If you haven’t heard, the United States House of Representatives is trying to ban the short-form video app TikTok by forcing it find a new owner that isn’t the China-based company ByteDance, lest it be removed from American app stores because it’s an alleged security risk. It’s unlikely that ByteDance will drop its incredibly popular social media app, so if this proposed bill is enacted, millions of Americans will lose a source of entertainment, income, information, and connection.
This has widespread ramifications for a lot of industries, but video game creators have thrived on the app. If TikTok goes away, it will be a massive loss for the communities that carved out a place on the app. In the wake of the bill passing, users have taken to social media to post examples of why the app is good and should remain available to US citizens. So, we thought we’d round up a few video game-specific TikToks to help make the case.
TikTok’s algorithm-based For You Page means that, after using it enough, the app will feed you videos that cater to your specific tastes. That means I get a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay and thirst traps of men at the gym. But I also see a lot of memes and inside jokes featuring games I don’t play, or communities I’m not in, that require me to do some digging to try and understand them. But thanks to TikTok’s tagging features, it’s usually easy to figure out what niche inside joke is being referenced in a video.
If you’re at all swayed by the cause, whether by this collection of videos below or by the fact that the U.S. government seems to be incapable of handling actual problems in this country, TikTok users are organizing to call representatives to push against the ban.
Without further ado, here are some pretty good TikToks from different video game communities.