Tik Tok is Gone

Shortly before 9 pm, a full two hours shy of legal shutdown date, even if you went by Eastern time, Tiktok logged off its users and closed its doors. 

I'm not an idiot. I know that in two days President Trump will probably enact the 90 day extension for the app that is allowed within the bill; in fact, he's already said he is thinking of doing so Monday. 

But for some reason this closure hit me in the gut. 

I don't use TikTok a lot. I'm one of the old guys that waits for a TikTok trend to filter down to Facebook Reels before I give it a view. But YaYa posted heavily on the site, Junie too to some extent, and Lisa and all the kids spent many an hour scrolling through the app. 

And yes, I understand that the data exploitation on Tiktok was a genuine concern of two opposing Presidential administrations. It just seems an awfully specific ban when our country seems so wide open to digital manipulation.  

Today, I literally spent hours trying to download and preserve every video I could from the kids accounts. I'm ticked that each starts with a noticeable, if brief, watermark, but I worked with what I had available on short notice. I had downloaded only one of six years worth of Junie's vids when the app went dark. Theoretically, if the site never comes back, that means her Musically account, which chronicled her life at 7 or 8, is gone forever. 

I should have known better, and preserved it long ago you say. Sure. I'm a data hoarder, and spending the day documenting their posts was right up my alley. But today was *also* the first day the kids allowed me access to see, and download, the videos they'd made private (which numbered in the hundreds) and so I was forced to scramble at the last minute. 

The day the app comes back online, I'll spend the evening grabbing the rest of Junie's posts. 

I pray I get the chance.