politics

Requiem for a Meme

Tik­Tok was a balm dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. What began as a sil­ly app for dances became the great­est visu­al sto­ry­telling mech­a­nism since Face­book first tried piv­ot­ing to video. Unlike Snap, Tik­Tok was wild­ly intu­itive, a new video just a quick swipe up and away. The algo­rithm was smarter and the con­tent bet­ter than any­where else online, which of course, is why it had to die.

For any­one old enough to remem­ber the Cold War, we’ve been invent­ing rea­sons to be afraid of things every­where for­ev­er. We’ve had issues with the Chi­nese since they came to Amer­i­ca and built the rail­roads. I wish things had evolved to a place where we could embrace inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and coop­er­a­tion, but here we are. I wish we had a keen­er under­stand­ing of how mis­in­for­ma­tion gets dis­trib­uted and how “legit­mate” chan­nels have been used to do this for as long as they exist­ed. I mean, “remem­ber the Maine” was mis­in­for­ma­tion. WMDs were mis­in­for­ma­tion. Those were far more cost­ly in lives than Tik­Tok, yet here we are.

This is a requiem for a meme.

Do you remem­ber the first trend­ing audio that sucked you in? For me, I think it was the bad­die dance trans­for­ma­tion and things spi­raled from there. It’s per­fect that I’m obsessed with the weird Twit­ter ener­gy of Lit­tle Sleepy Demons as the sun sets on TikTok.

But what about the friends we made along the way?

I for­get when exact­ly I joined, but it was late, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing. That said, I was imme­di­ate­ly hooked. It trans­formed how I con­nect­ed with my social media col­leagues, and the con­tent helped me work through things relat­ed to fam­i­ly and career that I did­n’t real­ize were such wide­ly shared expe­ri­ences. I dare­say that in impor­tant ways, Tik­Tok healed me.

As lay­offs hit me and so many oth­ers start­ing in 2023, Tik­Tok was a place where peo­ple open­ly dis­cussed — if not filmed out­right — their lay­off. It was like watch­ing the entire notion of employ­er brand vapor­ize in real time. There was a real fear­less­ness that came to life there through the mil­len­ni­als and Gen Z users who at times bared their souls to the app, hop­ing to find some­one who could relate. In some impor­tant ways that con­nec­tion, vir­tu­al though it may be, was a salve for the iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness that plagues so many of us.

Bar­ring an unlike­ly reprieve, I ful­ly expect Tik­Tok to dis­ap­pear just like Vine did, or how MySpace and Friend­ster did before that. There will be fee­ble clones. Peers like YouTube and Insta­gram will try to cap­ture that ener­gy, but nei­ther real­ly deliv­ers. It’s the demo­graph­ics that count. It will be sore­ly missed. Noth­ing gold can stay.

A Word on Urban Redevelopment

It’s not a social good in and of itself. 

I also won­der if folks who are all devel­op­ment uber alles still con­cern them­selves with things like “sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” which seems to be a watch­word among the gen­tri­fy­ing classes.

The knee-jerk reac­tion to build things like music venues in blight­ed areas is tan­ta­mount to “drill, baby, drill.” Do you real­ly want to be asso­ci­at­ed with that?

An Open Letter to Mayor Michael Nutter

Dear May­or Nutter,

I vot­ed for you because I thought you best rep­re­sent­ed what the City need­ed. I had my doubts, but thought that you’d be the best man for the job. I felt sure of it when I shook your hand after your vic­to­ry at City Hall sta­tion on my way to work.

A year lat­er I was­n’t so sure. You and I had an awk­ward inter­ac­tion at a Fels event. I asked you about the casi­no. You were upset and gave your rote answer. I don’t even remem­ber it. I tried approach­ing you after­ward not just to explain myself, but to give you a chance to turn on the charm and con­nect with a vot­er. You did­n’t. You tried to avoid me. When I caught up to you, you told me if I did­n’t like the casi­no, I could move. “It’s a big city,” you said.

Anoth­er year passed. You man­aged to sur­vive a tricky win­ter, despite the fact that the streets were in awful con­di­tion. May­ors in Chica­go lose elec­tions over stuff like this. The city streets were an insur­ance night­mare! I know it was record snow­fall, but does­n’t that mean city ser­vices should rise to the chal­lenge in the name of pub­lic safe­ty, or was it enough to don an Action News cap and give us updates?

You have about a year to turn this thing around. I know that the bud­get’s a mess, but you haven’t done a great job of accen­tu­at­ing the pos­i­tive. Going after the libraries was a dumb move, even as part of brinks­man­ship. You lost cred­i­bil­i­ty with the geek crowd from whence you came. You accept­ed an award from the library the night you threat­ened to close neigh­bor­hood branch­es. It sick­ened me and many peo­ple in my neigh­bor­hood. It real­ly hurt those of us who thought that you’d have a greater degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion than your predecessor.

What­ev­er hap­pened to the bul­ly pul­pit? Where’s the pas­sion, man? What did you tru­ly believe in in the first place? Was it all just a pro­gres­sive facade?

You know what? I start­ed writ­ing this let­ter to con­demn your cam­paign. I want­ed to blame you for giv­ing us false hope. But that’s not good enough. I want you to prove me wrong. I want you to wow me in the time you have remain­ing in office. Do you think you can? Do you think you can go to bat for Philadel­phi­ans and show them that you are indeed the bright bulb we thought we elected?

I know your job isn’t easy, but you knew that, too. Don’t just throw these dif­fi­cult deci­sions in vot­ers faces. It’s child­ish. Rise to the occa­sion and show us what you have. We still want to know about your ideas on tech­nol­o­gy, on your plans for the waterfront…heck, tell us more about bike lanes! Show us where you want to go. All hope isn’t lost, but you need to step up and lead. Can you?

Joan Didion on Obama

Maybe you weren’t with me when I linked to Adolph Reed Jr.‘s now infa­mous “Oba­ma No” piece from the pro­gres­sive, but you might find Joan Did­ion’s sober thoughts on the Oba­ma pres­i­den­cy more palat­able. From her essay in the New York Review of Books:

No one ever sug­gest­ed that the can­di­date him­self was drink­ing the Kool-Aid—if there had been any doubt about this, his ini­tial appoint­ments laid them to rest. In fact it seemed increas­ing­ly clear not only that he would wel­come some healthy real­ism but that its absence had become a source of wor­ry. “The exu­ber­ance of Tues­day night’s vic­to­ries,” TheNew York Times report­ed on Novem­ber 6, “was also tem­pered by unease over the pub­lic’s high expec­ta­tions for a par­ty in con­trol of both Con­gress and the White House amid eco­nom­ic tur­moil, two wars over­seas and a yawn­ing bud­get gap.” A head­line in the same day’s Times : “With Vic­to­ry in Hand, Oba­ma Aides Say Task Now Is to Tem­per High Expectations.”

What’s hap­pen­ing now is pret­ty much what hap­pened with Bill Clin­ton. Peo­ple thought the rev­o­lu­tion was at hand and then wel­fare was more or less abol­ished. We’re din­ing on thin polit­i­cal gru­el these days, but there are those who call it a feast. It’s time for what remains of the Amer­i­can left to regain its sens­es and active­ly pur­sue a pro­gres­sive agen­da in the face of aus­ter­i­ty. It’s our only hope.