I thought it was a Chinese data harvesting operation.
I started using TikTok shortly before the maximum time was changed to be over 60 seconds, and when I've tentatively returned recently it's been insufferable due to people hemming and hawing for 3 minutes when they could have done it in one. Of course my recommends are leftist/nerdy subtype, not so much dances.
This was a fun folk art collaboration in the sub-10-seconds subtype.
I think the more interesting thing will be the cultural moment that follows when it gets banned (which it will, because young people don't vote).
This very weird alternate history fiction Substack has a moment where a young marine - in context, I think around 2042 - trying to make conversation with a Master Chief, asks, "So, you guys do much OldTok back in the day?"
(Because TikTok was banned during the first brutal if short war with China, and NewToks rose up in its place, creating a generational divide.)
(The final word on Tiktok is of Bodies Bodies Bodies, which you should definitely watch.)
6 the Double Victory TL stuff is pretty great
8: Yeah, I subscribed. Though based on snippets released so far, I fear when the book comes out it will be about 2/3 military porn.
But it may still make up for it with stuff like:
[Xi and his Politburo] believe... semi-official conspiracy theories, such as: [President] AOC has secretly pardoned (as a member of the House) the imprisoned Sacklers and is using them to create a massive secret stockpile of oxycodone to be unleashed after a new opium war (a conspiracy heard by one of Xi's nephews, a WH-ologist, on a podcast hosted by an OAN anchor's Maoist white nationalist cat-girl ex-wife).
2: We saw what you did there.
As folks may know, it's been banned in Montana effective 1/1/2024. Unless the federal court finds the ban unconstitutional.
Montana banned TikTok?! That does not seem very libertarian of you all.
don't tell US how to be libertarian. We don't let fancy people from big cities define our words, and we don't do shit just because the government tells us to!
Even the venerable Reason dot com knows libertarianism means freeing local governments to regulate housing as they see fit.
IMO, the libertarian tendency is a distant third behind white/Christian supremacy on the one hand, and mainstream liberalism on the other. But libertarians are so afraid that mainstream liberals are secretly Stalinists that they'll support straight up authoritarians when choosing candidates. On ballot measures, they'll go the other way, though.
I don't think there is really that much distance, in practice, between the libertarian tendency and white/Christian supremacy. It turns out a lot of libertarians are also deeply racist!