8: Conclusion

On July 31, 2020, President Donald Trump announced he would consider banning TikTok from the United States if a American company couldn't buy it.¹ TikTok is a video app that started as a way for users to share short videos, usually lip-synching to popular music. Founded as Musical.ly in 2014, Chinese company ByteDance purchased the app and merged it with their own app TikTok in 2017. The app's primary user base is teenagers who have become quite adept at participating in memes and “challenges” using TikTok's user-friendly interface. TikTok remained under most adult Americans' radar until Trump's infamous Tulsa, Oklahoma rally where about 6,200 people showed up to a 20,000 person arena for a Trump rally. TikTok users created videos in which they “accidentally” reserved two tickets to the rally but remember they can't make it because they have to do outlandish things like “walk my fish” instead. This meme led the Trump Campaign to believe exponentially more people reserved tickets than the capacity of the arena. Much to Trump's surprise, his fans sparsely attended the COVID-era rally.² Many commentators believe the President's actions to shut-down TikTok because it was a Chinese-owned “security threat” stemmed from the TikTok users' call-to-action.³ While the political outcome of TikTok users' attempt to buy all of the Tulsa rally tickets is debatable, streaming culture facilitated comedic collective action.