’t clean better in hot water!
- Using a moisturiser. Even though I thought “pimples” meant “oily skin” and I thought “oily skin” meant “skip moisturiser”. Turns out I was wrong about everything! A big tub of QV (an Australian classic) turned out to be perfect for me. I tie it to the routine of brushing my teeth twice a day.
- Wearing sunscreen daily before leaving the house, and doing another application in the middle of the day. I found Zinc sunscreen to be the best for my skin. The only problem is it looks like white face paint. But I found a tinted version, so it’s more like flesh coloured face paint. This has the added bonus of smoothing out my complexion, it's literally makeup without wearing makeup.
- Differin for acne. I get it online, since it's prescription only in Australia (don't tell the pharmacy cops).
- Pimple patches for the occasional zit emergencies.
- Luxury product: A nice serum that has a few serious ingredients like vitamin C and niacinamide that keep my skin in good condition. I tried to be minimalist and drop this step at one point, but found out it really makes a difference, so it’s worth it. I get it from the supermarket (but only when it's 50% off, which is thankfully often. Very bougie of me)
But here's where it gets complicated. Staring at myself more intently in the mirror during the twice-daily routine made me hyper-aware of a bright red mole on my nose that had been there for 10 years but was kind of camouflaged with my other spots when my skin was bad. Once my skin improved, the mole became the one thing my eyes went straight to. Benign, but now glaringly obvious. It was always annoying to me: visible in any photo, even from a moderate distance, and impossible to cover with concealer. My toddler even included it when he drew a picture of me. Adorable, but a sign of how prominent it was on my face. After mulling it over for about a year, I spent a couple hundred dollars having it removed. A decision that felt simultaneously empowering and concerning. Was this self-care or vanity? I couldn't believe I'd become someone who seeks medical intervention for purely aesthetic reasons. Finally getting rid of that mole was a one-off fix, not an ongoing commitment to chasing perfection, which I think is a key point. There's still a small, barely noticeable, pink remnant of it, which is fine, because it's still a vast improvement, and real life isn't photoshop.
Even though I'm glad I did it, there's something that makes me uncomfortable. Even though I always wanted to, would I have taken the plunge if I hadn't been on the Skintok train? Did my social media consumption embolden me to do it, with its subtle normalisation of cosmetic procedures? The answer is: Maybe!
Because here's the thing about skincare content: it exists on the same predatroy slippery slope as everything else on social media. Start with evidence-based dermatology, end up watching "preventative Botox" videos. The pipeline is real, and it's designed to keep you moving toward increasingly expensive and invasive interventions, especially ones that require ongoing maintenance. A key theme on Skintok is anti-aging content, which is frankly disturbing given the target audience is on average much younger than me, and I think even I’m too young, at 36, to be worried about that right now.
With my current skincare routine, I look and feel better than I used to. Looking at photos from a couple of years ago, I can't believe I was walking around like that – it felt normal at the time, but the difference is striking. People might not say anything to your face about bad skin, but I suspect I'm making better impressions now. My skin still isn't perfect, but breakouts are less frequent, less severe, and heal faster. My skin is soothed and soft instead of flaring up with red, rough patches at the drop of a hat.
There's a balance everyone needs to strike between looking your best through healthy habits (good) and falling prey to the beauty industry's toxic thinking that keeps you insecure so you buy more stuff (bad). I had realistic goals, found a routine that works, and stuck with it, rather than allowing my goalposts to be shifted by a desire for endless optimisation that a lot of people can get caught up in.
I feel like a rare case where the algorithm actually worked for me, even though it sits on the edge of something more sinister. Tellingly, once my routine was established, I lost interest in skincare content, and the algorithm seemed to detect I was no longer a potential customer – Skintok disappeared from my feed entirely. It gave me just enough information to fix what was fixable, and then let me go before I got upsold into oblivion. I exited early out of a pipeline that starts with “fix your acne” and leads to “get a facelift”. I came away with clearer skin, one less mole, and a healthy dose of skepticism toward anything that promises eternal youth in a bottle. Aging doesn’t scare me - I was born to be an old lady. I welcome it. Though knowing me, I’ll still be the retiree with a rogue pimple on her chin.
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I know I should know better than to let algorithms curate my information diet. But skincare TikTok got me anyway. Reflecting on the experience.
— Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Metadata, Lattes & Impostor Syndrome) (@hannahshelley.bsky.social) August 29, 2025 at 12:46 PM
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Image credit: Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy AI4Media / Data is a Mirror of Us / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0