The Death of TikTok
So, there I was, spread out on my couch, scrolling through TikTok. Like some kind of capricious Greek god, I cast judgement upon all who dared cross my screen. Ha! Your video has pleased me — a like for you. Fie! This one was pure dross — next!
Soon enough, I was wholly consumed. I howled with laughter. I wept plaintive tears. I boiled with wrath. With wanton swipes, I propelled myself through the feed at a pace of reckless abandon until — bam! I was confronted with a bikini-clad adolescent twerking to Young Thug. Immediately, I closed the app, deleted it, and hurled my phone across the room.
“Oh my God,” I thought to myself, “I’m going to jail.”
When I was a senior in high school, Facebook was losing its soul. What once had been fertile ground for self-expression had rapidly decayed into a graveyard of insipid monotony. Spontaneity had all but vanished. There were no more outbursts, overshares, catfights, or self-masturbatory boasts. In their place was a cloying mix of beaming headshots and tedious “life updates.” Eventually, even these tiny morsels grew rare, leaving a void that was greedily filled by ad networks, brands, and various other media. As corporate presence subsumed the platform and human presence abandoned it, Facebook began to look less like a community of people, and more like a packaged media experience, designed to optimize engagement metrics and boost ad revenues.
In a sense, Facebook was a victim of its own success. As users’ networks grew intractably vast, the prospect of actually posting anything grew exceedingly daunting. After all, how many people felt comfortable inviting the gaze of hundreds of prying eyes onto their every post? To make matters worse, parents, teachers, aunts, friends’ parents, lunch ladies, grandparents, and all the world’s adults began a steady encroachment onto the platform. The feeling that we were being watched was becoming acute and inescapable, and we pulled away as a result. Facebook had “grown up” — both symbolically and literally. And so, our exodus to Snapchat began.
Snapchat felt like it had been made for me. Its complex design proved an effective deterrent to adults, while its system of ephemeral messaging conveyed a sense of furtive intimacy and hinted at titillating prospects. Looking back, it’s little wonder that Snapchat became such a phenomenon. The limited reach and duration of content stripped away inhibitions and encouraged users to post to their hearts’ content. The ability to track story views opened up a world of subversive mind games. Seemingly overnight, our lives were transformed — now, everything had to be captured through a smartphone lens: parties, vacations, lectures, dinners, funerals, etc. Candid moments were restaged and reshot so as not to waste a single opportunity. There seemed to be no end in sight.
But Snapchat never got a chance to “grow up” in the same way that Facebook did. In 2013, Snapchat rejected Facebook’s $3 billion tender offer for acquisition, and sought instead to make a stand on its own. Emboldened by its youth, Snapchat imagined itself the David to Facebook’s Goliath. In fact, it was Icarus. Facebook, in its radiant splendor, cast down the high-flying Snapchat by ruthlessly copying its most compelling features and porting them over to Instagram. In the blink of an eye, my community collapsed and we fled the platform, leaving a ghost town behind us.
Instagram felt like the platform that was promised. Snapchat’s idiosyncrasies, once endearing, now felt like glaring flaws in comparison. Through Stories, Instagram preserved Snapchat’s playful frivolity, while through its feed, it served up well-curated, high-effort content from friends and celebrities alike. Its influence has been monolithic but its decline has already begun.
Instagram’s emphasis on superior aesthetic has raised the bar for social media. Though it was once acceptable to throw up a selfie with little consideration, posts nowadays require a bit more thought. You must remain mindful of post frequency, be judicious in photo selection, brainstorm a clever caption, and then pray you’ll accrue enough likes to avoid embarrassment. No wonder the process seems to cause so much anxiety. Instagram has considered hiding like counts to combat this issue, but this will be too little, too late. Already, I see fewer posts from friends and my feed is clogged with memes, brands, influencers, and adverts — the same condition that afflicted Facebook. To make matters worse, my generation is growing older, and as our lives grow mundane, so does the content we post. It seems that Instagram has finally grown up. So you can imagine my delight when I heard about TikTok.
