Tag: TikTok

We ranked the best LeBron TikTok songs

Viral content always comes and goes, but some reach pandemic levels. In March, TikTok user @OkaySpade posted a 35-second R&B song named ‘ LeBron Song’, and the frenzy of ‘ glazing’ King James began: @itsokayspade Lebron Song #lebronjames #goat …

Viral content always comes and goes, but some reach pandemic levels. In March, TikTok user @OkaySpade posted a 35-second R&B song named ‘LeBron Song‘, and the frenzy of ‘glazing‘ King James began:

Watch on TikTok

The fan reaction and surge of users creating songs ultimately made LeBron James address the trend:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CpqjWJWrjRk

We’ve created a LeBronify playlist, along with the original songs. It’s fun to play, but always remember to give credit to the artists. We hope you enjoy it. Special shout-out to TikTok user @.ilyaugust for creating the most LeBron songs.

Why TikTok has stopped working in the United States

Welp, there goes TikTok.

If you checked TikTok on Saturday evening and got a foreboding message, it’s because the app is no longer usable in the United States.

The government’s TikTok ban went into effect late Saturday night, making it unusable on U.S. soil for the foreseeable future.

That means one of the most popular social media apps will be down for the time being.

President-elect Donald Trump has said he’s open to extending the company’s window to find a U.S. buyer, but he will not be able to do so until he is sworn into office on Monday.

That means the app will probably be out of commission until later in the week when Trump can make a more concrete decision.

Until then, there will be no TikTok for American users.

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TikTok star ‘The Rizzler’ in attendance for Chiefs’ playoff tilt vs. Texans

TikTok star ‘The Rizzler’ will be at Arrowhead Stadium for the #Chiefs’ divisional-round playoff matchup against the #Texans.

The Kansas City Chiefs are no strangers to having high-profile celebrities at their games in recent seasons, but the team will be graced with an almost-mythical presence when it takes on the Houston Texans this afternoon.

In a post to Twitter, the Chiefs confirmed that TikTok star “The Rizzler” was in attendance for Kansas City’s divisional-round playoff showdown against the Texans at Arrowhead Stadium.

“The Rizzler” is known for his larger-than-life personality that became a hit among users of the embattled short-form video platform last year.

The Chiefs’ official Twitter account posted a video of “The Rizzler” in the stands at Arrowhead and followed up with a picture of the social media star on the field before kickoff on Saturday afternoon.

Though Chiefs fans who aren’t chronically online might not recognize the young man, those who use sites like TikTok or Twitter regularly are sure to have seen his content in the past.

Who could buy TikTok? 5 names rumored to be interested with ban looming

Could one of them step in?

Well, it seems like TikTok is going to be banned in the United States, especially after the Supreme Court upheld the ban that the government wants to have in place on January 19 if owner ByteDance doesn’t sell it.

THE 17 BEST TIKTOKS OF ALL TIME TO WATCH BEFORE THE BAN

But before we all flock to RedNote or Clapper or whatever, what if someone — or someones — step in to buy TikTok and save it in the 11th hour? It could happen, right?

We’ll see. But there have been names thrown around as possible buyers, so we’ll list those here as we wait:

Mr. Beast

The YouTuber better known as James “Jimmy” Donaldson has expressed interest.

Elon Musk

Of course his name has been thrown around.

Frank McCourt and Kevin O’Leary

The Shark Tank star and the ex-Dodgers owner are also interested.

Steven Mnuchin

Per The AP: “Mnuchin told CNBC he had started creating an investor group that would purchase the popular social media company. He offered no details about who may be in the group or about TikTok’s possible valuation.”

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Why Duolingo is weirdly the TikTok ban’s biggest winner

We’re learning new languages out of spite now.

The United States Supreme Court upheld the nationwide TikTok ban on Friday morning as the deadline for Chinese company ByteDance to sell the vastly popular video app approaches on Sunday.

While a number of competing apps like RedNote, Instagram and Lemon8 are working overtime to attract soon-to-be displaced TikTok users and creators, one unexpected app has already seen traffic surge in the wake of the ban: Duolingo.

Yes, the language-learning app has been the big winner amid TikTok’s impending demise and it’s mostly due to spite. According to the app, Duolingo has seen a 216 percent growth in users learning Mandarin Chinese over the last year, which is tied to the growing popularity of RedNote.

https://x.com/duolingo/status/1879582775055176008

Obviously there’s a massive dose of irony in the United States banning China-backed TikTok only for its users to flock to another app whose name translates to “Little Red Book“. But that migration has serious real world consequences beyond Google search spikes for Mao’s handbook in the United States.

According to CNBC, Duolingo’s shares rose seven percent on Thursday ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision as RedNote continues to climb up the app store charts.

Learning a whole new language out of spite is the type of revenge Larry David would appreciate if not for the amount of work it takes. We’ll see if it sticks.

Will TikTok stop working on January 19 after Supreme Court decision? The U.S. ban, explained

Here’s what’s next with TikTok.

The Supreme Court has spoken.

The court upheld the law that would ban TikTok starting on Sunday, January 19 2025, given the concerns about national security.

Users have already started looking for alternatives and have begun mourning the loss of their beloved video app and all the entertainment and info it brings.

MORE TIKOK: The 17 best TikToks of all time to watch

But you may be wondering: will the app suddenly disappear from your phone? What will happen next after this decision?

We have some answers for you … or at least we’ll try to answer all this for you. Let’s dive in:

Will TikTok disappear from my device on Sunday?

