Let’s Not Fool Ourselves About TikTok

Before Vine’s die-hard fans said goodbye, they wanted to reminisce. The short-form-video app, which shut down in 2017, created lots of viral moments (“And they were roommates …”) and propelled a number of internet creators into the mainstream. It was unlike anything else on the internet at the time: You can still sometimes see the refrain “RIP Vine” thrown around on social media. But for the most part, everybody has moved on. Two of Vine’s biggest stars, Logan Paul and Shawn Mendes, are still plenty famous.

I immediately thought of Vine this morning, when the Supreme Court upheld a law that requires TikTok to be sold by its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. After I saw the news I then checked TikTok. The app was a hotbed of nostalgia, with many users reposting their earliest videos from several years ago. The ruling is the latest twist in the ongoing saga over the app’s fate: For more than four years, TikTok has been plagued by questions about its ties to the Chinese government. Unless there’s a last-minute intervention—still possible!—the app could conceivably shut off on Sunday. (After the Supreme Court’s decision, Joe Biden’s administration announced that it would leave enforcement of the ban to Donald Trump.)

[Read: The internet is TikTok now]

It’s a lot of fanfare and suspense over an app that, well, just isn’t all that important. There’s no denying TikTok has had a significant impact on American culture. Its kitschy trends, given names like “coastal grandmother,” influence the stores Americans shop at and the products they buy. Why were Stanley cups suddenly everywhere last year? Blame TikTok. Artists are encouraged to create music that might spark a dance challenge on the app. This is part of what TikTok does well: Its algorithm serves users ultra-personalized content, increasing engagement.

But though Americans might be listening to music or shopping for clothing that was made with TikTok in mind, a majority of them are not scrolling the app itself. According to a Pew survey released last year, only a third of U.S. adults said they had ever used TikTok. YouTube touches far more Americans, with 83 percent of adults reporting that they use the platform. Although TikTok is often referred to as the Gen Z app, a larger share of 18-to-29-year-olds are on Snapchat and Instagram.

To some degree, TikTok users seem at peace with knowing they have other options. Few people have flocked to Capitol Hill to protest the ban. For the most part, celebrities are not speaking out about just how dire the stakes of a TikTok blackout could be. Online, people are expressing their dismay with sardonic humor: tearfully saying goodbye to the hypothetical “Chinese spy” that’s supposedly been observing their TikTok behavior all these years. Millions have downloaded another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, whose name translates to “little red book” in English.

[Read: It’s just an app]

TikTok would be the first major social-media platform to face an outright ban in the U.S., but its demise would not be so unfamiliar. Even apart from Vine, Millennials and Gen X users spent their youth on platforms that also one day just disappeared, or became otherwise unrecognizable. Tumblr went through a number of changes that gutted the once-thriving blogging platform. Users eventually find new homes elsewhere: Facebook overtook MySpace, only to cede its cultural cache to Instagram, and TikTok itself absorbed Musical.ly. It’s all part of the larger cycle of migration that has always defined social media. The same will likely be true with TikTok. So many social platforms have already cribbed from the app and feature similar algorithmic feeds that keep you scrolling. As Hana Kiros wrote yesterday, “The app might get banned in the United States, but we’ll still be living in TikTok’s world.”

This isn’t to say a TikTok ban wouldn’t be felt. Influencers with big TikTok followings will have to fight for attention on other platforms that may have different audiences and mechanisms for success. Small-business owners, in particular, may materially suffer. Restaurants are one viral video away from waking up to a line down the street, a designer just one hashtag off from selling out their new product. The app’s boon for businesses has been abetted by TikTok Shop, through which users can directly buy items featured in the videos on their feed. Those who went all in on TikTok will surely take a hit as they attempt to set up elsewhere online, but in all likelihood, they will recover.

When I opened TikTok this morning, many of the videos that users were reposting in farewell to the app featured trends I barely remembered from the early pandemic: Morning routines soundtracked by Powfu’s 2020 song “Death Bed,” and exaggerated lip-syncing to anime. Those videos are a testament to how quickly the internet moves on. In a few years, TikTok’s most defining moments, like Vine’s catchphrases and Tumblr’s main characters, will largely have been forgotten.