Why All the Hate for TikTok Creators?

Entertainment will never be considered a “real job” and that’s unfair

Why is entertainment a multi-billion dollar industry, but we hate entertainers?

If you want to see how the average American feels about creatives, i.e. people who try to make a living through artistic or expressive means, just go to the comments section of any article that discusses the impending TikTok ban.

It’s brutal.

Why are creators on TikTok somehow thought of as slackers who can’t get a real job, when they’re actually bringing something of value — entertainment — to millions of people every minute of every day?

You know who the real “slackers who can’t get a real job” are?

Lawyers and politicians.

There’s a lot of misogyny in the comments too, along the lines of, “My wife watches cat videos on TikTok, but I don’t have time for that because I’m busy doing manly-man things.”

Like watching porn or making online bets with the kids’ college funds.

Social media platforms are often viewed as a “woman thing”. When you think “social media influencer”, you think “woman modeling clothes” or “woman putting on make up”.

TikTok expanded this into the LGBTQIA+ realm, which has only made it more of a target for the “manly men” in charge of everything these days.

It doesn’t help that the traditional “creative arts” are increasingly devalued because of access to technology that can make anybody an “artist” or a “photographer” or an “actor” or a “creative writer.

Or even a “journalist”.

Remember MySpace?

MySpace was what social media was meant to be. It gave people, young and old, an internet “space” that they could personalize with music AND art AND the written word.

If you want a space like that today, you’re supposed to shell out money for a web domain you can personalize to your heart’s content, until you die of boredom on your little speck of an island floating in a vast sea of information.

I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but…

Funny how TikTok is a target, but not Facebook or Instagram, which are both run by the same squirmy little billionaire who always has his finger to the political winds.

Funny how TikTok is the focus of debate due to Chinese ownership of parent company ByteDance (China = not Friend of Trump, or FoT), but nobody’s talking about the equal and arguably greater Russian threat of data skimming and political influence through misinformation (because Russia = FoT).

Huh.

This all translates into shutting down TikTok in order to silence all the facets of society that the Right Wingers don’t want around.

Which, by the way, is causing a deep inner dilemma for Donald Trump, who counts on all social media for his continued existence.

Here’s the thing.

Do you really think banning TikTok in America is going to slow down international espionage, attempts at political influence by bad actors, and data mining?

Please.

It’s like anybody who repairs roofs for a living will tell you, “You can’t chase a leak.” If you want to repair a leak, you have to rip off the entire roof and start over.

Except in this case, the “roof” is the internet.

Look, you don’t need to save me from the Chinese. You need to save me from the L.L. Bean pop-up ads on Facebook that are bankrupting me.

TikTok is a source of income for a lot of people who have no other way to make a living — the chronically ill, stay-at-home moms, young people who need an outlet for their talents.

Why all the hate?

My TikTok videos are a link to my past. My mom, the only family I had, is gone, but I have a video of the Easter lilies that bloomed in her front yard. I have a video of the giant tree that turned seven shades of orange every fall.

And like every other social media platform, TikTok provides that little dopamine rush we all crave.

For example, somebody named “Smodge” just liked my video of a truly gigantic woodpecker destroying a dead tree in my back yard.

And that “like” made my happy. Even if only for a millisecond.

I don’t mind that I’m “just another idiot with a smartphone”, like my IG tagline says. But I feel empathy for the creators who have worked their asses off to gain a following on TikTok, just to see it wiped out in an instant.

People who think banning TikTok is going to “stop the Chinese” are probably still eating American fries and longing for the days when it was legal to own slaves.

TikTok is one of the things that makes America great.

So clearly, it’s got to go.

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