(lively music)
- [Announcer] Please welcome your host, Daniel Howell.
(lively music)
(Dan mutters)
- What are you doing?
No, no!
Give me that!
(Dan hissing)
(Dan sighs)
Hello, internet.
I think TikTok is fucking terrifying
and it is the downfall of humanity.
Welcome to "Dystopia Daily."
(upbeat synth music)
I feel like the last person on Earth
that hasn't given in and succumbed.
This right here is the resistance,
but I feel like it's inevitable.
Like the ticking clock of time,
the Tok will come and there is nowhere to hide.
Wherever you go, TikToks will find you.
YouTube reactions to TikToks.
Re-uploads and re-posts
all over Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit.
You could live on a fucking iceberg in Antarctica
and a penguin with an iPad would swim up to you
and start lip-syncing to fucking Lizzo!
I'm doing my thing.
I'm just posting videos to YouTube, Twitter, Instagram,
and, every single time, one of you says,
"Oh, Dan, can you just make a TikTok and post it there?"
"It's where I watch things now."
So what is my fucking problem, you ask?
Well, even if you didn't, I'm gonna tell you.
Firstly, I remember.
I remember the primordial truth.
I remember Musical.ly.
(ominous music)
Yes, the weird fucking app where people just lip-sync
and dance in their living rooms,
and by people, I mean children.
Fair enough, having fun,
and creepy 50-year-olds that are either
weird and just vibing, good for them,
or groomers, let's be honest.
I went to my Insta DM requests recently
to see if anyone
replied about coming on this show that wasn't just Phil.
I sorted by top and I found this message
from the @TikTok account in 2015,
saying it would be cool if I joined Musical.ly.
Yeah, and do what? Dab to "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence?
Okay.
♪ Wake me up, wake me up inside, can't wake up ♪
- It just wasn't my vibe, really,
but then the lip-syncing included spoken word, comedy.
You could join in on trends.
Stuff like that Don't Judge Challenge happened,
which seemed a bit different.
It seemed maybe this was going somewhere new.
It became TikTok.
It became a different beast all together,
but I will never forget. (ominous music)
Now, I hope you'd agree that me in my mid-twenties
dancing with children would be fucking weird,
but now TikTok has become the generational divide
between the zoomers and the boomers
and the millennial doomers
who are probably just trying to get on the property ladder
and survive their third recession.
Good times. I'm in the middle ground.
That is the worst of both ponds,
where older millennials don't respect me
because of my effeminate facial features,
which often makes me just not welcome into older spaces
or taken seriously in business meetings,
'cause they assume I'm just
some fucking teen Roblox influencer.
Meanwhile, my younger followers are like,
"Okay, Uncle Dan, you just don't understand our humor."
"Look at him trying to have a mustache."
I just wanna say, as an editing note,
the other day, someone referred to me as a zillennial.
- [Children] Wow!
- And, in that moment, I wanted to instantly die.
Can we just decide what this dynamic is?
Am I like the older brother that's seen some shit
and I'm just here trying to give you questionable advice,
or is this like a weird step-bro kind of thing?
Am I uncle? In 10 years, am I daddy?
At some point, am I zaddy,
or would I have to exercise for that?
I feel like we're on a tangent.
It's not that I have any problem making
some fever dream surreal Minecraft meme at 3:00 a.m.
I guess that I am still just stuck on the idea that
TikTok is cringe. (tense music)
Firstly, nothing is more cringe than the word cringe.
What the fuck does it mean anymore?
People don't just use it for secondhand embarrassment.
It is now absolutely synonymous with,
"I don't understand this."
The time I see people saying things are cringe the most
is when they actually just don't fucking get a joke,
probably because it's not for them.
If I'm watching some bizarre queer shitpost
where a leather-clad bear wearing three-inch acrylics
is making guttural noises and saying, "Yass,"
my brother in heterosexuality, it's not cringe.
You just don't get it.
I remember being a closeted and desperately edgy teen boy
that was incredibly insecure
and would never admit liking something,
'cause that's a sign of weakness.
No, I had to hate everything,
and I hated nothing more than
people who were clearly secure in themselves, confident,
and, God forbid, happy having fun.
A bunch of girls or gays doing something for them?
Ugh, it's making me feel weird.
Is this cringe? (heartbeat thumping)
No, it's an awakening.
Follow the ancient proverb.
Do not kill the part of you that is cringe.
Kill the part that cringes.
Just get over yourself. You might have some fun.
Now, I think, as a culture,
we've come full circle on that in regards to TikTok.
There was the entire TikTokCringe subreddit that went from,
"Ugh, everything on this app is cringe,"
to, "Well, this was kind of funny."
