#115. TikTok Users and You

Everything on the app makes me feel like a coastal grandpa, and not in a chic way.

Hi everyone,

What an intense week! David Lynch* died!Football playoffs continued! Ceasefire deal??? TikTok ban went into effect! The Unrivaled woman’s basketball league tipped off! Ongoing fires in Los Angeles. The inauguration later today?!?!?! People yelling at me online for saying it’s a big corporation’s job to provide value to its customers. Severance is back! It’s been a true “We Didn’t Start the Fire” type of seven-day span.

(Okay for real what did people think about the Severance premiere?)

Also I turned 40 on Wednesday! I was a little flustered by the competing goals of:
- Throwing a party!
- Not forgetting to invite anyone! (I think I did the worst at this one!)
- Making it feel like it’s totally okay if people were unavailable to be there!
- Still having a bunch of people show up!

Photo by Arin Sang-urai. Sweater a birthday gift from Maris.

Overall I think I did okay! (Although, I am extremely sorry to anyone who slipped through the invitation cracks!) Lots of pals showed up. My somewhat-chaotic playlist (sorry for the Spotify link; it’s what the venue requested) set a fun tone. All the pizza got eaten. The photos (taken by Arin Sang-urai) came out great too. And, many different people came up to me to say that they had met cool and interesting people they didn’t already know, which is such a nice party compliment.

I don’t have a ton to say about hitting a big milestone birthday other than to say it feels really gratifying to hit this big round number and feel so grateful for all the love and support in my life from family and friends. And to feel more capable and accomplished professionally than I was the last time I hit one of these decade markers. Looking back in the medium-view, I had a pretty excellent ten years, despite everything. And a good ten years is made up of a bunch of good individual days, which can occur through engineering or by surprise basically any time, weather permitting.

So, thanks to everyone who came out! And everyone who sent a happy birthday message over the internet! I wasn’t able to reply to all of them, which of course makes me deeply uncomfortable! Just know that, okay?

Last night, Maris and I went to opening night of Gary Gulman’s off-Broadway solo show Grandiloquent. We’d seen it in previews a couple of weeks back, but we were invited back to the official premiere, and it is even better now! Plus, the people-watching was out of control. Maris and I were seated in a row with a bunch of friends, but also we were directly behind OLIVIA RODRIGO???? So I also kind of watched one of the world’s biggest pop stars enjoy Gary’s show.

I hope on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day/Trump Inauguration Day Pt. 2 we are all able to think about how we can do our part to help build a fairer and kinder world and undo cruel and racist systems. Especially because there are so many people who seem to love racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic policies and want to hug and kiss them. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that for today!

I know I put my all of my show dates at the bottom of the newsletter, but here are a few upcoming shows that will be really fun!

This photo is ALSO by Arin!

TONIGHT: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall in Brooklyn!
SATURDAY: Sup, Bro? with Alison Leiby in San Francisco (plus a couple of other Sketchfest shows, but I’d really love for you to come to this one)!!!
NEXT WEEK: Los Angeles! Details below!
2/8: Circle Round LIVE! in Boston

*I have a possibly dubious memory of my parents recording the original run of Twin Peaks off of the tv onto VHS tapes but not letting me watch it because it was too scary. But also Twin Peaks seems way too scary for my mom to enjoy. Mom, I know you’re reading this. Text me to clarify please!

PEP TALK FOR TIKTOK USERS

America’s…greatest…adversary?

It seems like, for the time being, you’re back in the game. After a brief interlude Saturday night through Sunday morning, which gave Big Shortform Video a chance to kiss Donald Trump’s weird butt. So, you’re back in action for now, at least, whether you’re an aspiring dancer or a famous chinchilla or a political commentator or someone who just performs other people’s jokes without giving them credit or a standup comedian who’s extremely curious about how long the two people in the front row have been dating or a “wellness professional” who’s rebranding eating disorders as biohacking or a guy and his twin son (?) who got famous (?) for reviewing Costco’s food or “coaches” who aren’t legally allowed to call themselves therapists but who use the exact cadence of therapists they’ve seen on television. All of you, plus your fans, you’re back!

I am, sincerely, sorry for any professional instability and stress the actions of our government have caused you. Many of you are extremely talented and hardworking and spent a lot of time building a career tied to this specific platform, and now it’s in jeopardy for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint. I honestly had to google “why are they banning tiktok, again?” and the reasoning still feels slightly clunky to me. I guess because TikTok’s parent company is based in China, the data harvesting they do is bad and should be illegal. As opposed to the data being harvested by American tech companies which is business as usual, play on player.

I don’t even really like or care about TikTok (besides the fact that it’s been helpful to the careers of many people I like and respect, and the fact that it serves unlimited cute dog videos to my wife). But it does feel strange that this is the app that has to go. Personally, I am way less worried about Chinese companies than American ones because the Chinese government isn’t the boss of me. I don’t (as far as I know) present a national security risk by occasionally uploading standup clips when I remember to do that. Or by watching half of a video of someone making the worst-looking recipe I’ve ever seen and then logging out of the app for a week and a half. I would rather have tabs kept on my by a government that isn’t allowed to do anything with that information than one who can show up at my apartment whenever they want.

