Mornings have started the same for me in the past few years. I wake up to the whirling sounds of our automatic cat feeder, scratch someplace inappropriate, and grab my phone. The bright illuminating light triggers my lizard brain to look for a hit of dopamine, opening TikTok to doom scroll.
For a few minutes (or hours, depending on my need for productivity), my finger swipes for “research.” Binging food reviewer feuds, political activism, and brain rot memes. It’s familiar.
But on Jan. 19, at the demand of the US government, TikTok will shut down for good. Though billionaires and MrBeast have offered to purchase the community of 150 million Americans, the end is nigh. TikTok’s owner ByteDance has made it clear that they’d rather shut down than have it end up in the wrong hands. Soon, we doom scrollers and binge-watchers, will end up as digital nomads. Searching for a central hub to tell us what the hell the Bop House is.
This forced exodus has created a lucrative opportunity for whoever manages to become the next popular video-sharing and e-commerce app. Though Mark Zuckerberg would love for all of us to flock to Facebook or Instagram, Meta is losing users. It seems like most of the American audience would rather go anywhere rather than to the hands of AI shrimp Jesus.
Over half a million new users have joined the Chinese social media app RedNote in the past week, earning it the top spot on iOS app stores. Being the diligent internet culture journalist I am, I decided to spend as many hours on RedNote as I could to learn if the platform could replace TikTok in my life.
The platform had familiar content, like Family Guy clips, cooking recipes, child trafficking conspiracy theories, and Luigi Mangione memes. Just a few hours in, I started getting videos talking about America’s many faults and how great of a superpower China is.
But mixed in were Americans talking about how welcoming RedNote users were as well as Chinese creators accepting TikTok refugees. The vibe was of overall positivity, which makes sense since controversial content in general isn’t allowed.
What Is Different On RedNote?
Due to China’s strict censorship policies, there’s a lot of that traditional TikTok sleaze missing from my algorithmic feed. As creator roxycat put it in the second video I saw on RedNote, there’s “no drugs, no gambling, no prostitution, no anything you need to think twice about.”
The internet, in general, is all-encompassing but fragmented. It’s broken into subsections siloed off because of language and app access. In the past week, RedNote has increased its use of English making it easier for TikTok refugees to use. Those barriers started to melt away allowing a new POV into the overall conversation.
But I’m not sure if RedNote is for me. I miss the sleaze, drama, and swears that are cornerstones of the American social media experience. Without the Wild West that was Facebook in the early 2010s, I don’t think I’d be the person I am today. I found myself after hours of positivity being bored with the app, opening TikTok to scroll.
But I know have to give a new algorithm more time to learn about my interests like Bionicle and MrBeast before it can really cater content to me. I’m willing to see if it can learn.
All I know is I’m not using Reels.
