I Won’t Download That Sketchy App
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“Btw I have no idea what I just signed up to?” is a text I received today while campaigning for this Substack. So here is some backstory:
Six months before the pandemic, having spent years traveling to different cities most weekends to DJ for large crowds, I packed up my life and threw myself across the Atlantic. I wiped all my socials. It was the first time since my ✏️ LiveJournal days that a ‘feed’ wasn’t influencing my relationships or my income. My first job in Europe was managing a music PR agency. Call-out culture was dominating headlines and throwing my team into harrowing daily strategy pivots. When lockdown hit Berlin, I lived alone. It was an odd time to be burned out by the internet, when all of my social interactions depended on it. Like so many others, it was in semi-seclusion I got hooked on TikTok. I leaned into my algorithm. The more it got to know me the quicker my grudges were softened.
I was being schooled by content from a new internet generation who leaned heavily on laughter and joy. The dancing, slapstick, crazy beats and anarchic curiosity was also campy and queer. Something about the internet I grew up on didn’t feel consensual ⛔. Looking back on it, validating my gayness at a time when ‘content moderation’ meant busting online sex offenders seems mad. But this generation of users are blissfully unaware of all of that. They are evolving faster than Silicon Valley can control them, creating multiple backup accounts in case one gets flagged and moderating comments sections in gangs like a scene from The Warriors.
I realized that merely being a fly 🪰 on the wall of this metaverse was healing years of sketchy AOL chats and MySpace Top 8 bullying. I desperately wanted to share it with people my age but continually got the “oh we see what's important on Instagram” or “I won’t download that sketchy app” response. Well, this shit moves fast and frankly, some of y’all missed it. 2023 is going to be the best and worst year for TikTok and I’ve been aching for a place to celebrate this fantastic (and often rotten) cross-cultural, multigenerational, de-gendered wormhole of a platform before it steamrolls into the next thing and changes forever.
So… this is my backup account. A place to wax on about the glory days of TikTok before the servers get firewalled 🗑️ or things go the way of Tumblr. See you in two days with issue #1 xoxo jacob xoxo