The hate against TikTok is not only a result of American nationalism, it also reminds many young men from the Anglosphere of their own failures and insecurities.

Awkwardness, social anxiety and unatrractiveness. Those people crying the loudest for the ban on TikTok are usually those, who are even too shy to take own selfies. They probably even complain about people taking selfies of themself.

@TikTok haters, many of you are like this: You’re in love with that girl from school. You stalk her on social media. You find her TikTok account. Binge watching everything she does. She’s surrounded by attractive, fashionable young men who are confident enough to take funny and cringy videos of themself and even uploading it afterwards.

You watch at those videos, developing a hate against those men. You turn on Battlefield, storming the British defence lines on Kaiserschlacht. You imagine how one of those guys on her TikTok videos is your roommate. She visits him to hang out and notices you playing. After the Germans took over Zone A and B, you’re getting goosebumps and you’re holding back tears when you hear the whistle and war cries. You imagine, how she notices you and how she thinks you are a mysterious and intresting man. You are different. You ain’t partying and drinking. You’re a warrior. She wants to date you.

But it ain’t going to happen. You are a pizza delivery guy. One day you ring the bell of a customer and she opens the door. You feel like having a lump in your throat and your heart starts beating faster. You stand their with a red head and opened mouth, while she is taking her food. One of the guys on TikTok appears, helps her with the food. In the background there’s a cozy, small living room. Dimmed light, a bottle of wine and two glasses, you see the TV and notice, they may watch “Always be my maybe”. They are going to have a good time. She never even looked in your eyes when she paid you, she only had eyes for him.

Back home you listen to aggressive music. Or military music. Because you are different. But you end up listening some mainstream love songs because you actually like them more. You switch again to “your” music, imagining how she would think you are tough, different, a real man for having this music taste. You’re checking her TikTok again. They seem to have a good time. You try to calm down by listening to LoFi and hanging out on your Minecraft server, talking to your “friends”. Every five minutes you check her social media on your phone made in China, seeing both of them on your cracked screen makes you hate TikTok even more.

But you started lifting and binge watching Elliott Hulse and Alpha Destiny. You want to become a military man. A real man. Because you are a warrior, mysterious and different. You’re not using TikTok! And then, at the end, you will be deployed and maybe she is going to rescue you. Maybe she starts worrying like Jenny worried when Forrest Gump left for Vietnam. But she doesn’t know you .. maybe they talked about that weird pizza delivery guy who was standing there, awkward and with an opened mouth.