
There’s so much in the air right now about what happens to writers, artists, and creators when a platform gets shuttered and goes dark.
I’m 44 years old, so I’ve lived through my share of apps and services going through boom and bust cycles.
I’m old enough to remember AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ from my high school years… (RIP, sweet old ICQ… you brought me my first long-distance pen-pal boyfriend. Daniel from Australia in 1995. My children were aghast when I told them this story recently, but that’s another blog post for another day.)
MySpace and Napster were thriving when I was in college, until they weren’t.
Vine was around in the ether at some point *waves hand vaguely.* (Which I was kind of too old to use and was out of the loop for why anyone cared as it rose and as it fell. But still. I was alive for that one, too.)
And now it’s January 2025 and everyone who built a community or a livelihood -or both- on TikTok is losing their marbles because it went dark last night.
A bunch of people my age & older had been trying to tell folks for months… nay, YEARS… that it’s risky to build on someone else’s sand.
As of this writing (12:15 pm Central), the news is breaking that TT is already flip-flopping and putting out new announcements, so who knows what the coming weeks and months will bring over on that side of the internet?
I just wanted to say: I’m happy to have my own little corner, in my own little URL, where I can be whatever I want to be.*
*with sincere thanks to Rodgers & Hammerstein