MILLENNIAL DIARY
We welcome TikTok as Trump tries to ban it
ANOTHER week, another rollercoaster for TikTok: while Ireland welcomed the Chinese tech giant building a European data centre here with open arms,
Trump issued the executive order to have the app banned completely in the US, radicalising an entire generation of American teens in one fell swoop.
A couple of weeks ago Ireland was pretty sceptical about TikTok too — in fairness, its privacy and security problems aren’t really up for debate at this point.
But I suppose we feel now that if TikTok has to mine absolutely all of our data, passwords, keystrokes and browsing history, isn’t it as well that they store them in Ireland? Isn’t that better than having them God-knows-where? At least we can keep an eye on it this way, and maybe get a heads up when the digital fascist revolution comes.
An animal howl of pain and vengeance rang out on Friday when the executive order was signed, and #SaveTikTok began trending.
Everyone’s least favourite horseman of the apocalypse, Zuckerberg, rode in to save the day. ‘Don’t worry teens,’ he didn’t say, ‘Ol’ Mark has your back — you can do your TikTokking on Instagram Reels now, which is basically the same as TikTok except American and intrinsically less cool!’
The idea of Reels does not comfort the millions of US teens who feel that the potential ban is the real rock bottom of 2020 — Reels is like the oven chips your mum says you can have at home when you drive past a McDonald’s.
Teens don’t want Reels. But millennials might well move over, seeing as we’re only tourists on TikTok anyway and most of our business is on Instagram. It’s handier to have everything in the same place and we’re less likely to be faced with teen memes about our own incompetence daily.
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Everyone knows there’s nothing worse than being teased by teenagers: we hope to leave it behind when we stop being teenagers ourselves, but it doesn’t always work that way.
It’s millennial cultural tastes that seem to bother teens the most: why do we think Harry Potter is important? Why did we make Hamilton a Thing? Why brunch?
But, in fairness, although we may say we feel personally victimised by Gen Z memes, we have not been — unless we are Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Last week, teens noticed that the Hamilton creator has a disconcerting habit of biting his lip coquettishly for selfies. There’s no doubt: it’s disturbing and the more you look at it, the more disturbed you become. One was even available framed on his official merchandise shop. Teens turned the Pulitzer Prize winner into an unstoppable meme, Lin-Manuel-biting-his-lip content had hundreds of millions of views last week, all served with a helping of profound cringe — possibly the most powerful force on the internet.
TikTok is essentially a way for teens to tease anyone they want, and turn it into a form of collective action: Trump is eviscerated by 14-year-olds en masse every day, in ever more creative and surreal ways; and the story here is undoubtedly about how Lin-Manuel’s ‘progressive’ hip-hop rendering of the founding fathers represents everything that is wrong with ‘liberal’ millennial politics according to Gen Z, and the sharp cultural incline we’re at — but all I can think about is whether I’m currently doing something I think is innocuous that would appal teens if they knew.
I hope I find out what it is before they do.
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Hopes for a late-summer miracle were dashed last week as guest restrictions for weddings remained in place. This was difficult and sad for many couples who’d been planning their big day — but the consternation ran much deeper than that, right to the core of our national self-esteem.
What is Ireland without two-day weddings with hundreds of people? Who are we really if we’re not sing-shouting directly into a tuxedoed stranger’s ear at 3am? What is a wedding if not an opportunity to meet loads of your distant aunts for the first time because their presence is an absolute deal-breaker for your mother, though she hasn’t seen them since someone else’s wedding in the ’90s?
This is the country of Posh Spice and David Beckham’s wedding — with thrones. This is where a literal Beatle (admittedly, Paul McCartney) got married. For goodness sake: this is Ireland where not 10 years ago we hosted Brian and Amy Huberman’s there’s-no-recession-inLeitrim festivus. Who could have imagined that not a decade later we’d be talking about 50-guest caps and salt shaker on request only?
However, many millennials are secretly thrilled at the news, which means they can have the anti-social wedding they always dreamed of, without their best friend’s terrible boyfriend — and you, yes you — in attendance.
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If millennials can indeed be redeemed, our redeemer, our Messiah, would be Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama has all the dreamy impressiveness of her husband, without the bummers, like (a) being a cis man (booooo say millennials), (b) presiding over the bombing of civilian children.
Millennials feel let down by our institutions and elders; it’s kind of our whole thing. In a world of Karens and boomers, when it seems like no one understands us and Gen X has just left us out to dry, Michelle Obama is our safe space. She is the mother every 30-year-old woman furloughed from her marketing job needs. She is the aunt who knows what you mean, you don’t need to explain: we trust Michelle Obama.
For years Michelle Obama has been saying: shoot for the moon! You never know the power of your own potential! I, Michelle Obama, believe in you.
She also told us, “it’s not always enough to lean in, because that s--- doesn’t work all the time”, and we felt seen: Michelle knew it wasn’t our fault. Michelle is on our side.
And last week Michelle said that she has been suffering with some ‘lowgrade depression’, not just because of quarantine, but because of Trump and rife hypocrisy.
Said the millennials: same.
Anecdotally it seems last week a lot of us hit a wall: there was the dawning realisation that life really isn’t going to get back to normal, not really, and the awareness of the number of people who aren’t willing to help the collective effort against the virus. It has felt hopeless and demoralising in a new and more upsetting way.
And Michelle Obama feels it too; we’re validated once again.
It may be a cliche to say ‘you’re not alone’, but when the person you’re ‘not alone’ with is Michelle Obama, you can at least let yourself off the hook.
If Michelle can’t cope, like, you definitely can’t.