American users are saying goodbye in the most TikTok way: crafting montages, sharing memes, and jumping on what could be the app’s final trends.REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Soundtracked by Green Day’s wistful school graduation anthem Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), a popular TikTok montage of viral moments felt like flipping through a yearbook. The video, which has 2.9 million views, includes clips of Couch Guy, Hawk Tuah girl, trad wife Nara Smith making bubble gum from scratch, and part 37 of the “Who TF Did I Marry!?!” saga.
The majority of these names and phrases are likely incomprehensible for those not suffering from TikTok-induced brain rot. But for millions of American users who found community, comedy and careers on the app, the comment section of the video functioned as a kind of eulogy for TikTok.
“Omg not the series finale montage.”
“I miss all the crazy dances, wine fairies, notes shared from window to window during lockdown. I’ve learned so much from this app.”
“And now I’m sobbing. I wish we had yearbooks to sign for each other.”
With only days to go before a TikTok ban in the United States is expected to take effect on Jan. 19, American users are saying goodbye in the most TikTok way: crafting montages, sharing memes, and jumping on what could be the app’s final trends.
One of those trends is users posting videos saying farewell to their “designated Chinese spies”, mocking the national security concerns over the app’s Chinese ownership. A clip of an emotional scene from Big Hero 6 is captioned “Me on January 19th leaving my Chinese spy who’s been with me since 2019.”
Other videos are from the point of view of the spy: “It is a great honour to spy on you the last few years. I wish you all have a great life in the future … now something personal. Laura in California, you shouldn’t drink that much Coca-Cola.”
Unless the Supreme Court overturns the law, which legal experts say is unlikely, or pauses the law to give themselves more time to make a decision, the app will be banned in the U.S. immediately.
TikTok has said if the ban goes ahead, it will shut down the app for U.S. users on Jan. 19 and users attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban.
“We go dark. Essentially, the platform shuts down,” TikTok’s lawyer Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court last Friday during oral arguments.
Although YouTube Shorts, Instagram’s Reels and Snapchat are likely to be the largest beneficiaries of a potential ban, a legion of TikTok users are moving to a different Chinese-owned, short-form video app called Xiaohongshu, or RedNote.
Xiaohongshu, which means “little red book” in Mandarin and is a reference to a collection of sayings by Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, topped the charts in the App Store on Thursday. Over 700,000 new users have joined the app this week and videos with the hashtag #TikTokRefugee have garnered millions of views.
The potential ban also appears to have inspired an influx of Americans learning Mandarin by chatting with Xiaohongshu users and downloading Duolingo, which has seen a roughly 216-per-cent growth in new Mandarin learners in the U.S. compared to this time last year.
Many users have made TikTok videos about their own exodus to Xiaohongshu, noting the irony that a law motivated by Chinese national security concerns has inadvertently pushed them to another Chinese-owned app.
A video of a woman pulling a suitcase is captioned, “Me because I’d rather move to China than Instagram reels”, while in another video, a woman says “I will fly to Beijing in basic economy on Spirit Airlines and I will hand Xi Jinping a sticky note with my social security number on it before I ever, ever use Instagram Reels.”
As the countdown looms to a potential ban, U.S. President Joe Biden and incoming leader Donald Trump are said to be considering ways to keep the app available, according to media reports.
Mr. Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News on Wednesday that he’s ready to intervene to “preserve” TikTok. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the incoming president was considering an executive order to suspend or delay the ban.
In Canada, although the federal government has ordered TikTok to shut down its Canadian office, it has said it would not ban the app outright. Even so, Canadians on TikTok would likely notice the absence of the 170 million Americans who use the app.
As one TikTok user commented, “I’m Canadian and it feels like my best friend is moving far away, just isn’t gonna be the same anymore.”
