Abby Jimenez said she and her family felt “whiplashed” on Sunday morning, when the video-centric TikTok social network was restored to service in the United States after being shuttered late Saturday.
Jimenez, the local author of bestselling romances and a hardcore user of social networks, harnesses the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to announce book readings and so on.
But TikTok is special to the west metro resident. Her novels are rarely mentioned on this network. Instead, it’s where she nurtures a reader community focused largely on hijinks in her household — often including Stuntman Mike and her three other dogs, along with her daughter Maya, who plays 15 musical instruments and delights in sparring with mom.
Plus, she said, it’s super easy to create clever videos. “TikTok is where I go to have a good time,” said Jimenez.
So, when China-based TikTok owner ByteDance announced Saturday that it was going dark in this country, she said at the time, “I’m devastated. I feel violated.”
ByteDance’s move was a preemptive one because the U.S. government was about to block TikTok on security concerns that the company is too cozy with the China’s Communist government.
ByteDance then resuscitated TikTok in this country when incoming President Trump announced he planned to sign an executive order giving the social network 90 days of breathing room to find U.S. ownership of some kind.
“I’m back on the app, I love the app,” Jimenez said. “I went down with that ship right until they shut it off and I was back on immediately when it came back.”
Arik Hanson understands TikTok’s appeal, even though he doesn’t use it much himself.
The Twin Cities-based social media consultant says Internet users are drawn to TikTok like they are to certain popular podcasts and Substack blogs.
“I think for most people, it’s maybe not an addiction, but a love for TikTok that they don’t have for other platforms. I don’t know what it is, exactly. It feels like a community.”
Josh Liljenquist agrees. The TikTok creator has built a St. Paul-centric home on the social network with a simple schtick: He walks into a restaurant, buys large quantities of a popular entree, and gives it all away to homeless people at telltale locations such as the Dorothy Day Center.
In the process, he’s built two communities. There are the 8.4 million followers who watch his every move. And there’s the increasingly close-knit network of IRL (in real life) folks such as restaurateurs and unhoused people who have in many cases become his friends.
That’s why Liljenquist last week was sweating the fact that TikTok might go away. “I spent a lot of time building a community just for it to be taken away overnight. It just sucks,” the Chaska resident said at the time.
But he was breathing easier on Sunday. The TikTok outage hadn’t affected filming that happens pretty much daily.
And he was figuring out that he could keep his channel going on other networks, if necessary. It’s not, at its core, a money-burning enterprise, since restaurants usually give him their food for free.
But money he gets from the TikTok Creator’s Fund comes in handy for buying the homeless tents, blankets, pillows and propane-tank refills.
That’s the community part of TikTok that Liljenquist and other users keep talking about.
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