I recently noticed that I have changed some of my leisure time-wasting. For the first time since Christmas, I started playing videogames again. Basically, I replayed the campaign of the long-awaited Halo Infinite. I put it on easy mode, so as not to waste too much time. I’d say that over the course of three weekends, I only died a half-dozen times. Also I seem to have changed over my Reddit browsing to a few new subjects. I no longer find car wreck fails compelling, especially now that I have my dashcam. Now it’s all r/SweatyPalms. Every once in a while about 5-10% of the videos end up being sourced from TikTok. I have also noticed that r/therewasanattempt is now steeped in anti-Israel propaganda. I can’t say if a greater fraction of that is TikTok, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Since I tend to have my head more often in strategic places than the average bear, I am aware of the identification of TikTok as a particular national security threat, owned as it is by the CCP. I’m not going to split hairs about the operations of companies licensed to do business in China and matters of state capitalism. Whomever wants to buy TikTok at a premium should be welcome to do so. Whichever country wishes to ban TikTok should be welcome to do so. The reason is simple. Sovereign nations are sovereign and free markets are free. In the course of human events, laws are passed and corporate takeovers happen.
What I’ve heard about TikTok to its obvious detriment is that it circumvents the security of mobile devices and leaves daemons running in the background slurping up data even when the program itself is not running. I don’t run such apps on first principle, and I expect Apple to keep its app store clean of such piracy. Secondarily, I’m hip to the rumor that the Chinese, ever engineering its population, sends its population edifying content, but publishes uniquely insipid foolishness to other countries. Social media of all sorts pushes content selectively - that’s why it works. There’s a robot Simon Cowell behind all of these platforms; such bots insure their success. What’s viral is planned. Just like what hits are on the radio and what subjects Jon Stewart is compelled to blather about.
The first strike against TikTok is sufficient. We suffer no debilitation of free speech by a market shakeup of social media carriers. WhatsApp can pick up the slack. Facebook wouldn’t even hiccough on the extra traffic. I don’t know if you’ve paid attention recently but Amazon and Apple make movies and TV series. Good ones. We still call it Hollywood even though it’s not. When Sony bought Columbia Pictures, we survived. Few of us think of the change now. The woman who posed for the updated logo has been long forgotten, if she was ever known.
AltaVista used to be. Sun Microsystems used to be. Silicon Graphics used to be. The Herald Examiner used to be. We live in fungible times. Yet we should keep in mind that the rivalry between the Eagle, the Bear and the Dragon are no simple dramas. These are great powers and their conflicts are paid in blood. This is something that is not easy to face or simple to negotiate, but losing TikTok should not cause us to lose any sleep.
Go ahead and delete it from your phone, and chalk on up for you against wasting time.