"Oh, this is interesting."
"Wow, this guy is my favorite."
And now everyone just loves it, but they kept the name.
They lost.
They started a war in which
they declared that platform was cringe,
and they ended up being corrupted too.
So, why? Why do people say TikTok is cringe?
Is it the skeleton of the Musical.ly
that will always remain deep inside the dancing,
the lip-syncing, the collabs,
the easy trends ready to make your take on?
Maybe, but you can't just judge TikTok,
'cause, like, some people are really out there
on Facebook right now.
(man screams)
Spare a thought.
People can be cringe on any fucking app.
Hi. (gentle music)
So many times in the last couple of years, I've said,
"I'm not gonna wait for the best of TikTok
to inevitably be shoved in my face everywhere I go.
I'm gonna get on it."
But I simply could not survive
the initial period of the default algorithm.
When I signed up and said, "I am a British male,"
it showed me that default filter.
Weird boomers, girls in yoga pants, dancing, and fights.
(crowd shouting) (tense music)
Just a lot of really violent street fights,
and this is clearly what the TikTok algorithm knows
is going on inside the mind of the average British male,
and that makes me wanna fucking scream.
I am looking for animals, interior design,
maybe hot guys dancing in yoga pants, let's be honest,
and dank fucking memes that are so surreal,
I don't even understand why they're funny,
but I cannot stay on the app long enough
to survive the onboarding process.
"Oh, it'll get to know you better than you know yourself."
Everyone says, but at what cost?
See, my time is valuable.
To me, that is. Not society, obviously.
If I have a free moment,
I want exactly what I want instantly.
I know what to watch on YouTube when I'm on the toilet,
who to go to for political opinions on Twitter,
which high school crush to scroll back to 2007
on their Insta profile
and get caught liking something.
I do not want to watch a bunch of boring local crap
to just train an algorithm to get my TikTok popping.
Should I just leak my password publicly?
Just let somebody log on
and let me know when you've fucked it up in a good way?
I do find it strange when people post TikToks
that have absolutely no point
or seemingly entertainment value whatsoever.
People just do stuff just to do it.
Like, you can look at your front camera
without uploading it to the internet.
It's like letting everyone on Facebook know that
you're feeling sad.
No one fucking cares, Steve! Your wife left you!
Lawyer up and hit the gym.
Um, what?
This kind of pointless posting just makes me go,
"What is this place?"
I was awake at 4:00 a.m.,
watching a guy play Minecraft in the background
while just reading Reddit,
and it made me want to get killed by
a random bolt of lightning from God.
If I hear the first note of the fucking "Oh No" song,
I will swan dive out of the nearest window
face-down into some fucking concrete, okay?
Now, there is something about TikTok culture
which is just desperate,
and I've been a YouTuber since 2009.
I get to say that.
The way that people are so desperate
to immediately hopping on a trend like Binley Mega Chippy,
which I mean, yeah, look, that's iconic,
but Jesus on a bloody bicycle.
Once it became a thing, it was like an exodus,
not to just go there and appreciate a potato,
but to simply record yourself in the location.
Not creating any content.
Just geo-tagging you were there.
Why?
The trends completely bulldoze society.
What the fuck was Gentleminions about, huh?
Like, that's funny as fuck, not gonna lie,
but the poor kids just trying to have
some banana time in the middle of the day
had to deal with some TikTokkers
stood up in the middle of the film,
spinning around, showing their suits.
This is the antisocial apocalypse,
and these trends come and go like my dopamine levels.
One minute, you are the epicenter of humanity,
and, next week,
you are dead and buried like Margaret Thatcher.
I'm just reminding people
in case they need a little pick-me-up.
(Dan chuckles)
Okay.
The most.
(Dan giggles)
Right, anyway, the most, it's fine.
Look, Section 28, that's not a controversial opinion.
The most obvious clash with me personally
is, obviously, TikToks are short.
My first video this year was 85 minutes long.
I clearly like to play cock and ball torture
with people's attention span over here,
but, over there, it is a competition
to be as loud and fast and bright as possible
and then get out, which the millennial in me would say
this is gonna destroy entertainment and education
if people need everything to be dumbed down
and can't watch something over four seconds long,
but the 3:00 a.m. surreal memer in me says
get with the times, bro.
Why waste time saying a lot word when few word do trick?
That's an "Office" reference, millennial.
I feel like it is.
At what point will "Friends" become ironically zoomer?
Oi, are you even watching this?
Did you scroll down to the comments? Be honest.
All right, you have five seconds to list five things
in the background of the set.
