It was like a party at the end of the world. Before TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, pulled the plug on the app last night—getting ahead of the official ban in the United States, which took effect today—the app’s most devoted users were going overboard. I watched someone with their hand up a Kermit puppet having (or maybe just performing) an emotional breakdown over the app’s impending demise, the frog’s mouth gaping toward the ceiling on livestream. Duke Depp, who first went viral on the app for doing a striptease to Akon’s “I Wanna Love You” while dressed as Willy Wonka, gyrated on the floor to “WAP.” Earlier this week, Meredith Duxbury, Lexi Hidalgo, and other high-profile creators revealed that some of their most successful content had been built on half-truths—one actually didn’t use as much makeup as advertised; another had actually done only half the workouts they’d talked about on their channel. You’re mad about it? Nothing you can do now! TikTok’s over.
Or at least, it was for a second. President-Elect Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account that he’ll sign an executive order after he’s inaugurated tomorrow to help bring TikTok back online. TikTok said today that it is “in the process of restoring service” already.
Still, assuming it does actually come back for good—Trump’s plan is far from a sure thing in the long run—TikTok may never be the same after this. Social media is a delicate thing; too much downtime means users can divert their attention elsewhere, and too many attempts to curate the culture can destroy its magic altogether. Last night, I took in as much of it as I could before the shutdown. What would it look like when the internet’s brain-rottiest app died—when all of the app’s users knew well in advance that the thing was on its way out? For nearly six hours, I mainlined TikTok’s feeds. It was like Cabaret through the kaleidoscope of the infinite scroll.
Many users held a funeral of sorts, dancing in all black. The Next Level Chef breakout TikTok star Tini made her viral mac and cheese for the occasion. Fancam editors posted smash-cut compilations of highlights from the app’s near-decade run. People shared the creators they would miss the most, the people they wanted to thank for being part of their TikTok journey. Adam Ray Okay, a TikTok star known for his disheveled and brash character, Rosa, dressed up as her one last time, complete with stripes of bronzer and misplaced false lashes, to say goodbye to the app.
The app slowly began to lose functions throughout the evening: Comments froze and the refresh button lagged. Posting videos became difficult. Nervously, I exited the app and went back in. Comments reappeared. I breathed. Watched another video. A pixelated shark superimposed onto stick-figure legs walked through a void, set to “It’s Quiet Uptown,” from the Hamilton soundtrack.
In my favorites folder, I scrolled through the hundreds of audio clips I’d bookmarked over five years. The very first clip was a lo-fi remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl” that I saved in 2020. I was in college when I first started using the app, downloading it to learn the “Blueberry Faygo” dance, and now I am haggard at the age of 26. Much has changed—I moved to a new city, began my career, experienced heartbreak for the first time, and posted through it all. The Pedro Pascal fancam edit cradled me after I experienced my first layoff. The dense-bean-salad girl wiped my tears when I felt like I was about to teeter off the edge at the grocery store. Chloe Ting’s two-week challenge got me through lockdown with her promises to help her followers attain an itty-bitty, teeny-tiny waist and a gigantic, earth-shattering butt.
Everyone’s experience with TikTok is, famously, individual: The algorithm seems to know us better than we know ourselves, or so the cliché goes. But the app has also meaningfully shaped aspects of our culture and politics, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, as with any social platform. Many people found community on TikTok. BookTok transformed the publishing industry; creators encouraged viewers to support indie booksellers and caused books sales to skyrocket. It played a political role: “TikTok teens,” with help from K-pop stans, flooded Trump’s 2020 Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally with fake ticket bookings just to mess with him. Reporters like Bisan Owda provided unique, on-the-ground reporting about life in Gaza. TikTok’s feeds pushed huge amounts of body dysmorphia, prejudice, and alt-right lines of thought—the app has also been a prime suspect in the decline of attention spans, the rise of hyper-consumerism, and the general deterioration of media literacy. Such a consequential app deserved a major fade-out. Perhaps a soft vignette or fade to black, or a final curtain over the whole thing. Maybe a rolling-credits song or a bagpipe solo to play us out.
We didn’t get that, of course. Just a pop-up notification as I was midway through a video. This is the nature of TikTok, and really the internet overall: always shifting; here today, gone tomorrow. And then, maybe …
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