*Insert Cricket Noises* (Or: The TikTok Unban and My "Author Platform")

It finally happened- the day of reckoning. TikTok has been banned in the United States.

And then it wasn't.

Huh. As of the writing of this blog, TikTok has been officially unbanned after going offline for, I don't even know, six hours? Guess we all overreacted- including the goverment.

Or, you know, the president-elect is trying to score cheap points with Gen Z for fixing a problem he helped create.

Regardless, the panic leading up to this moment was fascinating to me for two reasons:

And yet, I still felt like I had horse in this race- and her name was BookTok.

BookTok Good/Bad/Whatever Your Pre-Existing Opinion Is

You don't need me to tell you about the chokehold BookTok has on the current publishing industry. TikTok Made Me Buy It tables at Barnes & Nobles, the rise of tropes as marketing, Colleen Hoover's Everything- we all have TikTok to thank/blame/be ambivelent about.

While I'll watch every available video essay about it, I don't feel informed enough to have an opinion on BookTok since I don't have an account, even though I should.

...Should I?

Let's get one thing out of the way: I hate the idea of having a "Brand", let alone being one. I am not a product, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I refer to the things I make as "content". But in the eyes of a cold, unforgiving algorithm, that's what they are, and I have to market them- and myself- as such.

Writers don't need to be influencers to get published, I know, but let's not pretend it doesn't help. Young people get most of their book reccs online, and word of mouth can only take you so far. Long gone are the days of isolated artistes; roll up your sleeves and make a BlueSky account.

Currently, the only "following" I have is the personal Tumblr (I'm one of those people that still use Tumblr) blog I've had since I was twelve- not exactly the best spot to advertise. I've tried my hand at WordPress, but that's really more of a platform you link your already existing fanbase to. I have Twitter, but I try to use it as little as possible due to it being Twitter.

Honestly, it was either this or SubStack, and the world has more than enough SubStacks.

Even though I'm posting into the void, I have to admit having a website makes me feel more official; Anyone is able to see what I've done and what I want to do, and that type of pressure motivates me to keep going.

Maybe one day I'll get a TikTok account and hype up my manuscript with all its tropes, but for now this is okay. I'm working on adding a comment section to my blog posts, so if anyone is reading this in the future, tell me what you think!

Also, feel free to bully me if I never got around to post a January Wrap-Up blog like I'm planning to.