"Hightide" is a short, atmospheric music video piece for the song "BETTY," crafted around the theme of friendships and the small, often overlooked elements that shape them—what goes in to make relationships feel alive: shared rituals, unspoken support, private jokes, and everyday choices. The film blends lyrical imagery, candid moments, and a nonlinear narrative to explore how friendship survives distance, change, and the tides of life.
The three friends in the video are not named characters but archetypes: -Hightide-Video- BETTY- FRIENDS - WHAT GOES IN ...
This triad mirrors the internal voices of any friend group: the sentimentalist, the minimalist, and the observer. "Hightide" is a short, atmospheric music video piece
In the summer of 2023, a grainy, sun-bleached video surfaced on TikTok and Vimeo. Titled simply Hightide, it was attributed to an anonymous creator named “BETTY.” Within weeks, the phrase “What goes in…” became a cryptic caption on millions of posts. But what is the Hightide video? Who is BETTY? And why are her “friends” central to a modern parable about consumption, loyalty, and the tides of consequence? This triad mirrors the internal voices of any
This article dives deep into the Hightide video phenomenon, unpacking the BETTY collective’s artistic statement, the role of friendship as a narrative device, and the haunting question posed by the film: What goes into the hightide… comes back to shore.
The phrase “What goes in” is deliberately ambiguous. In the Hightide video, it operates on three levels:
BETTY’s voiceover (spoken only in the last 90 seconds) states: “What goes into your friends when they are not looking—your envy, your borrowed joy, your unspoken debt—that is the hightide.” In other words, the video is a cautionary tale about emotional pollution. Just as microplastics enter the food chain, unprocessed feelings circulate within a friend group.