tiktok went beyond dancing children and stupid challenges. it provided people with the chance to learn about experiences outside their own and join communities they otherwise would never have had access too.

whether you used it or not, you must realize that losing tiktok is a loss for everyone.

it was a triumph in connection between people who never would have met. i met some of my closest friends through tiktok a few years ago when we were all locked indoors and needed a shared escape.

on my tiktok home page, i regularly received videos of families in palestine asking for help evacuating. it wasn’t my only source for news, but i know i and many people my age used it as a convenient and consistent source of information.

if you live around conservatives, a common bumper sticker reads “liberalism is a mental disorder.” you’ll see effigies of dem politicians, unhinged screeds about satan-worshipping dems written on lawn signs. this stuff gets ignored while any hint of condescension from liberals is treated as endemic