Why I'm a bad friend for cheering on the TikTok ban
"great busts (side-eye emoji)"
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SHOWS:
Secret Show Mid City. Weds March 20th
Glazer’s After Party @ Comedy Store Belly Room (LA). March 28th.
Bergamot Comedy Festival (LA). Tuesday April 2nd + Thursday April 4th
Comedy Loft (DC). May 28th. featuring for the great Sam Salem.
Hellooo Sternal Journalists,
I’m going to admit it. Though I don’t think this is fair or even right, I’ve always felt that someone who gets famous on social media is ~getting away with something~.
I know where this comes from. It comes directly from Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton and the other great busts (side-eye emoji) on the Mt. Rushmore of “famous for being famous.”
Or should I say it comes from the, ya know, societal reaction to them. Of course were not just famous for being famous. They were famous for being hot and pliable and charismatic and going there, wherever there is or was.
And I’m not saying all people who get famous on TikTok are just today’s versions of Kim and Paris et al. Some of them are! But not all of them (although close to all of them are charismatic and a lot of them are hot and pretty much all of them are pliable in terms of letting the algorithm become a creative collaborator for their success)!
Nor am I saying the earliest reality stars or celebutantes deserved to be dismissed.
I’m just saying that we were taught to and/or collectively decided to be dismissive towards them. And that, for whatever reason, the attitude my brain was taught to have towards them is the same attitude I have towards people who get famous on social media.
So that’s why I think I have always seen the TikTok famous person as a person who has pulled one over on us, caught a lucky break, or been given a big sack of house money to play with.
I bring this all up to say that my initial reaction to any news about TikTok dying is “good riddance!” A sense that the people who built following there had a good run and it kinda sucks, but you got lucky for a while and now your luck’s run out.
And I bring that up to say that I’m sorry. That is a shitty reaction to have. It is two kinds of shitty:
(1) it is unempathetic shitty and if we’re being totally honest, it’s quite petty. I have friends, MULTIPLE VERY GOOD FRIENDS, who make significant career moves if not significant career money off the strength of their TikTok presence.
These are talented people who work hard at their craft and also work hard to market it. If they got away with anything, it was a business plan.
(2) it’s counterproductive shitty! I am a person who has made a lot of my identity all about how gatekeepers suck and everyone should be allowed to distribute whatever they want to artistically. TikTok has many problems in my opinion, but it also is one of the greatest ways to get your creative work in front of millions of people who have never heard of you. To cheer for its demise is to cheer for a significantly more closed network of how and to whom we can disseminate our ideas.
All that’s to say: I still have this inherent bias about people with big followings that they should feel fucking lucky that they have it, and if they lose it, they should suck it up and get back to grinding like the rest of us. But I am trying to unlearn that bias.
Losing a following that one has spent many many man-hours and probably a significant amount of money is not digital karma coming to get revenge on someone who had too easy a go of it. It’s a loss of a small business (with this in mind, my Instagram account is one of the most failing small media businesses of all time! Take that, QuiBi!). For a lot of people, it could be a loss of purpose and/or direction.
So! Does this mean I’m against the current legislation that could force a sale of TikTok or effectively ban it in the United States? No! I’ve heard some pretty compelling arguments (see recommendations!) that make me hopeful that some solution will be found.
But I’ve caught myself recently rooting a little too hard for this chaotic demise, and if I know my Sternal Journalists like I think I do, some of you have probably been doing the same. So I thought I’d let ya in on my little reframing thought process in case it was helpful or interesting to you!
Recommendations
Hard Fork: TikTok Ban, Royal Photoshop, Your Car is Snitching. Podcast. I recommend them a lot, but this week’s episode did a great job of covering the TikTok ban as well as the Kate Middleton drama that I knew nothing about. And I found it an especially funny episode.
Powerful Women. Song. The fact that Dolly Parton is the feature and Pitbull is the main artist on this International Women's Day song should not be enough to deter you from listening. It shouldn’t exist, but it’s a hoot and they both do everything they do best.
The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth Goes On. Article. My new favorite type of New Yorker article is where one of their writers tries to review a kinda down-the-middle wannabe prestige television show and winds up dunking on it repeatedly by bringing in a ton of comp lit and probably better prose than exists in a single line of the show. That is what Jill Lepore did here with a John Wilkes Booth show that is apparently on AppleTV+.
Keeping Track of Your Travel Toiletries by taking a picture and just adding a crude caption. Lifehack. I’m traveling this weekend and I always dump my liquids into 2 ounce bottles and then forget which is which. But no longer! Because now I have 4 different pictures like this one in my camera roll:
Alrighty, that’s all! I’ll leave you with a little story. This week, I was in an Uber. My driver presented as gruff and Eastern European. A couple blocks into the journey, a pedestrian stepped in front of his car without looking any way, let alone both. I was BRACING myself for him to go gruff Eastern European Uber driver on the pedestrian, and in his own way, I guess he did. He warmly waved the pedestrian to cross the street, said, “No worries,” and turned around to me and said, “You must have love and respect for everyone. That is the only way.”
Have a loving and respectful week!
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos (Update: I have gained some paid subscribers since originally writing this bumper and I don’t think it’s had a meaningful impact on typos. Workin’ on it!)
You must have love and respect for *YOUR BROTHERS BY DELIBERATE CHOICE