It’s been really interesting to sit on a platform of “revolutionaries” and free thinkers, folks who if you let them tell it – were crucial in shaping the culture of Twitter and social movements – hate TikTok.

TikTok is the future.

Sounds corny and maybe it is, but I see the vision and I feel it.

For my generation; folks in their thirties – we grew into a cultural shift. We saw things go from no internet, to slow internet to “oh shit, you can do what on the internet?” within the span of two decades.

We had to grapple with our changing ideas of self, expression and what it meant to be a part of something via anonymity and then break that to be ourselves again.

The folks coming up behind us don’t have as much space to pretend; they have IG accounts from birth, technology in their hands at a young age and the willfulness culturally to not make the same mistakes we did.

Why are we trying to stifle what they are trying to create?

We’ve become our Facebook parents. They are the new free thought.

We feel the rise of the new supreme and we are reacting instead of deciding whether or not we care to learn or stick to what we know. Of course there are a large amount of users that patronize both platforms but you know what I’m talking about.

It’s clear by the criticisms and “opinions” that have become popular that the folks doing the academic writing and prostrating haven’t spent enough time trying to be a part of the culture of the platform.

You don’t understand it and maybe you’re not meant to. We don’t need to think piece it to death – we can just wait for the Netflix Docu Series that outlines it for us – from launch as A.me to the merger with musically to the international powerhouse that it’s become.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I can’t explain it to you.

I’ve found lots of community spaces – sub communities. There is no shortage of wonder and awe. 

I follow home cooks in India and Nigeria, hackers teaching basic darkweb navigation,  political news, heated debates about which soca and dancehall songs are the most lit and everything in between.  

In my short time there, I’ve fallen in love over and over with the access. 

I used to daydream of other places and other people and imagined how they lived, engaged and loved. TikTok makes it easIER.

It’s a social studies and anthropological paradise. A time capsule in the making in the age where being a content creator is as natural as breathing. 

We haven’t been able to explain (black)Twitter and they can’t explain TikTok. 

You just…gotta be there.