It is With a Heavy Heart We Bid Farewell to Jackson Mahomes, Who Says We Won't Be Seeing Him Once TikTok is Banned

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As of this morning, lawmakers who have been attempting to force China to sell TikTok or ban the app altogether scored a major victory in court:

The ban is set to go into effect on Monday. The Biden Administration is reportedly not going spend its last hours enforcing it. And about-to-be President Trump is expected to negotiate a deal where TikTok finds a new owner and stays in operation. So seems that this is one of those issues that affects people directly and cuts across party/ideological lines. 

Personally, I'm torn. On the one hand, I only use the app as necessary to find content for the app you're currently on. I don't like the look of it or how it functions. Generally speaking, it's the home court of females in their late teens and early 20s with daddy issues dancing and lip-syncing and no place for a thoughtful, literate, charming silver fox like me. 

But people love it. Clearly, it's become a lifestyle for those who like to get their entertainment and information in bite-sized, 7-second increments. And since I try to be a Free Speech absolutist (as close as you can be without inviting all sorts of demonic horrors), I'm OK with the existence of a social media platform that does nothing for me. You hang out in your playground, I'll stick with mine, and everybody wins.

Here's where it gets complicated, though. There's a price to be paid for keeping TikTok available. A societal one, as well as a national security one. There is no disputing that. It's been clearly demonstrated that the Chinese Communist Party controls the algorithm to promote the worst, most divisive, and fringe content in order to sew discord in the US. Download the same app in China, and it's all positivity. Students winning academic awards and the People's Republic heroically building great public works projects for the greater good and serve the revolution or whatever. All while data mining every American user like we're filled with zinc and lithium. 

And let's not for one hot second pretend that Free Speech as we think of it is actually something TikTok's overlords practice:

So in that respect, I say good riddance. If the platform existed for any reason other than as a form of spyware, the company would get sold to an American interest and the issue would be dead. The very fact they'd rather burn it to the ground than take their money and run tells you everything about what the CCP's intent is. And they are not on the side of the angels on this one. 

On the other hand, there's a heavy societal price already being paid by this decision. It's costing us more than just the Costco Guys no longer having a platform to eat food samples and say "Boom." 

Hard as that may be to accept. Worse still, it's costing us Jackson Mahomes:

Sure, he's insufferable. Utterly devoid of talent. Providing zero reasons to consume his content. The lowest form of fame-chasing, celebrity-adjacent, nepo-brothering since Michael Douglas' brother Eric hit the stand up comedy circuit in the '90s.* But he was our no-talent glommer. And TikTok was the perfect platform for his worthless, entertainment-free, self-aggrandized, narcissistic attention whoring. 

Just think, the next time the Chiefs win a postseason game (pause to choke back the vomit in my mouth) and Jackson records himself dancing on the postgame field, he'll only have his family, friends, and followers on the 'Gram to share it with. And for that, all of us are poorer in spirit. Even if we're safer and more cyber secure. Thanks for nothing, highest court in the land. You just ruined America. 

(* I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But I worked some comedy rooms when Eric Douglas was making the rounds and can confirm he was an entitled prick in addition to being an objectively terrible comic. According to legend, he once responded to a heckler by yelling at him with the worst sentence in the English language. "Do you know who I am?" And then continued, "You can't talk to me like that! I'm Kirk Douglas' son!" To which someone stood up and said, "I'M Kirk Douglas' son!" Another stood up, "I'M Kirk Douglas' son!":

Soon it was the whole audience. If true, it was the greatest spontaneous group heckle in comedy history. And I believe it because I want to believe it.)