Time’s a Wastin’
I’ve been writing about TikTok’s probable demise in the US in my head for about a month. I’ve written about TikTok in other places before and my feelings have only been strengthened over time.
This morning I woke up to a comment on a note I’d posted with a TikTok video, calling it “drivel for the short attention span generation.” The video is of a well dressed woman sliding off a rolling stool and falling flat on her back, spilling her coffee. While she is laying on the floor, Mary Oliver’s familiar voice speaks “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles…” The video shows her spilled coffee and then it ends. It is ten seconds of well edited, generously vulnerable art and it is hilarious. I think Mary Oliver herself would’ve enjoyed that video.
It’s easy to dismiss TikTok. I did for a long time. I thought that as a 40-something year old woman, I was too old for TikTok, that it was just full of lip-synching kids. I thought it wasn’t for me and that I didn’t need to waste my time.
I don’t know what prompted me to finally download it but I did and wow, I was wrong. TikTok is for everyone and while you could definitely waste time there, it’s a more enriching experience than doomscrolling X.
Most of my friends use TikTok. One my closest friends, has never downloaded the app. She is privacy minded and doesn’t want another app vying for her attention. I am an idiot who poured my heart out on livejournal and have been living my life on Instagram since it started. The online privacy ship sailed a long time ago, without me. This friend though, she loves TikTok videos. Almost every single morning for years, I’ve sent her a good morning text with a downloaded video from TikTok.
TikTok’s algorithm is what makes is so great. I get a lot of poetry videos, dog videos, cooking videos, leftist organizing videos and dance videos. That all makes sense. Every once in a while friends and I will discuss the weird parts of TikTok we’ve landed on. My housemate gets a lot of hoof cleaning videos. For a while, I was on Korean Grandmas doing chores TikTok and I have no idea how I ended up there but it was a nice place to be. We’ve all learned so much on TikTok. My FYP is also chock full of stories - family stories, dating stories, ghost stories, historical stories, political stories. So many stories.
It’s the storytelling I’ll miss the most.
That same friend gave me a pin once that read “Tell me a story and I’m yours.” I am an absolute sucker for a good story. That friend and I talk a lot about the stories I send her from TikTok. Months ago I told her that every time I open the app, I fall a little more in love with people, in general. Which during a time of deep unrest and multiple genocides, feels miraculous.
At the beginning of December, a video by “Brian the Motel Guy” appeared on my FYP. It was titled The Comeback Story. In it, Brian, the Motel Guy, prepares for a celebration at the motel he runs. He talks about a previous celebration at the motel, which he called the world’s saddest birthday. It was for a young woman who lived at the motel for a time. There are videos of her, thin and anxious, with a kind of sadness that anyone who has known anyone who has lived on the street will recognize. Then, she arrives for the new party. She looks healthy, has gifts for everyone and a baby in a stroller. She is happy, grateful and has been clean for over two years. I sobbed and then started sending it to everyone. I warned them they would cry. They all did. I’m honestly crying now just thinking about it.
I think a lot about a thing I think Glynn Washington from the Snap Judgement storytelling podcast has said - that it’s impossible to hate someone when you know their story, and how Maya Angelou said, “It’s very hard to hate someone when you look them in the eye and recognize them as a human being.”
TikTok allows us to look each other in the eye and recognize our shared humanity.
We know the US Government’s claims that privacy and national security are the reason for the TikTok ban. We know that Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL was quoted as saying “We have a TikTok problem,” because users of the app aren’t believing propaganda regarding Palestine any longer. We know AIPAC, as well as Meta, lobbied heavily for the ban. We know foreign entities have used Facebook and Twitter/X to spread misinformation. We know TikTok is a powerful tool for organizing and building community and tends to be left leaning. And we know a lot of people dismiss TikTok, the way that man in my comments did earlier. But it is the storytelling, the ability to connect with people from different backgrounds over the things we have in common, coupled with its community building and organizing capabilities, that feels truly dangerous. What can happen when we see each other as fully human, put aside the things that don’t matter because we share some fundamental truths, and work together? That’s the real magic of TikTok.