In December, in a piece about Luigi Mangione and the “blackpilling” of America—a descent into disillusionment—Vox writer Rebecca Jennings described a general malaise settling over the masses: “All swaths of Americans increasingly appear to find themselves in a nihilistic mood …They’re disenchanted with the economy and feeling pessimistic about climate change, the dating market, and their own loneliness. They’re losing faith in nearly every major US institution, from the public school system to police departments, the military, unions, organized religion and, of course, the media.”
That feeling could also describe much of the attitude toward social media platforms in 2025. X, once considered the town square of the internet, is lousy with trolls, hate speech, and propaganda. Meta, seemingly following in X’s and Elon Musk’s footsteps, is rolling back fact-checking and hate speech protections on Facebook and Instagram at a breakneck pace. Social platforms are poised to become even more poisonous to their own users as a handful of outrageously rich and powerful men grapple with their own insecurities around masculinity and free speech.
TikTok, in comparison, was not just another social platform. It was personalized, helpful even. I’ve been an avid TikToker for years; it’s a platform that taught me recipes, curly hair care, how to find financial resources, art tutorials, workout routines, plant care, and so much more. It’s had a more positive material influence on my life than any other platform, a feeling shared by many American users. Is that personal impact more important than listening to dry explanations from the government on foreign influence? Just ask the TikTokers now learning Mandarin as they migrate to RedNote.
Other TikTok users are spending what appear to be the app’s final days saying goodbye. “To my Chinese spy watching me through my phone,” reads one, “I will miss you.” End times on the app are full of creators asking their audiences to follow them elsewhere, while also using every last second to dunk on their own country and its efforts to ban an app while much larger problems persist. “National fucking security risk?” user Bryan Andrews says in a video with 27 million views. “Yeah fucking right.”
We’re long past the days where TikTok was thought of as just that app where people posted lip syncs and dances. Today it’s a powerhouse, a finely tuned machine churning out memes, jokes, fashion trends, news, music, slang, and so much more faster than any modern social platform.
TikTok’s success exists on both a macro and micro level, dictating both cultural trends and offering individuals the ability to curate a specific sort of lifestyle through a feed that constantly evolves based on your interests. It gave artists a better platform to have their work seen by people all over the world. It helped victims in war-torn countries get their message overseas. It created a new generation of small business owners, an incalculable number of people who were able to financially bootstrap themselves into better lives by building an audience.
The threat the US government claims TikTok poses holds little interest for the average American. Indeed, younger generations have always existed in a highly online world where their privacy has been exposed, sometimes since birth. As TikTok user crutches_and_spice put it: “I don’t fucking care that China has my data! Are you joking? Everybody has my data.”
