Goodbye Tiktok I’ll miss you (maybe)

Image source from Freepik.com

This weekend was rather interesting. We had folks falling apart because TikTok was going to go away in the United States. It was down for under 24 hours before coming back up again.

It was crazy to see people losing their minds over what they would do to pay their bills and make a living.

I remember when Tiktok was all the craze to learn the latest dance. I was a late user of TikTok. I joined a little over a year ago because I was asked to post a TikTok video for a product I tried.

What I liked about TikTok

I liked TikTok because it offers a variety of topics and videos to view. They were short or long-form videos. I learned a lot and found many creators I related with. I also learned a lot too.

The one thing I found was different from Instagram reels or even YouTube shorts was that your FYP always had something new.

I also felt the app had a sense of community. If you wanted to learn to knit, you found your group of people. If you loved books, you found Booktok.

There wasn’t a major divide like other social platforms. Yes, you had the folks that made Tiktok their lives but the same can be said for Instagram influencers and Youtubers.

For me, it was a place for people to come together and share opinions.

What I disliked

I found that as of late TikTok has become the latest shopping channel on the web. It seemed like every few videos was a creator trying to sell me the latest product. I’m not going to lie I did buy a few items from TikTok Shop. Mainly pet and gaming stuff.

I also didn’t like that videos would be suppressed because of their content. I had some scam alert videos flagged for no reason.

I certainly didn’t like the political angle that was thrown at us recently.

I also felt that CapCut (Byte Dance’s video editor) would have spoken out about the upcoming ban before all the users were locked out.

I will admit I found myself doom-scrolling, especially at night before bed.

When Tiktok came back on Sunday I noticed that I couldn’t reinstall the app (because I had deleted it.) I also found that I couldn’t like any content in the browser it kept prompting me to download the app.

I’m not going back

I opted to close my TikTok account over the weekend. It takes 30 days for it to go into effect. I’m okay with this because I didn’t have a large following.

I also didn’t have as many views of my videos as I’d hoped. My engagement was about the same as Instagram. So I’m not too sad to be leaving TT.

What I will miss is the sense of community and the many creators I found. I have followed some on other platforms.

I can say this much throwing political views into the usage of an app doesn’t sit right with me. There are plenty of other apps or websites that could be shut down and deserving of the ban.

Where do we go from here?

I wonder what all the people who created farewell videos or confessed to fooling viewers will do now. Will they have the same large following?

Will they go back to TikTok?

I think many people will go back and try to play things off and go back to being TikTok creators and earning money. While I think other users will opt to sign off permanently like I did.

All I can say is it was fun while it lasted but I’m getting too old for political BS.

share your thoughts in the comments below.