Creator rants about influencer culture and the TikTok banfrom @bradley.thor

Transcript

Saturday, January 18. These are going to be the last few things that I cover about the bad before we all collectively learn what actually does end up happening. First, there's an awful lot of speculation being tossed around about TikTok being purchased, offers being made, changes in ownership. It's all exactly that, just speculation. So don't let it rob your attention span too much right now. If you dump too much emotional energy into what's going to happen that hasn't happened yet, it's gonna scatter your energy. It's gonna scatter your efforts. No matter how breaking somebody tells you a story is, if that story is just speculative purchasing of the app, it's not a story. Best, I wanna take a last opportunity here to address some of the pushback that I've gotten for riding so hard for this app. I've actually been seeing and receiving a lot of commentary about how foolish it was for me to fight so hard for this app if I wanted to just move it along to some other app and tell people where to follow me, that would have been the smart thing to do. So I have a very strong message to the people that feel that way. I know the influencer culture of people who just post and ghost and don't interact with your comments. I've been invited to the influencer events or the celebrity events where you go to a red carpet, take photo ops in some sort of attempt to hit that escape velocity tier not need to interact with people who follow you anymore. I know there are influencers who are famous enough to go on any app and find instant success because people just recognize their face. And I am painfully aware of this overwhelming air of entitlement. People just leaving the app and hopping to the next place without having anything to say. But the difference is I use this fucking app. I use this app to connect. I yes this app to enlighten myself to learn more things that I might have not had evolved perspectives on. I yes this app to learn about marginalized communities that I would have never been exposed to. I yes this app to make friends. I used this app by reading comments no matter how toxic that was for my mental health. I use this app to take in what people wanted to learn from me and to slowly apply it in a tasteful, organized fashion. I use this app to grow my small business, but nothing I fucking did to talk about saving this app is worth praising. Imagine the entitlement of letting a bunch of people help you grow, help you change the size of your business, help you make more money, help you pay your bills. Every comment, every like, every repost, every time somebody patted you on the fucking back and having such a flimsy spine, such a gelatin skeleton that you can't turn around and say a few things about trying to keep the app at a bare minimum no to at least just stand up for your community's ability to keep using the app. My point is I think influencer culture might have died this week. And unless you show that you have a genuine interest in the way people feel and how you can bring them content they thoroughly enjoy, I don't think our community is gonna have the taste buds to stomach that entitlement anymore. I'm a nineties baby. We've been told who is famous and who to watch and who to pay attention to our entire lives. And to keep it absolutely 100 with you, I just don't think the American people, the collective are going to have the palate, the taste buds anymore to consume content from people, from celebrities who can't even hear them. TikTok may get saved. Someone may buy it and change it forever. Someone may buy it and keep it exactly the same. Someone may not buy it at all. My point is is that no matter what app we end up on, read the room. I am way more terrified of celebrities and influencers who have no takes than influencers and celebrities who have bad takes. So if somebody comes swooping in with a Superman cape on and saves the day for TikTok, I reserve the right to change my mind on whether or not that's a good thing based on how free speaking this app remains. I just wanted unadulterated access to see the opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles of my fellow American citizens. It's not the app I'm fighting for. It's that I'm fighting for. Saving this app, saving TikTok was my idea of a means to that goal. It is not the goal in itself. Okay. So what's the point, Thorin? What are you trying to get at? Reason why I'm not pushing so hard to tell you where to follow me best, find me tier, is because I don't want you going where I'm going. I wanna go where y'all are going, and I'll need to earn your attention span on the next platform by merit. I didn't earn your follow on another platform yet. Maybe I will.