Scrolling Past TikTok
TikTok should be banned, but the true problems that the app has unleashed will not be solved when it is gone.
This Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a bill forcing TikTok to find a new owner within a year or face a ban from operating in the United States. ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, has said that they would prefer to “shut down” the app rather than simply sell it, which totally sounds like something a company that is not being used for espionage would say.
Further evidence for Chinese shenanigans can be found in TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s hilarious video arguing against the policy, in which he talks about the “American values that make the United States a beacon of freedom.” This desperate appeal to red-white-and-blue rocketship bald eagle Americanism adds credence to the national security concerns cited to justify the ban. The video’s script clearly was not written by an American, to say the least.
While we can all get behind concerns of Chinese espionage, “national security” has not been the main topic of discussion among those outside the Establishment. Most of the conversations have revolved around TikTok’s political influence, especially in an election year.
Obviously, TikTok holds massive cultural sway over America’s Zoomers, with two thirds of them using the platform. If a song trends on TikTok, everybody hums it. The other day, I heard an Asian-American girl from the suburbs say “on God, bro is a yapper.”
The same applies to political sentiments: every Zoomer-centric movement of the last few years, most notably the current one surrounding Palestine, have been grown and spread on TikTok. While these algorithm-nurtured movements are leftist, they are notably not always politically beneficial for Democrats.
Herein lies the primary conservative reservation about banning TikTok, the Zuckerberg Concern — that Zoomers will simply flock to Instagram Reels, owned by Meta, who are known to have collaborated with the federal government to shift narratives around the 2020 presidential election.
Zoomer dissolution with the Establishment would be quashed, helping Democrats win more elections in the future. In spite of this possible short term gain for Democrats, TikTok should still be banned anyways. It is “better” for the souls of American Zoomers to be Biden Democrats than it is for them to be Marxist radicals, and that it is never wise to play utilitarian calculus expending the health of souls for short term gain, under any circumstances.
However, the concern that Zoomers would simply flood to Instagram reels makes obvious the fact that the problems TikTok has caused will not be solved by its banning. The greatest ill that TikTok has brought to society is not so much that it helps the spread of bad ideas, or even that it is spyware. TikTok’s biggest problem is that it is the most efficient and dangerous time-waster and soul-destroyer in human history.
The “Scroll-Spiral” format is designed to flood the mind with dazzling slop, robbing America’s youth of true edifying leisure time, the quiet space that every human being needs in order to truly live. A happy, well-ordered soul, adorned with unique skills and interests, takes countless dedicated hours to develop.
TikTok, in replacing leisure with idleness, leaves its users dim and grey, their heads pointed downward towards their feed, like a pig at a trough. Time that could have been spent praying, or gardening, or fixing a beat up motorbike, or whatever, are instead spent being stimulated, but bored — and boredom will destroy a nation faster than any Chinese spy.
The AdamoZone is a column by Luca Adamo, Vice President of Marketing at The American Postliberal. Published every Friday at 5:00pm EST. Sorry for the delay this week!
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