I don’t know, I guess there had been calls from nations around the world about privacy on Tik Tok which is unfortunate considering the completely positive reputation it has. Like before I got an account, all anyone ever told me about it was that it has stupid teens dancing. But that’s harmlessly positive. I did decide to make an account eventually and it’s been a grand ole time. To say tik tok is just dancing teens is a real understatement of the content on there. I’ve seen short films, shit posts, plenty of skit creators, cinematographic experiments, and some well choreographed dances. So it is the same as YouTube, just shorter time on videos. That even gives Tik Tok creators more time to specifically make content there and increase their virality.
But it’s Chinese! I guess. That’s the argument you hear from some national leaders around the world but it really isn’t. So I wanted to figure like how a Chinese company became a global powerhouse on the social side of the Internet. I went on Wikipedia and learned about their origin in music.ly, Douyin, and the parent company Bytedance. Basically, from what I understood, Tik Tok started as an independent cousin to Douyin that was to be international since Douyin was Chinese. The apps are functionally the same though (with the lip-syncing and dancing teens) but they have different servers and different employees. Tik Tok itself is based (I thought) in California and is only considered for the rest of the world. So basically, it has nothing to do with China.
Now because of an actual dispute with China, India decided to ban the app into their country. You know that’s over dramatic but at least that’s a cause. Now I think there were also some European counties that banned Tik Tok from government employees but I don’t see that they would be young enough to download it in the first place. They all seem to agree (along with some American governors) that Tik Tok has a privacy issue. Maybe China could spy on us with that app but it I find it much easier for China just to keep doing what they are doing. Literally 1400 years of European warfare has taught us that directly attacking our rivals is hardly a sustainable way of growth as a nation. It’s better to just outlast them economically which is what we did with Soviet Russia. China as a civilization has only been kind of expansionist, most dynasties just vassalize and keep to themselves because it is a self sufficient geography. The same is true for Maoist China that started their Belt and Road Initiative and has no reason to actively fight us. They’re just gonna try to outlast us and we’re gonna get distracted by uhhhh oh fucking Tik Tok. I mean I totally understand 20th Century thinking that China may do something against the USA, but I’m also 23 and naturally more hopeful we just forget this nonsense of nationalist competition (foreshadowing). Anyway, I guess for a while now, Congress has had discussions with Tik Tok reps before hand but on March 23rd, they had a public hearing livestreamed to YouTube (where I watched) and other distributors. It would be with the CEO of the company, Shou Zi Chew, a man from Singapore. I didn’t even know about it until I saw clips on tik tok making fun of the meeting because of how…disconnected the Congress members were to say the least. Because I’m going to say a lot about them. Because the entire thing is 5 hours!
And to prep you on how disastrously useless the conversation was, I got more out of the Seth the Programmer Keemstar episode than this. Besides writing this article, I also genuinely wanted to learn more about the Tik Tok app that Chew may state in this hearing because I don’t know that much only after using it for over a year. A lot could be and should be clarified in a 5 hour conversation (even though there were some damming clips) but this does not come close to happening. We’re about to get to the actual conversation but there’s a few structural reasons to explain why this was unproductive.
- When it starts, the Chair (some lady I’m not gonna remember names for this) had stated that every member gets 5 minutes speaking to Mr Chew. Now originally, I thought that meant, they’re timed up to five minutes and Chew could potentially for as long as they want but no. However long he talks is also counted for their five minutes. Absolutely a dogshit idea when compounded with other things.
- “Loud and Annoying” is an effect that allows the monster to completely override Chew’s answers by interrupting him, speaking over him, and basically serving him to speaking rights. They do this out of fear of running out of time but-
- “Prepared Opening” quite literally all of them had a prepared opening (which is fine) but every time it takes up like 3-4 mins of their time. Their openings are mostly grandstanding, meandering about some policy, or slowly recounting some instance of falsehood from Tik Tok Corp unrelated to their question. A lot of them will also repeat each other. I understand if they came up with their statements independently without checking each other…BUT that doesn’t mean they can’t omit it in the moment. If someone before said this thing don’t waste time repeating it.
- “Selective Attention” is another effect that allows a monster to completely ignore an attack on an ally monster, thus leaving that monster undamaged. Really, they did not seem to be listening to each other except for when it helped their extremely unfriendly case. Even without that, when they repeat points or questions Chew has already answered, they waste their own time. They they act all mad at him if he tries to elaborate on anything. This also allows them to be completely un-self-aware.
- “I see my time’s up” is what they say when they assume the Chair will cut them off (immediately after cutting off Chew). Sometimes they’ll rush their last sentence or tell Chew that they don’t have time anymore but then…
- “I recover my time” or something similar is what they’d say if they feel like Chew wasted time with an answer so with this spell card, they can recover the thirty seconds or something. I’m pretty sure one of them used it twice in one turn (kind of broken) but most didn’t use this.