(dramatic game show music)
You failed! Fuck.
What we've learned by the fact that
TikTok is kicking the shit-shok
out of every other platform's popularity right now is
it is simply the most powerful way to communicate.
They have found the mind-crack.
It is the apex predator platform,
and everyone in the world who makes content,
whether you are an aquarium YouTuber or a TV sports network,
now demands that all content is
short, snackable, and vertical.
Do you remember two years ago when everyone would be like,
"Look at this post on the internet"?
"Oh, you filmed it vertical. You've ruined it."
"Can we stop vertical video?"
You lost. Do you?
Yes, you remember now. No, you forgot.
You, too, were corrupted,
and now every other inferior social media platform
is desperately playing catch-up.
Hey, kids, do you want some YouTube Shorts?
No? Do you want some Reels?
Shit, no one's watching the Reels.
Quickly, put the Reels in the main feed!
Oh, God. Oh, God, we're still behind!
Make the whole feed Reels! Go!
Wait, now everyone fucking hates us
'cause we literally stopped being
the app that we're supposed to be.
However, with great power comes great responsibility,
and when you can reach so many people so fast
and be so influential,
the bad guys have just leveled the fuck up.
The algorithm, which finds someone
that piqued your interests and sends you down a rabbit hole,
can take you from
complaining about a video game's release being delayed
to being a full Nazi in about 20 minutes.
Your algorithm could be cute places to grab lunch,
or conspiracies about how 5G in the water
is making the COVID gay!
There are terrible, evil fucking misogynists
talking about how to control women and be an alpha male,
which, for reference,
as the self-appointed expert, is cringe,
but this shit is getting billions of views,
and like a CIA brainwash scene
with someone strapped to a chair
with their eyelids peeled open,
when we get naturally pulled into the fucking TikTok hole
in the dark of night, sat in our bed,
this shit taps straight into your soul,
and that genuinely scares me.
For a long time, I didn't download it,
because it is absolutely just harvesting all our data
and sending it to China
for them to recreate human consciousness
and put them into gene-edited robot clone drones,
but I've now just given up 'cause I live with Phil
and found out he always just
shares his contacts with every app
and just gives them microphone access,
so they've got my fucking DNA on print already.
I do wonder where this algorithm will go in the future.
They'll probably know us so well, they'll just be able to
completely control human emotion and behavior
and influence our actions and conscript us
to fight in World War IV
against Zuckerberg's 30-meter-tall Metazord,
trying to trap people in VR, having shit family meetings.
I miss having free will, I think.
I like not knowing what I want sometimes.
It's just a good way to pass the time.
It'll be sad if I walk into a Lidl
and the algorithm already knows that I want
six AA batteries, a bottle of red wine, and a cucumber.
Where's the mystery?
I'll be honest though.
I mainly know that if, when I get into it,
my already world-record-breaking
procrastination and productivity,
dear God, you will never see me again,
and, honestly, I am scared of what my take on TikTok trends
and 3:00 a.m. shitposts would be.
I should never be allowed something
that lets me make and publish content without time to think.
You should all be scared of that reality,
but, for all the bad, there is inevitably just as much good.
Like all social media, people can create communities.
They can get representation and education
that they might not have in their culture in the real world,
now at hyper speed. - Yass.
- Like, imagine how quickly I could have just told you
I was gay on TikTok instead of YouTube, right?
Fucking hell.
- [TTS Voice] Basically, I'm gay.
- It's given us some things
that have added some joy into my life
that made me feel like I wouldn't just nuke all of us
if I had a big red button.
I wouldn't nuke the cranberry juice guy.
Jesus, he got me through the whole fucking month,
but the Musical.ly skeleton hiding deep within,
it's thanks to that technology
that we get the 11th-dimensional out-of-context collabs.
It's too easy to just focus on the below-surface iceberg of,
yeah, dystopian tech, cringe dancing, and groomer boomers,
but if you know where to look,
TikTok is just where the good shit is first,
and do you know when this happened before?
Vine. (dramatic music)
Yeah, oh, we all hated Vine when it was alive,
'cause for every groundbreaking original comedian genius,
there are a thousand mind-numbing teen influencers
that made me wanna start my Joker arc,
but we don't remember that shit.
We just remember the
"Vines That Cured My Crippling Depression" compilations
that consistently restore my faith in humanity,
even if I've seen them a thousand times each.
So what do I think?
Well, I think it doesn't matter what I think,
because it is too late and it is inevitable.
(solemn music)
(Dan sighs)
So I made an account.
(ominous music)
(Dan chuckles)
Follow me on fucking TikTok!
(Dan sighs)
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