What I’ll miss about TikTok

The “For You” page, for those of you who have more interesting and pressing things to do during the day than scroll endlessly through a series of short videos, is what the Chinese communists who run TikTok call the array of videos and posts that their algorithm has selected for each specific user. My FYP — that’s what the kids call it, by the way — is mostly videos of dogs, food, and people falling down in hilarious ways. But a few months ago, an old television commercial for instant coffee slid in there, and I was hooked. 

The coffee commercials are nearly identical in tone, and it’s breathtaking to see those old sex stereotypes on full, unashamed display. The wife is always in some kind of bathrobe. The husband is always dressed for work. The coffee the wife has prepared is always inadequate and disappointing, and the husband is always bitterly angry about it to an unnerving extent. You almost expect that what you thought was a coffee commercial is actually a public service announcement about the signs of domestic abuse. But no: It’s just terrible coffee brewed by an incompetent wife and, you know what, honey? I’ll just grab a cup on the way. 

Eventually, of course, she switches brands, and everything is domestic bliss, so the neighbors do not need to call the police. The weirdest installment of this genre stars Paul Lynde as the sneering and dissatisfied husband. It’s impossible to see Lynde today and not recognize him for what he was: a theatrically flamboyant gay man. But, back then, I guess he just came off as “persnickety.” But you can’t unknow what you know, so it’s hard to watch that particular TikTok post without shouting to the poor wife on your phone’s screen, It’s not the coffee, dear, it could be the best coffee in the world. The problem is that your husband is a homosexual man.

I’m going to miss those old coffee commercials when they take my TikTok away.

I’ll also miss a popular genre of “response” videos, in which the screen is split between something on the right side and someone responding to it in real time on the left. The best of these come from a guy calling his content “Chefreactions,” in which he comments on the recipes and techniques of TikTok’s food vloggers in a hilariously withering monotone.

Another chef does essentially the same thing but with a different attitude. She starts her reaction videos with a cheerful and upbeat “Everyone’s so creative!” And then, she tries to keep the enthusiasm going as the recipe gets more and more inedible. “See those eggs in that oil? Notice how the boiling oil is going all over the place? That’s what you’re going for!”

I’ll miss those guys. But the TikTokers I’ll miss the most are the comedians and video creators who deliver raucous and envelope-pushing comedy. There’s a constellation of these folks on TikTok who specialize in the kinds of jokes and sketches that you can’t find anymore in the usual places, thanks to the humor police. 

Television, both the broadcast version and the streaming stuff, is so resolute about purging anything “offensive” or politically incorrect (in other words, anything funny) that they’ve driven a lot of the funniest people to TikTok. If you tune your algorithm correctly, your FYP will make you laugh in ways that are wrong and bad and problematic and insensitive. In other words, the way you’re supposed to laugh.

Look, I know that TikTok is run by the Chinese communists, and they’re probably mining the whole thing for crucial data they will exploit when they invade the United States from the west and the south, fanning across the continent and turning the entire central part of the country into a Xinjiang-style reeducation camp. But that’s going to happen in the future. Right now, I’m a little more concerned about the doctrinaire communists running American television and mass media. Honestly, they seem a lot scarier. 

Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.