Lots of people ring in the new year with resolutions. Whether it be eating healthier, going to the gym more or reorganizing their living space, people are always finding new ways to reinvent themselves for the new year. My resolution? Collecting a button each day. What will I do with those buttons? Only I know and I don’t really feel like telling you.
That was the exact interaction TikTok user @flylikeadove, better known as Tamara, had in a TikTok comment section under a post discussing New Year’s resolutions. She shared her plan in the comments to collect 365 buttons over the year, one for each day. She claimed the collection buttons would allow her to “be more conscious of time passing.”
When users, rightfully, asked what she would be doing with these buttons or what the purpose of these buttons was, she simply answered, “hey so it only has to make sense to me and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else.”
The interaction received so much attention that it quickly gained traction on TikTok. Suddenly, the simple interaction about collecting buttons was being joked about and talked about by creators everywhere. The app was filled with people parodying her responses and adding new theories of what she could be using these buttons for. Even with all this attention she remained firm in her stance not to explain the button resolution as the internet continued to search for an explanation.
Despite the post quickly becoming a meme amongst online users, it raised an important question: When sharing ourselves online do we open ourselves up to scrutiny and how much do we have to share because of that scrutiny?
Many of us have grown up with the internet and we have seen how the internet has expanded for people to share their lives with the entire world. In 2025 alone, it was shown that 73.2% of the world population uses the internet. It has created a new living space for someone to exist outside of our own reality.
As the internet population grows larger, those who actively share themselves online open themselves up to anyone interacting with them. And when anyone can interact with you, you open yourself up to negativity and scrutiny as well.
Even if you’re just in the comment section of another user’s post, like Tamara, you are making yourself known on the internet even if it’s just through a few words. Having any account online is your personhood on the internet. The smallest comment still has a chance to be seen by the whole world.
That’s exactly what this user did. She commented and shared a part of herself through a simple New Year’s resolution. Even if she had no intention of sharing her reasoning behind her comment, she still opened the floor for people to comment on it.
And that brings us to the next part of the debate: Did Tamara have to explain her reasoning for her button collection? In reality, no.
Despite sharing her resolution with the world, she has every right not to explain it to others. Sure, it would’ve probably gotten users off her back, but she should not be pushed to share more when she made her boundary clear.
Some could argue that when she made her first comment, she should’ve expected people to question her. However, it was a sense of whether she felt comfortable sharing her explanation with others. Based on her response, clearly, she did not.
It’s an unfortunate truth of the internet that when you share any portion of your life online, your audience will expect to see every portion of your life. But that should not be an expectation. Every person has the right to privacy, offline and online.
This has been a particular problem for a lot of influencers and creators who have built their entire livelihood on the internet. Their audience expects them to share everything and anything that may go on in their lives. The moment they decide to keep something private, they face backlash from the audience that believes every portion of their life should be in front of a camera.
For those who are in the spotlight online, it comes with the risk of your audience not understanding those boundaries through their very parasocial relationship with the influencer. It often leads to harassment and stalking in real life.
If they decide they are uncomfortable with sharing a specific portion of their life with others, then that’s that. They are the ones who have the discretion of what they share and what they do not share with the world, not other users.
In the end, do I understand what Tamara’s button resolution meant? Absolutely not. But I do understand her reluctance not to share further, even when she was being pressed to do so.
Ultimately, whether Tamara fills a jar, sews it onto a vest or just stares at it, she’s right — it only has to make sense to her.
In an online landscape obsessed with sharing everything with everyone, perhaps the most radical thing you can do is refuse to explain yourself even when the masses demand it.
