The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: Where Will People Go After TikTok?

If early reports are indicative of future results, 2025 is going to be a messed up year. We're barely two weeks in, and already the kids are leaving TikTok, accusing Elon Musk of cheating at video games, and drinking water from glaciers.

Self-proclaimed "TikTok refugees" are flocking to Red Note

An online group calling themselves "TikTok refugees" are downloading an app called RedNote in advance of a possible TikTok shutdown. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has vowed to start winding down the app in the U.S. early next week if the Supreme Court doesn't step in to delay the upcoming ban, leaving 170 million U.S. users unable to watch trending dance videos or share their personal information with the Chinese government.

In advance of the possible shutdown, young people are searching for an alternative. That alternative for many is 小红书, also known as Xiaohongshu in Mandarin or "RedNote" in English. The social media app is currently at the top of Apple's App Store's most downloaded chart, despite not being available in English.

The potential TikTok ex-pats are already posting videos on both TikTok and RedNote where they give each other tips on navigating an app in a language you can't read or speak, or simply reacting to what it's like to use RedNote. Consider TikToker xlvxlv1, who simply says, "I'm here and I'm scared:"

In the most interesting TikTok/RedNote crossposts, users talk about why they're switching to a Chinese social media platform when Western options like Instagram and Facebook are readily available. Turns out they're actually picking RedNote because it's Chinese. The government shutting down TikTok is seen as censorship, and many think the real reason the U.S. is banning TikTok isn't over "national security concerns," but because of one man: Mark Zuckerberg.

Here's how new RedNote user Candacce explains it: "I would rather stare at a language I can't understand than to ever use a social media that Zuckerberg owns. Mark Zuckerberg lobbying to congress so TikTok gets banned and everyone has to use his social media—it feels like when he was in college and he would try to force people to be friends with him." Burn.

I don't know whether Zuckerberg's congressional lobbying is a factor in the TikTok ban, but if TikTokkers think it is, I doubt any of those young people are going back to one of Zuck's properties. Most of TikTok's users are under 30, and they see Facebook and Insta as apps for old people. They're essentially uncool, and once you have that image, you're not going to shake it—just ask anyone labeled a nerd on the first day of freshman year.

Viral video of the week: Does Elon Musk cheat at video games?

In other "billionaires who are totally childish" news, let's talk about Elon Musk, the subject of this week's viral video. Musk, an adult, recently posted a video of himself playing video game Path of Exile 2 on X, ostensibly to test the site's streaming capabilities, but really so he could show off the totally cool armor or magic wands or whatever bullshit his character, "Percy_Verence," uses in the game. (Yes, that's really what Musk chose as his character name.) Musk clearly wanted to brag about his high rank in Path of Exile 2. "This is max difficulty, on hardcore," Musk, a grown man, proudly proclaimed on the stream.

That would be funny/pathetic (fathetic?) enough, but probably not fathetic enough to go viral. But then actual players of Path of Exile 2 analyzed Musk's stream and concluded that the richest man in the world is a gaming fraud, and hires other people to play a video game for him, presumably so he can look cool to people who really do play video games a lot.

"He clearly has no idea," says YouTuber Quin69TV, "100 percent, some guy plays this account for him," he added.

I can't say whether what Quinn69 and others say is true (I'm an adult but not Elon Musk, so I don't know anything about Path of Exile 2) but the YouTube video evidence seems compelling. But mostly it's hilarious. I can't believe Elon Musk is a real person, and not the main character in a poorly regarded Adam Sandler movie from 2004.

The controversy over what "TS" means online

I like to keep up with the slang kids use, so I was all ready to tell you the "TS" means "this" when used online, but that's only partly true. Like most modern online slang, TS originally comes from AAVE, where it means "this shit" or "that shit."

In a way, "this shit" is just a different way of saying "this" anyway, but the whole thing highlights the "AAVE to Brainrot pipeline" that has claimed words like "rizz" and "gyatt." (The slang word "skibidi" does not have origins in AAVE, however; it's native Brainrot.)

Is TS's widespread use another example of appropriation? Probably. A lot of people online think so, anyway. Whether there's anything anyone can do about it is a different question; language tends to develop how it develops, regardless of whether people like it or not.

Warning: Do not drink water from glaciers

In part 4,623 of my 9,690 series "Don't Do Anything You See Online," let's consider videos of people drinking the melted run-off from glaciers. If you're thinking this sounds like a great idea, I have news for you: It is not.

The trend has been growing in popularity among people who have the means to travel to faraway places to drink melted ice, including rapper Ludacris, who sampled the meltwater from an Alaskan glacier recently and posted video evidence.

I can't deny that the glacier water looks mighty refreshing, but apparently, there are lots of things in water that you can't see. Scientists (remember them?) have studied ice from glaciers and found it rife with microbes. It seems bacteria, phages (which are viruses that live inside bacteria), and other creatures pollute our ancient glaciers. There could be something else in there too—something sinister that's been waiting for thousands of years for its chance to strike. "We know very little about viruses and microbes in these extreme environments," Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist, told Forbes.

Until proven otherwise, I'm going to assume that Ludacris has been taken over by the creature from John Carpenter's The Thing, and our current Ludacris is a murderous alien simulacra. Also, I've changed my mind: Drink as much glacier water as you want. Whatever happens to you can't be worse than just existing in 2025.