It started, of course, with Donald Trump, as so many bad things are wont to do in this current age. There was a bill or an order or a something or another in 2020 that said hey, Tiktok? We should bin it.
And then somehow, with the kind of alacrity that they can’t seem to muster for literally anything else, the Democrats went full bore on this insipid idea once Biden was in office, and promptly took it from the whim of a thoughtless man to a signed bill that even the Supreme Court declined to rebuff. There’s more to it, obviously. Threats of data collection and foreign spying and ~~~NaTiOnAl sEcUrItY~~~ but the brass tacks are quite simple.
It was being banned, then it wasn’t, then it definitely was, but it was just gonna be a slow decline but then it was gonna happen all at once? Then on Saturday, January 18th, around 10:30pm EST, I watched as several live-streams waiting for the end blinked out of existence as if Thanos himself had snapped his fingers somewhere inside TikTok HQ. TikTok was gone gone, so sorry. Except wait, what’s this? Twenty minutes later dear President Trump (remember him? The one who started this bullshit?) was on the case!
And then like magic, not even a full twenty-four hours later, TikTok was back like nothing fucking happened.
Except of course, everything is different.
I told my roommate, after things went dark on Saturday, that the app would either be live once more by Friday latest or we would never see it again. TikTok isn’t just an app— it’s a tool. And not just for us peons using it to inform and organize. TikTok is both the bread and the circus Roman poet Juvenal was talking about when he coined the term all those empires ago. The idea that we would enter a new Trump presidency without the pacifier of an endless algorithm felt not only terrifying but highly improbable. It is perhaps the biggest distraction aid in Trump’s arsenal, already highly attuned to serve the masses what they want when they want it. And while it has proven to be invaluable when it comes to shedding light on stories and histories that would otherwise fly under the radar, it is also one of the greatest disseminators of misinformation that currently exists; idiots parading themselves as experts, liars, frauds, and the several handfuls of congress members with still active accounts all serve as a backdrop and an ever louder cacophony.
I know I can’t be the only one who feels oil-slicked and sticky. TikTok might be back (and I mean this in the loosest terms. The ban has been signed into law and upheld as constitutional. All Trump can do at this current moment is delay the inevitable. It’ll be interesting to see if he bothers to untangle this mess or if he’ll just keep kicking the can down the road until Zuckerberg and Meta prevail in canabilizing the app for good) but it is so over. Just scrolling now makes me feel dirty, watched and reported on. Something very sinister went down in the Room Where it Happens.
And he hasn’t even been in office a full day.
I spent this morning reading the Executive Orders that Trump signed after his inaguration and well… it’s about as bad as we all knew it would be. Federal DEI initiatives wiped away, legal protections for asylum seekers slashed, America officially no longer apart of the World Health Organization or the Paris Agreement. Trump wasted no time lighting out matchbox government on fire.
I’ve never been more tired.
Take care of yourselves friends.
xx,
april
“Oil slicked and sticky” is correct!!