In my dream, I am running.
Before me lies a twisting corridor; behind me, I hear the footsteps of a massive crowd, relentless in its pursuit. I fly down the tortuous hallway, crashing into the walls at every turn. In the ruddy light, shadows of the crowd paint themselves upon the ground ahead of me, mocking my escape.
After what feels like an eternity, I round a final corner and arrive before a massive oak door. In scintillating gold lettering, the word “TikTok” is embossed upon its surface. A soft glow emanates from beneath the doorway, accompanied by the sounds of music and laughter. I sense the crowd drawing nearer behind me.
In a frenzy, I wrench the door open, rush inside, and slam it shut, barricading it with my body. Momentarily, I am taken aback by the scene — a vast sea of dancing tweens undulates before me, flailing their limbs here and there. I can see Megan Thee Stallion off in the distance, reposed on a palanquin. Strangely, nobody seems to have noticed my entrance. There’s no time to waste — I cry out, “GUYS! HURRY! THE ADULTS ARE COMING!!!”
Every head in the room slowly turns to stare at me. Somebody shuts off the music. *disk scratch*
Then, a lone pre-teen, still “flossing,” speaks up:
“But… you’re an adult.”
“What? Me? No, I — ”
Flustered, I look down at my pleated khakis. I finger the buttons on my plaid collared shirt. I grasp the messenger bag laying flaccid upon my hip. I can feel myself beginning to swoon.
“Oh God… no… I can’t… this can’t… Oh God. Oh — ”
I wake up in a cold sweat.
More than a dream, this was a premonition: I am the death of TikTok.
Scrolling through my feed, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be. I am presented with images of high school hallways, teenage trysts, classroom pranks, and other trappings of youth that now seem like distant memories. These images evoke more scorn than nostalgia, and I find myself scrolling with a hint of contempt. The content featuring adults doesn’t feel real or relatable either — rather, it is a fetishized representation of adulthood, filtered through an adolescent’s lens.
Even my more substantial protests against the app sound like the ravings of an old man… we must stay vigilant against the undue influence of the Chinese Government! TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is reputed to maintain close ties with China’s Communist Party, allowing its platform to be used for surveillance, censorship, and the unethical treatment of minorities. The abstract fears surrounding data collection and abuse that were once associated with American social media companies seem to have truly manifested themselves in TikTok.
Still, I cannot be dissuaded. I will hate-watch TikTok until it burns holes in my retinas. Every time I upload a video, I will do so with pleasure, knowing that my ghastly apparition has likely spooked another handful of children. Simply by lending our presence to the platform, my millennial peers and I have conspired to bring about an end to the festivity at TikTok. In fact, it would be irresponsible to allow them to continue without adult supervision. As dutiful chaperones we will ensure that the fun is safe, clean, constructive, and non-existent.
Okay, I’m 26. You might think that’s too young to have written an essay about being too old to be on TikTok, but you’d be wrong. To the contrary, I am the perfect age to have written this. I am old enough to have witnessed the rise of social networks and young enough to have never lived without them.
My generation was the first to face the brave new world of social media. We struck out into new digital territories in order to navigate their treacherous landscapes, and ultimately to shape them. In the midst of that wilderness, we carved out a space for ourselves that was largely inscrutable by the adult world. There, we established the norms that circumscribed internet communities — we determined what you can do, what you can say, what you can’t say, what a “like” means, when it’s appropriate to “follow” someone, and the significance of every other minute detail of online interaction.
So then what really bothers me about TikTok isn’t the feeling that I don’t belong, so much as the idea that it doesn’t belong to me. For the first time, I won’t be involved in writing the rules or shaping the culture of this emergent social network — that torch has been passed. No longer an active participant, I’ll hang on a little while longer as a passive observer, spending my time swiping, watching and judging. Then one day I’ll wake up and find that all the young people have moved on — the only people left will be the ones like me.
