This newsletter is, really, a way for me to try out ideas, so let’s try one, a bit of a quick hit.
You may be aware that Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk, and he seems to be the new Drip King. If you read that sentence and fear you may be having a stroke, rest assured that all of those words make sense. Feel free to go get it explained by Defector if you need it, but all you really need to know is that this guy’s TikTok videos started going viral in recent days, especially on Twitter, and no one know who the hell he was talking about, why he addresses the camera with that off-putting monotone, or really what reality is anymore.
Here’s the basic level of this: Livvy and Baby Gronk are people with millions of followers, so they, especially Livvy, are very well-known to certain people, even if you and I have no idea. They are successful content creators and athletes — Baby Gronk’s father gave an interview last month where he bragged, re: his son, that “everything’s monetized for him,” which is the primary goal of any parent. The fact that thousands of people previously unaware of any of this have been forced to learn all this pointless information, including you, is what I want to talk about, or rather, the effect that this has on what people share on TikTok specifically and how it bleeds outward.
Livvy and Baby Gronk “met” back in March, and this video only made the viral rounds in June, which is our first indication of a couple things. First, TikTok is the main source for a lot of internet chatter today, regardless of when it finally makes its way to other platforms. It’s the home for the stupid or funny stuff that people like to talk about online. Second, and most importantly, TikTok is a world unto its own, but it is also (algorithmically) organized into clusters or spheres, or what I’ve called genres previously. When something breaks out of its cluster, and especially when it gets shared on another platform like Twitter without context, people don’t know what to make of it. It seems beamed in from another dimension, or maybe it feels like your ears are bleeding.
As Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick put it, “It feels like, just beneath the surface of our normal base reality, there is another layer of American culture. I’ll call it Barstool reality. It’s a place where niche Instagram personalities, OnlyFans models, college athletes, and that guy Hasbulla all intersect.” Max Read talked to the guy who made the TikToks, and the guy confirmed that it’s all a joke, but the point I want to make is that it doesn’t matter. TikTok transcends bits. We spend a lot of time online now trying to determine if what we’re reading or seeing is for real. Everyone is deeply concerned about disinformation and misinformation, and on social media we also have the long struggle over authenticity. What’s more important in the interview is when he says:
If it wasn't gonna get views I wasn't gonna cover it. It’s kind of my thing at this point, where like, I can’t make a video being like, Hey, I know this is all [bullshit]. I don't actually care about this stuff. But most of my viewers--I would say it's geared towards, like, middle schoolers and high schoolers.
Right! Asking if his videos are real or whatever is the wrong question. They’re sincere, in the sense that even if he doesn’t actually care about any of it, he knows it will perform well, and appeal to Gen Z TikTokers, and so the videos get made and shared in earnest. It’s a bit, but not really. It’s real.
Let me put it another, more coherent way. He also reveals that the only reason he started paying attention to this is because Baby Gronk’s dad DMed him, asking him to cover his son. That’s all any of this is: marketing. There is effectively no difference between TikTok content that is real or fake, or at least it becomes impossible to tell, and this is by design. It is a “social” platform that prioritizes content from people you don’t know and will never meet and perhaps have absolutely nothing in common with — but by God you’re going to sit and watch whatever bullshit they’ve concocted for the algorithm and therefore for you. So it needs to keep incentivizing viral things from all corners of its niche clusters, because some will become unmoored from there and become something everyone, perhaps, will want to react to. The Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk guy says he makes his videos to piss people off — reactions are seconds watched, money made.
In some ways, then, TikTok feels like the apotheosis of online social platforms. If something performs well, you just keep making more and more of the same thing, willingly taking on the persona and language that an audience responded to until the point when it becomes pointless to try and distinguish between what is real and what is performed. Everything’s a bit, and nothing is. Yes, we are always performing to some degree, in real life and certainly on social media. But on TikTok, performance is the only currency (both social and economic) available, so it becomes a moot point to even comment on it. It’s a living.
Ephemera
The Financial Times interviewed sci-fi writer Ted Chiang, who has provided us with the best metaphors thus far for talking about generative AI. “But the fact that LLMs are able to do some of that — that’s not exactly a resounding endorsement of their abilities,” he says, referring to menial language tasks no one wants to do but that ChatGPT can be efficient at completing. “That’s more a statement about how much bullshit we are required to generate and deal with in our daily lives.” // “It’s like what Mark Fisher, the British cultural critic and political theorist, once said. Chiang paraphrases: the role of emancipatory politics is to reveal that the things we are told are inevitable are in fact contingent. And the things that we are told are impossible are in fact achievable. ‘I think the same thing could be said about science fiction.’”
Edward Ongweso Jr wrote for The Nation about how all the ongoing media focus on AI is distracting from Silicon Valley’s many other abuses: “Taken altogether, why should we worry about some far-flung threat of a superintelligent AI when its creators—an insular network of libertarians building digital plantations, surveillance platforms, and killing machines—exist here and now? Their Smaugian hoards, their fundamentalist beliefs about markets and states and democracy, and their track record should be impossible to ignore.”
Speaking of authenticity and influencers, Tech Won’t Save Us has Emily Hund as a guest today, author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. I haven’t listened yet, but I’m sure it’s a great conversation.
Song Recommendation: “Bad Thing” by Miya Folick (summer patio vibes)