Like, am I supposed to feel like China, the country, is my enemy? I don’t love everything their government does, but also I don’t love everything our government does. And who gives a shit what country is #1 in the world at various industrial metrics? What’s the reward for being #1? Do they hang a big gold medal on the White House? Do we get holiday bonuses? How is letting tweens lip sync to Taylor Swift songs standing in the way of that regardless?

I don’t love the algorithmically-driven self-censorship on TikTok. If I were personally choosing a reason to ban the app it would be the way the algorithm-avoiding euphemisms have escaped containment and are being spoken out loud not even for videos. Hearing someone say “unalive” to mean die or kill makes me want to commit vehicular buttpepper (my cute new TikTok-style alternative term for “assault”). But it’s not technically unconstitutional to trick people into sounding ridiculous.

I hope that you get to keep making your videos about amateur botany experiments or gentle parenting or “reactions” to other popular videos where you just make a befuddled face or theories about relationships you learned from a 22-year-old who’s never been on a third date. And I’m sorry that, between this and our increasingly-cruel immigration policy, Congress’s biggest issue of bipartisan consensus seems to be xenophobia in one form or another.

Anyway, the decision to ban TikTok seemed legally workable but philosophically unnecessary. And now it’s potentially here to stay thanks in part to our incoming president who hates China but loves any outlet to sell cheap garbage to gullible fans.

You’re welcome? I’m sorry?

PEP TALK FOR A READER

This request is near and dear to my heart, so I didn’t edit much!

My wife is estranged from a longtime friend of hers, who's a mutual friend of mine, which means (thanks to our wedding vows which clearly state "your enemies will be my enemies") I'm estranged from him too. But I have a long-term project I'm working on where this guy would make for an ideal contributor. I feel like I have to pass over him because he didn't do right by my wife. But I keep thinking of how good it'd be to collaborate with him on this. I know I can't ask him — I don't need advice to make that call — but how can I get over it and renew my vicarious enmity at my former good friend?
- Enemy For Wife

Right out of the gate, I want to commend you on staying strong on your wedding vows and not caving to the pressures of professional success in direct contradiction to your wife’s enduring personal acrimony. I myself took a vow of spite when I got married, so I understand your predicament well.

There are lots of things that make a good collaborator. “Gets the job done well” is one positive quality. “Does not cause tension in my marriage” is another. Obviously these factors are not mutually exclusive. The best version of this is like: “My wife’s favorite of my coworkers is also the one whose collaboration yields the best results.” The worst outcome is something like: “The person I had a relationship-jeopardizing affair with is the only one who can help me accomplish this goal.” Or, conversely: “My partner’s best friend is an untalented chump who ruins every day at the office we share by being agonizingly incompetent.” The outcome matters, but so does the process, as does the experience of doing the work.

It’s not all about raw productivity and wife compatibility. There are obviously lots of other good and bad qualities for a colleague to have.

Some good ones: Fun lunchtime gossip, thoughtful communicator, occasionally brings snacks to the office, good taste in art, possesses skills you lack, cares about the outcome of your shared endeavor, not a snitch, cool sweaters, a perspective that is unique but not too unique.

Some bad ones: Shirks responsibilities, bad listener and/or talker, withholds compliments to feel powerful, too-intense aroma, prone to disappearances during work hours, big into harassment (sexual or other).

What I’m driving at here is that the ultimate outcome of a project is only one factor in the decision-making around that project. You’ve got to decide how fast you need it done, how much work you’re willing to take on, whether you’d rather deal with the precise but prickly coworker or the delightful but slightly more spacey colleague. (Obviously sloppy and prickly is the worst option here, and precise and delightful is the dream when possible.) You’re allowed to prioritize whichever factors you want, within the boundaries of what your employers/clients will tolerate.

And, if the best revenge is living well (which I can’t say for sure, but it is the most powerful form of revenge I’ve had the pleasure of attempting, and it’s not bad), then getting this job done capably without involving your enemy-once-removed will fulfill your professional obligation, please your wife, and spite your enemy in one fell swoop.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Talking Heads - “And She Was”

Surprisingly, David Lynch dying made me want to listen to a bunch of Talking Heads songs. We must appreciate our old weird Davids while they are still here! (This for some reason was also the second song I put on my birthday party playlist, so I guess I was in a David Byrne mood even before we lost David Lynch.) Another possibly-invented childhood memory I have is my mom having this song on a cassette in her car stereo along with “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits and a few other tunes I can’t recall. But maybe those songs were both on the radio a lot while my mom was driving places when I was a kid.

Here’s a bonus song that I also put on my party playlist (I told you it was a little chaotic). I listened to D’Angelo’s Black Messiah album twice in a row the night it came out (nearly 11 years ago????). If we’re going on his normal release schedule, we’re only three years away from a new D’Angelo album, so that’s something nice.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

1/20: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/21: Taskmaster Premiere at Town Hall (Manhattan), Scorpion Records (Ridgewood)

1/22: Young Ethels (Brooklyn) and New Money at Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/23: Spicy Moon Bowery (Manhattan)

1/25: Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest (San Francisco)

1/27: Superbloom at the Elysian Vault (Los Angeles)

1/29: Apartment Show, Better Half, and a third thing? (Los Angeles)

2/5: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

2/7: Don’t worry about it.

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

2/9: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/10: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)

2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/11: (Venue TBA) Ridgefield, CT