In case you've been living under a rock, the Indian government has banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, citing privacy concerns against the background of increasing pressure to boycott Chinese products. This move was met with equal amounts of praise and criticism.
My first reaction (and pretty much everyone else's) when I found out that TikTok was getting banned was to make a stupid joke about it. It wasn’t shock or anger, but amusement. (1/n)
Three months ago, if someone would've told me I would be a sadpanda.jpg about TikTok getting banned in India, I would have haha-d it away. Who would've thought an app, whose existence I didn't care about all this while, will become my biggest stressbuster during this time.
However, irrespective of whether one supports the ban, it is impossible to ignore the platform's decentralised, inclusive, and democratic nature.
tik-tok provided a platform to rural, working-class people and marginalized communities and certainly empowered them to showcase their perennially neglected talents and broke the hegemony of the bourgeois city elites on indian internet with access to means of digital production https://t.co/hf0bquoJY3
It has never been about TikTok or China. It is about the 'free' stage & opportunity given by technology. A partially blind man from a tribal village, with a hut to live in, could never be admired by thousands in his lifetime, no matter how many gov. schemes we float.
ok but listen TikTok was low-key more inclusive than all other social media platforms, didn't require so called "superior" use of language for reach, and people were SO CREATIVE on it :/
Moreover, it was also a space where queer identities thrived!
Creators on TikTok are presenting queer narratives in such an easy to understand way it's fascinating. It's definitely reaching a much much wider audience than ANY other social platform. Here's a thread of some of my favourite ones:
For what it's worth, TikTok was the only social platform where we saw so many Indian queer kids living their best lives.
Some Twitter users also pointed out how TikTok shaming was basically a reflection of our own elitist beliefs and attitudes.
Tiktok succeeded in breaking the monopoly on content creation to a large extent. It gave a space for expression to those who don't lead instagrammable lives. Elites brush off its content as cringe ignoring how their idea of what's cringeworthy is determined by their social class.
Stop saying you're glad TikTok got banned because you found it cringe. It's not cringe. You taking a 100 mirror selfies in H&M's trial room is cringe.
Tiktok shaming is classist. The real reason u don't like tiktok is not bcz 'oh the content is so bad' it's bcz u hate that someone who's not from ur social class now has means of self expression. You hate that you don't have the exclusivity of content creation anymore.
Ban or no ban, in the end, it is the spirit of creativity that matters.
For any TikTok creators reading this: it doesn't matter what platform you use, no one can take away your expression from you. So DON'T STOP CREATING! ❤️