“Enough with the Ticker-Tok”

I’m not a big fan of TikTok. I’m 42. It’s not that technology confuses me, I’m from the generation that went from analogue tapes and spin-dial telephones to digital streaming and iPhones in just over a decade; adapting to technological change is in my blood.

It’s just that TikTok seems, I don’t know, not for me.

If I open the app and look through it, I feel like an unwelcome presence, like a dad at a teenage house party.

What’s with that nasally-sounding doop doop doooo song everyone dances around to? (edit: it's "Laxed" by Jawsh 685)

Kids getting their parents to dance in the kitchen with them is not my idea of entertainment. There, I said it. I'm 42, hear me roar.

Besides, continuous low-level panic about TikTok security and Chinese state espionage only fuelled the flames of my reluctance, so it became one of the many apps on my phone that remained untouched and covered in digital dust.

Yet, none of us live in a bubble and the zeitgeist will get us all in the end. Inevitably, I started noticing funny TikTok videos as they leaked onto other social media platforms.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous TikTok Fortune

Then along came Meggie Foster, a British lockdown sensation. She blew up on TikTok around March, miming out political discussions whilst adding in comedy elements and satirical takes of her own. I watched as she embraced her newfound fame, diving into the media circus of television and radio as she flourished under the white heat of publicity.

Around the same time, I started following another British TikTok star Joseph the Dreamer who, ironically considering my earlier lamentation, is a dancer. But this time there wasn’t a doop doop doooo in earshot as he played out biblical scenarios using dance and comedy.

But as Meggie soared, Joseph crashed.

After a few weeks offline, he reappeared confessing he'd had a full-scale breakdown partly due to the unprecedented exposure from TikTok. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown (of likes).

I marvelled at how social media fame can breathe life into some and destroy others. TikTok is a bizarre compression of life, concentrated and dished out in 10-second doses, creating heightened, ultra-real versions of individuals and people flock to them with digital begging bowls, demanding the next hit of dopamine.

I felt more at odds with the platform than ever, which is probably why I relate so much to a TikTok video I saw recently. I can't stop watching it. It is possibly the greatest, TikTok video of all time.

Let's talk about it.

The Greatest TikTok Video

Let’s call Zach Margolin's video “Enough with the Ticker-Tok.”

Here we have two men, divided by just one generation, but also by an ocean of culture. A father and son duo with juxtaposed views of the world, and in this video we get to see those two very different worlds collide.

Zach's exasperated father spies his son talking to the camera and explodes with a rage that has evidently been building for months, likely years.

An older man in appearance, isolated from his offspring by the technological world, the bizarre second life online that he doesn't even want to begin to understand.

And there is his jobless son, dipping into that mysterious and wasteful netherworld of likes and follows once more, that confuses and repulses him in equal measure. Here is a man who was brought up in a world where work was done face to face and money was something physical in your pocket.

The son, on the other hand, a bubbling entrepreneurial spirit with the hope of Pewdiepie and Casey Neistat in his eyes, sees his father a dinosaur of the old world, whilst he is a shimmering hope of a different way of life.

As with the hippies of the '60s, the punks of the '70s, or the ravers of the '90s, Zach is also part of a youthful rebellion, but this time it is a movement online, played out through selfies and videos.

It is against this almost Greek tragedy of a backdrop we get to eavesdrop upon a generational collision.

They say tragedy is comedy, perhaps the divine comedy, and in this moment, the exasperation of the greying father figure spotting his son’s piece to camera is hilarious.

"FOR FUCK SAKE!" the father shouts, before beginning his tirade.

"NOBODY'S INTERESTED, ALRIGHT?!" the father declares, as we witness Zach's spirit give up, his shoulders slope, his head hangs, as he accepts his fate of yet another fatherly speech, the ones he's heard over Sunday lunch, or when he lays in bed until 11am, or that one time when spilt a cup of tea on the good sofa.

"GO OUT, GET A FUCKING JOB AND MAKE SOMETHING OF YOUR LIFE" the father rants, as a resigned and broken Zach reaches to shut off the camera.

Perhaps someone should tell Mr Margolin about Meggie Foster? Or about the most successful TikTok star, Addison Rae, who takes home $5m a year.

Zach is building an empire, Mr Margolin is building resentment.

Like all dream killers, the dad doesn't mean to be a nay-sayer, he only sees his jobless son talking into his phone. He can't begin to comprehend the possibilities of income that don't involve wearing a suit and tie and commuting to an office.

The pinnacle of this video is, of course, his exclamation of “ENOUGH WITH THE YOUTUBE, ENOUGH WITH THE TICKER-TOK!"

A sentence perfectly summarising his confusion and isolation from his son’s world, telling us everything we need to know, an entire back story painted in a misplaced phrase with breathtaking brevity.

It is also fucking hilarious.

And perhaps the dad is right. Becoming a social media sensation is the new "I want to be a pop star", it takes work, work and more work. It's both ironic and unlikely that Zach will reach more popularity than this video, his one big viral hit.

In fact, it was his sister recording the same incident from afar that got the initial traction, this was just his close-up version of the event.

For me, this video is real. It's family, it's dreams, it's generational difference, it's gut-wrenching humiliation and empathy-inducing content. It is, in short, the perfect "ticker-tok" video.

And at 42, I straddle the world's of both these men, I can see both their perspectives. I am both the frustration of the father and the dreaming blue yonder of the son.

Shakespeare himself could not have laid down a more revealing and perfect display of human interaction if he was born in the time of social media. A golden moment caught on camera that we can all relate to. Perhaps this video is the greatest metaphor for these changing technological times we'll see this decade.

Or maybe - maybe - it's just an angry old man shouting at his lazy kid, but who doesn't want to watch that? It's better than another doop doop dooo video, that's for sure.