What confuses me the most about TikTok culture is how little it differs from YouTuber and Vine culture from like, 3-5 years ago. These guys look and are named like carbon copies of the dudes from this 6 year old joke:
Like, are you surprised the guy on the top of the car is not Jake Paul? Those stories about his squalid mansion of precum landed three fucking years ago.
Considering the rapid acceleration of cultural change over the past 10 years, and the vanguard position teens have historically held in American popular culture, you would expect the current crop of Hot Rich Hooligans to look somewhat different from their pervert predecessors.
On the other hand, American White Male Teen doesn’t really change. Last time, I wrote about Fascistic Freedom, which is as good as any term for describing the general mindset of a white/het/wealthy/cis/male teen. They are free and they will inherit the Earth. The perennially reckless freedom of the American teen is both inspiring and horrifying, a beautiful affirmation of individual liberty and a disturbing rejection of empathy. Their reserve of joy and energy is bottomless, their smiles emit a context-destroying aura that reconfigures the world around them: the party is here. They are monsters.
About 16 years ago, shortly after graduating High School, I was down on Cape Cod piloting my dad’s Boston Whaler. There were about 10 of us on the sturdy 18-footer, careening on full throttle over large waves, getting tossed in the air and yelping with glee. I was a bit drunk. My friend Jay caught me laughing maniacally behind the wheel, and I said to him, “We’re teenagers! Nothing can hurt us!”