Taylor Lorenz: TikTok has replaced Twitter as the global town square

That's funny … we'd thought that Mastodon had replaced Twitter as the global town square. After all, every person who was butthurt over the idea of Elon Musk buying Twitter said their goodbyes and tweeted out their Mastodon handles so you'd know where to find them. Half of Twitter was moving to Mastodon. Now there's Threads, which seems to be ban-heavy, like Twitter 1.0.

But there's also TikTok. The only time this editor sees TikTok videos is when someone publishes them on Twitter. The most recent trend was to shoot video of yourself taking a sip of Grimace's birthday shake from McDonald's and then either waking up in your underwear in the forest or gnawing on the shoulder of your buddy or just passed out dead.

Taylor Lorenz, who's the expert on these things, says that TikTok has overtaken Twitter as the global town square:

Musk also fired Twitter’s trust and safety team, allowing harassment and abuse to explode across the platform unchecked. He’s banned prominent journalists and liberal activists. He’s railed against LGTBQ people and declared the word “cisgender” a slur. If that wasn’t enough to drive the most dedicated Twitter users to greener pastures, last week he began limiting the number of tweets users could read, blocking nonpaying users from being served more than 600 tweets per day.

All of this has led users to stop relying on the service. Daniel, 17, a rising senior in a Philadelphia high school who asked to be referred to by only his first name because he’s underage, said Twitter is simply “not the spot” anymore. “People my age are going to Instagram and TikTok before they go to Twitter,” he said.

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I can’t stop laughing.

Somehow WaPo let Taylor Lorenz publish an article declaring that Tik Tok has replaced Twitter as the global town square because an anonymous high school senior in Pennsylvania told her so. https://t.co/TX1TSpV9sy pic.twitter.com/h9Qh5KLVaM

— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 8, 2023

Something tells me the kid's anonymity is more for her benefit than for his. https://t.co/F8Ze9xqrdq

— Noam Blum 🚡 (@neontaster) July 8, 2023

I just talked to a different rising senior at a retirement home and he’s convinced Hotmail e-mail chains are still the real way to get the best information these days.

— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 8, 2023

"breathtaking"

— JWF (@JammieWF) July 8, 2023

But those things the source listed have been true of the younger users for years now. Why is she trying to make this look like this just happened?

— Kris Kinder (@kris_kinder) July 8, 2023

@washingtonpost has become a laughing stock with some of these young inexperienced journos. The solid exerienced journalists are still top notch, but they let a lot of people go a year or so ago & the new hires really don't quite cut it.

— Dr Sheryl D Baldwin (@jaderesearch) July 8, 2023

Taylor Lorenz is so old, she interviewed Methuselah when he was a child.

— Red Stator (@thenovanglus) July 8, 2023

2-minute videos about how to open pickle jars with your feet or eating laundry detergent now called 'absorbing content' 👌

— Ron M. (@Jewtastic) July 8, 2023

What is a "rising senior"?

— pragmatometer (@pragmatometer) July 8, 2023

I’m willing to bet Daniel isn’t even real.

— NotaRealR8RFan 🇺🇸⚓️ (@NotaRealR8RFan) July 8, 2023

That wouldn't surprise us. Once again, news of Twitter's death has been premature.

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