I’ve been studying film in one way or another since I was a kid.
My first career was respiratory therapy.
My second career was to be “something in film.”
I have taken classes in tv production, broadcasting, film, screenwriting, visual effects.
On my way out from medicine to film, I went to The Web.
But I’m sensitive to the techniques of film. And when I watch. video, I can feel the way it is manipulating me.
In a fiction film, that can be great.
When everyone is streaming and making short videos to inform, I can feel the techniques and I find it deeply unpleasant.
So I never made a Tik Tok account. I could feel how much it would make me unhappy.
I have been happy to see some videos bubble out of there that inform, or are funny, or are creative.
But I could never be a user of it.
But a US legal ban of it does not make me happy. I would say that every aspect of the ban that just went into effect is a pointer. Each aspect points at a broken US government system.
I don’t have complete thoughts of this, but I will be cautious about how I think about this ban, and what might un-ban it, or how things go from here.
But I’ve never been more convinced that having a website that you control is important to communication in the 21st century.
I’m feeling doleful and disappointed.
It’s going to be a hard weird year.
Take care, and share your opinions to the world.
Learn what it takes to run your own website.
And I hope a complete picture of the cynical political and corporate pressures that created this new “Great Firewall” come to light.
And I hope that Tik Tok’s communications around this are also scrutinized as they toady to the incoming administration.
Get your own website.