- “I offer my remaining time to” allows a monster to gift all their atk points to another monster on the field for the turn. This only happened once. I forget who but this guy just gave some proud insult at Chew’s company and then just gave up his time to others. I don’t know what he came here for.
- Lack of faith is another structural issue this conversation had. Imagine trying to interview a guy with a bias of not believing or understanding what he wants to say. First, the Chair had begun the meeting with five minutes of not just explaining the issue but completely muddying the waters and ruining any chance of non-bias (which I feel like should be the role of the Chair but I’m just a civilian). Literally all she said was attacking Tik Tok via alleged connections to the Chinese government and using that as a basis for a spying on 150 million American theory. Then all the other members would (again spend half their time) assailing Tik Tok as if Chew personally and violently fucked their entire family line. Then they’d give a question and he’d try to answer it but kept getting interrupted. Even if he did give a full answer, they’d simply disagree and this ending is the worst part.
- I’m going to ballpark that about 75% played this card. “Prepared Closing” is a field spell card that allows the player to switch positions of monsters on the field as they please during the Endphase. This means that no matter how Chew answers or tries to retort, they give a full minute speech about how he didn’t convince them nor was he able to clear Tik Tok’s name as they shit on it one more time. I literally only noticed this about two hours in but most of every one of them was doing it. And in order to do this, they had to act like they were unconvinced during the conversation so no matter what transpired they could proudly say “well seems like you are the dirty chink that I thought you to be. I hope that I and other Americans all recognize this yellow for the bastard that he and all of his communist woke faggy unholy subhuman pieces of shit that they are” (I simply forgot the name of who exactly I’m quoting). And that sucked for me watching because it felt like the Congress person wasted their own time. For every useless interview I asked, “why did you even come? Why are you hearing taking up time and space?”
- “Insufficient Objectivity” is a trap card that allows the player to flip a coin on whether or not the opponent’s attack misses. If it is tails, it misses and the attacking monster is turned to defense mode. If heads, take no damage. That sounds crazy broken, right? There were several of them that would ask fairly complicated questions that Chew was happy to elaborate on but then they would interrupt him to say “just yes or no does Tik Tok support the Uyghur Genocide?” Like what the fuck?? What the shit??? (Btw they ask this five separate times) And he’d tried to say “yes/no but-” and is unable to complete this sentence. He would learn this quickly in the first thirty minutes (that he doesn’t have a right to speak clearly and at length) despite being the most polite CEO possible, and so he adjusted with his own spell cards.
- “Save for later” this monster effect allows him to send an opponents monster to the graveyard once per turn but they will be brought back to the field on your his next turn. Chew used this to answer most complicated questions, basically promising each Congress person an email that can fully explain whatever they asked although it does give him a lot of homework for later.
- “Broad Stroke” an equip card that allows damage calculation to be compared to an opponent’s defense points rather than attack no matter what position they are in. Basically he would give a general answer as he usually could not elaborate for more than ten seconds and it may suffice for the Congress person.
- But an hour in, the members got tired of him vaguely answering stuff (because he kept getting interrupted) and they would continue to call him dodgy, ‘beating around the bush’, dancer, and unsure. This strange creature born in 1845 literally used his turn to just rant about how ‘unclear’ Chew was being since this information would be oh so important to the American people. He was one of the most annoying retards on stage simply because he was unaware of exactly why Chew can’t answer specifically. And I’ll agree that Chew was ‘lying’ at times but not to tell falsehoods. He was simply omitting stuff at times. You know why? He could barely get anything out of his mouth! He was fucking forced to lie in that position which ultimately sucked more for me (who wanted to know the tiny details of the app) rather than them who can easily email him. The Chair didn’t even let Chew respond to this attack (and many others) on his polite character, I was screaming and crying. And I don’t know how Chew could help himself here. If the other person in a conversation is being so faithless that they treat you this way, you just kind of have to react well or lie. Either way, the conversation won’t progress.
- Xenophobia is one final reason reason the structure of this livestream was inherently broken. This goes back to treating him with bad faith and a later point I’ll make about nationalism but ultimately, this was a huge fuel to stopping progress. They didn’r call him a chink or anything but this is only proposed to exist because they believe a ‘Chinese’ app would be ‘supporting’ China because of fears of China. Again though, that’s 20 Century thinking. We’ll discuss later how but Chew consistently argued from a time period beyond their own where more acceptance would be had.
So when you add a dash of xenophobia on top of short speaking time while they meander about misguided fearmongering before they finally ask a question for which they will ignore the answer to while interrupting him, you don’t have a good conversation at all. And I have to use the word, this was functionally retarded. Some of you may be iffy about the word but that’s because folks used to use it to refer to autistic people. If your iffy about this word, I have to assume you’re iffy about stupid, idiot, or dumb which is fine but I use all these words the same. It’s not for any mentally ill person. Retard is reserved something that is slowed or weakened which every Congress person here is hellbent on doing to the conversation. They were retarding it and are thus retards. Could I be nicer and call them senile? Same difference to me, I won’t be name dropping them specifically.
tdwriter 