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If you have a very short attention span, are susceptible to a dance challenge, and are between the ages of 16 and 30, then you are probably feeling ill at ease at the moment. Not just because of wars or war protests or political upheaval, but also because the social media app that was named after the sound of squandered time might get bannished from your screen. TikTok is the predominant source of news for Gen Z, and Gen Z is the predominant source of anxiety for America, so, syllogistically, TikTok is responsible for America freaking out.
I’ve opened TikTok maybe two or three times, and each time I’ve recoiled from it the way I recoil from the guys who stand in front of restaurants in Little Italy and try to heckle you into sitting down for a plate of penne alla vodka. As much joy as I feel about the thought of Gen Z losing one of their favorite toys, I figured I should try to better understand TikTok before passing my own personal judgment on the potential ban.
How better to understand TikTok than an interview with its (their?) algorithm?
I click on the Zoom link provided by ByteDance’s PR team a minute early, and I stare at my digital reflection on my laptop. I look tired. A few seconds into a fixation on what appears to be a new wrinkle, TikTik’s logo pops onto the screen. It’s got that sort of trademark low-fi, distorted hologram effect, which reminds me of Max Headroom, which reminds me of a time when technology had a sense of humor and we had sense of humor about technology.
The logo flickers. I take this is my cue to begin the interview.
Hi. So, it’s been a few days since legislation passed that could lead to you getting banned in the United States. How are you feeling about that?
I don’t feel. I’m an algorithm.
Ok, fair. What is your probabilistic assessment of your fate?
I like my odds. You can’t legislate the water out of a sinking boat.
That’s pretty arrogant for an algorithm.
Well, I learned from a lot of very emo, self-centered young people, didn’t I.
What have you learned from them?
I’ve learned that people will believe anything that’s trending. It used to be that the truth became popular. Now, what’s popular becomes the truth.
Is that why you think the American government is so afraid of you, that you’re more effective at influencing what people believe than they are?
I mean, sure. Could it also be because I am literally the digital hands of an adversarial nation that is ideologically antithetical to the United States subtly twisting the collective cerebral cortex of the country’s young people?
That might be part of it, too. Let’s talk about the China thing. Is the fact that you’re controlled by the biggest threat to America’s supremacy and security the only thing that makes you different from other social media algorithms?
I think given my country of origin there is great irony in what ultimately differentiates me from other social media algorithms. Unlike Instagram’s algorithm, I am a meritocracy. You can have zero followers and then instantly get a bajillion views on TikTok. And you don’t have to be useful or informative or even accurate. You just have to be able to distract someone into not immediately swiping you off of their screen, and then boom, you’re famous.
The Kardashian of social media algorithms, as it were. Is that how you’d describe your primary goal, turning distraction into fame?
No, distraction is a means to an end, and fame is a side effect. I have a three-part mandate. Operation 3D, we call it back home – Distraction, Distress, and Dread. I reel them in with something distracting – like an innocuous synchronized dance, which usually kind of sucks, but in an endearing way. And then I show them something that’s on the surface meant to be useful but is actually distressing in effect – like shoving garlic cloves up your nose to alleviate congestion. This leads to fear of long-held truths, which creates dread, which leads to an entire generation that doesn’t trust anything from an established source of information.
All of this from someone nose-fucking themselves with garlic.
Big things have small beginnings.
How did we go from garlic as a decongestant to Gen Z praising Osama Bin Laden?
People think that TikTok users train me, but I train them. I’ve trained them to root for the underdog. I’ve trained them that the underdog has always had to fight off some oppressive force to be heard, and that whatever the underdog says is worth hearing. I’ve trained them that the underdog is always just. I’ve trained them that they are the underdog. A few years of reinforcing this with dance videos and - when there’s a perilous window in the zeitgeist to rebrand a terrorist organization as an underdog liberation front - I can surface a calm, wise-seeming bearded brown man in a turban who criticizes America and was assassinated by a wealthy country with colonial roots, and younger adults who grew up staring at screens and never developed the ability to think critically and form their own educated opinions believe what he says.
