The Last Right: Dignity in the TikTok Era

On the way to see The Whale with my younger daughter yesterday and we talked about the potential content of the movie. As has pretty much always been the case with every Darren Aronofsky motion picture since π, the trailer is pretty good at saving plot points.

I posed one idea I considered too easy and we talked about some recent incidents on TikTok. Interestingly enough, she carefully curates her social media exposure, appropriate for mentally healthy people over the age of 12, as to keep herself out of content she herself is not creating. Some of her friends do not always observe the same precautions, and this led her to witness a vicious episode of body shaming both online and in person last year.

The incident ran as you’ve heard a thousand times. A group of young people were in a public space when they encountered a guy streaming on TikTok. One of the young people in their group is of a body type not considered ideal on social media. As you might expect, things got out of control in the comments section.

“It pisses me off,” she explained, “when people online body shame people [who] I don’t know.” But she managed to contain her responses and didn’t engage every negative comment. And maybe her response is the best we can hope for today.

Ever since the writers’ strike that led to the rise of so-called reality television and the last major financial crisis, the West, and the United States in particular, has opened itself up to division and debasement in ways that impact us in both a micro and macroeconomic sense. It’s been proven that this leaves us vulnerable to online manipulation on every subject from political perspective to Star Wars fandom.

This germinated in the gamification of real world activities like walking around outside with Pokémon Go, but has become necrotic with wage stagnation and viral infamy. A few considered radical have suggested we amputate malignant forms of social media while others want to transform reality itself with a metaverse. The street-level result has been the same.

“I don’t like people and I don’t want to know them. People are terrible,” my younger daughter explained.

“What if that’s the objective?” I replied. And I went on to free associate how economic and philosophical influencers in culture use insecurity to sell things whether they are ads, the products in the ads, or a distrust of our neighbors. All of this depresses public life and channels communication back online where commerce can be centralized.

That’s great for the countries where most of the production is being done, not so great for the mom and pops. Add a global pandemic, and people have even fewer options. Home delivery begins to look like part of a global monopoly for consumer goods as the variety of products available locally shrinks. And with it, your paycheck.

Paychecks have been under assault since the wave of compliance-oriented social changes around the meltdown at Enron, which paired well with the bursting of the housing bubble. Companies all over the US opted to build up cash reserves instead of making merit-based pay increases.

In a word, insecurity. A loss of dignity. And a scramble to be validated at any cost.

And there it all was right in front of us. The thing Gen X has been trying to get our heads around since the late ‘90s. The tidal wave you can either surf or be drown by.

I think back to my days in college when former intelligence officer Guy Vanderpool suggested off the cuff that more people like me were needed at the state department. I once again side with my skepticism. I couldn’t read the stitches on the baseball until I was looking at their impression on my forehead in the mirror.

TikTok is a place kids can debase themselves for the benefit of our number one vendor nation. It’s methamphetamine for tweens with parental illusion of control. And far too many young adults lead the charge.

Or maybe, just maybe, my younger daughter’s reservations about appearing in streaming content she doesn’t control is an indication that the Resistance has already begun. Maybe there’s a chance that not all of Western Civilization will be caught up in the viral St. Vitus of TikTok.

After the movie we talked about the ancient and revered institution of social control - the church - and how it helped reduce trust in individual agency a thousand years ago through today.

Ironically there’s more hope today than there was for Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

Today there are thousands of institutions more powerful than the church was at the time. Thousands of shelters against the indignity of the TikTok era. Thousands of philosophies and psychological schools in which people can thrive independent of the drive toward homogeny of the live-streaming ideal and its Inquisition in the comments section.

I hold out hope.