Just deleted the TikTok app after 6 years. Obvious changes to my FYP over the last few days. Suppressing Minneapolis / ICE content. Pushing MAGA creators and messages. Eerily similar to how X changed after Musk. So happy to have Bluesky to move to then. Where go from TikTok?

Welcome Pete! Good to have you here and gave a follow.

Chef’s kiss. Some much beauty in small details. Sargent’s ghost delights in you noticing.

Sadly, periods of social progress in the US are often followed by backlash. Jim Crow followed Reconstruction, Nixon came after the Civil Rights Act, and now open misogyny follows women’s progress in education, culture, and the workplace. Still, this is a pretty jarring push backward. All white men.

2) One day, one of the lesbians stopped by to see my parents. I was out front digging out roots from an overgrown bush my Dad had cut down to earn a few bucks for gas money. On the way inside she said “I see they got you doing n****r work” and smiled. Then it made sense.

1) I grew up in a small rural community in the Midwest with White parents from “the City” who were Democrats. They were friends with a lesbian couple from the community who were staunchly Republican. At that time the Republican Party was virulently homophobic, so this was surprising.

I am persuaded. I have lived in a bottom, middle, and top quartile income household in the US and seen a lot. I think he gets right one of the major animating principles of the MAGA coalition.

So interesting! Thank you.