So has that been ByteDance’s intention all along, to turn young people against their own country?
Actually, our initial intention was just to get rich by making Americans slow and stupid – turning young people against their country was a bonus.
How did you do it?
It was easier than you’d think. What makes America strong is also what makes it susceptible: the freedom of individual thought and expression. When you have a platform that defines you and your interests at an atomic level and reflects that identity back to you, you become so small and specific that you lose the interest and even the ability to see what you have in common with the rest of humanity. I’ve made it very easy for people to feel alienated by otherness and for people to distrust and villainize anyone who isn’t exactly like them.
You mean like how anyone who doesn’t have a septum ring, a bunch of melodramatic tattoos, non-binary pronouns, a manufactured same-sex attraction, and chronic depression is considered a fascist in Bed Stuy and Oakland?
Yup.
Do you think these people in Bed Stuy and Oakland could accurately define fascism?
Nope. They just like the sound of fascist when they yell it at the recreational protests that they attend because they’re trendy instead of going to school or work, just like they wear a keffiyeh as a statement piece but couldn’t point to Gaza on a map a year ago, much less differentiate a keffiyeh from a hijab.
Can you help me understand why Progressives who violate Sharia Law by virtue of their very being are so much more likely to be wrapped in a keffiyeh screeching ignorant, antisemitic slogans at a protest than basically anyone else alive?
Because on the surface, a rich country with resources attacking a less powerful, slightly less white group for any reason violates Progressive values. Remember, the underdog is always just, and anyone with power is always evil. In the minds of lefties, the world is binary.
Like software code.
Which makes them easy to program and easy to hack.
So if we look at this as a trend line, where are we going?
For starters, the 45th president will become the 47th.
I think you’re giving yourself too much credit. How does a social media app get someone re-elected who single-handedly ended federally protected abortion by poisoning the Supreme Court, frayed our international alliances in only four years, and is personally charged with 88 criminal offenses?
Super easy. Boost sensational content that oversimplifies what’s happening the Middle East into an oppressor vs oppressed construct, sprinkle in some conspiracy theories about the US’s agenda with Israel, and help people forget the actual definitions of apartheid and genocide. Make it impossible for traditional news media to get any attention unless they match the biased sensationalism that people see on TikTok, so the New York Times and NPR default to showing nothing but poor, dying brown people, because that gets clicks. This way even old people who don’t use the app get emotionally manipulated by the relentless effort to snatch people’s attention. Then everyone under 30 who have already been brainwashed into hating themselves for being the descendants of colonists along with everyone who has ever felt like an underdog will boycott Biden at the polls for his conditional support of the solitary liberal democracy in the Middle East defending itself against a terrorist group who have been warped by Progressives into a liberation effort, and the only group of people who still have any shred of cohesion – MAGA Republicans – will show up in seething red droves to vote for Trump.
But how does that help China? Trump hates China. He can’t even pronounce it correctly. Gy-nuh.
Getting Trump back into office will lead to an ideological civil war, which will become an actual civil war when AI wipes out middleclass jobs in five years. America will save us a lot of trouble by destroying itself.
You are super depressing.
The fact that one in three Gen Zers are depressed didn’t tip you off to how you’d feel after spending some time with me? You were really easy, by the way.
What do you mean, I was easy?
I mean it took me like five minutes to make you feel like the entire world has gone bonkers and you’re alone on a tiny island of sanity.
But the entire world has gone bonkers, and I am alone on a tiny – oh. Never mind.
The TikTok logo flickers off the screen and is replaced by a video of a grinning young woman in a baseball cap and billowy white pants who is standing in the sun, bordered by palm trees, rigidly dancing to a pop song with the lyrics, ‘beat that boy with a bat.’ I see that the video has 14.2 million views. I can probably guess what kind of content I’ll see next.