No. But apparently the app will disappear from app stores so that it won’t be downloadable. Updates won’t come in, which will eventually make the app not work as well.

Will a TikTok sale happen between now and Sunday?

It could happen theoretically, but there hasn’t been much talk of a sale happening. If there was progress in the app getting sold, there could be a pause in the law being invoked, but we haven’t heard much about progress.

Will Donald Trump step in and stop it once he’s president?

He’ll be sworn in the day after the ban is supposed to go into place. It doesn’t seem clear what, if anything, he can do to stop this, but guess we’ll see soon enough.

Will Lemon8 be banned too given that ByteDance owns it?

That’s been floated as a possibility.

What apps can I use that are like TikTok?

We have a list that includes RedNote, Clapper and more.

Why is TikTok getting banned?

From USA TODAY:

The Justice Department had argued the restriction is not on speech but on a foreign adversary’s ability to control a widely used means of communication. Unless TikTok is sold, the government said, China can gather data on Americans or manipulate the content on TikTok to shape U.S. opinion.

“The Chinese government’s control of TikTok poses a grave threat to national security,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court last week.

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5 TikTok alternatives to use (RedNote?) in case the app is banned in the United States

Some apps like TikTok to use if the ban is upheld.

As of publishing this, we’re waiting to hear if TikTok will be banned in the United States on January 19 if the social media video app isn’t sold.

So we’ll see what happens. But should it be banned, where do you go next to see all the dances, memes, recipes, and hilarious content?

MORE TIKOK: The 17 best TikToks of all time to watch

That’s where this list comes in. Full disclosure: I’m a TikTok guy and haven’t tried any of these. But from what I’ve been reading, they seem like good alternatives should the app get shut down.

Here’s a look at the best TikTok alternatives:

RedNote (Xiaohongshu)

A lot of buzz about this one being a good alternative.

Lemon8

It’s also owned by ByteDance, so maybe it also gets banned if TikTok does?

Clapper

This is supposed to be very TikTok-like.

YouTube Shorts

I can tell you from experience that this is basically the same thing as TikTok in terms of content.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yoIhn9afRfc

Instagram Reels

Same with this one.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DC2iKq4SKIZ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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The 17 best TikToks of all time to watch before the potential ban

TikTok has come up with some real gems over the years.

Come January 19, it’s possible the United States will be without one of the most popular social media platforms as a nationwide ban of TikTok could go into effect. Launched in September of 2016, TikTok has become a place for viral videos, influencers, dance trends, cooking tutorials, movie reviews and really anything you can think of.

Unless someone intervenes on the governmental level, it looks like it could be the end of TikTok in the United States. While the concerns around misinformation and data security are fair, it was also a site that provided endless hours of entertainment and laughs.

Here are some of our all-time favorite TikTok videos that will carry on post-ban.

WARNING: Some of the videos might include some language that is NSFW.

A perfect compilation

Pyramid construction

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Z970c4H8PpU

LGBTQ+ support

A short story on sisterhood

When you’re that fan at a Beyoncé concert

IKEA employee

A series of unfortunate events

The Law & Order: SVU theme creation

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nQ-TpRMyNyI

Bill Withers in studio

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XeGDW4CHJ0w

Beethoven’s latest banger

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5-NCPjMxiL0

The purest song reactions

The art of lip syncing

Country Roads

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sSLI0g7IlVs

Animal Crossing art IRL

Meatier?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ix2iidJp1OE

GoldenEye pause music

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0k23djFBHt8

TikTok duets

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This fake TikTok funeral program is perfect

This is deeply unserious, but we love it.

The end is near for TikTok.

For context, a possible app ban looms large, and on January 19, it all (likely) goes up in smoke. So, people are getting creative with ideas for saving it. (For The Win even made a list of sports owners who should buy TikTok.) But, we stumbled upon something that deserves an award.

Some genius human being made a TikTok funeral program, and it’s perfect.

YES, SOMEBODY MADE A FUNERAL PROGRAM WITH AN OBITUARY, AND WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS KIND OF NEXT-LEVEL CREATIVITY.

Shoutout to comedian KevOnStage (Kevin Fredericks) for dropping this gem on his Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DE33M5eRZlt/?igsh=bHQ2cTF4dnV3dGMz&img_index=2

Whoever created this (Ro Watkins?) humanized TiTok, calling the app “Tikiona Tokson,” and even wrote a lovely reflection about its life.

But, it’s the pallbearers for us. It’s such profoundly unserious stuff, and we can’t stop laughing.

Then, they decided that wasn’t enough and wrote an order of service with a “viewing of the deceased” to push it over the threshold.

WE ARE UNWELL. This is 10/10 content. No notes.

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The possible TikTok ban and Supreme Court debate, explained

The possible TikTok ban, explained.

Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Are you hearing about the possible TikTok ban in the United States and the Supreme Court getting involved? And you’re confused? No problem. We’ve got you covered.

That’s right. TikTok — with its mega-popular personalities, the memes that everyone loves to share and extremely viral videos — could be facing a ban in the United States, with January 2025 marking the deadline for all of this to come to a head.

What’s it all about? Let’s dive in and break it all down for you:

What’s going on with all this talk of a TikTok ban?

Back in April, President Joe Biden signed a bill that had been passed by Congress that forced TikTok owner ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. Failure to do so would lead to the app being banned in the United States, although Biden could push the deadline back if he saw progress toward a sale.

Why did the U.S. government force the sale?

There are major national security concerns about the app. From USA TODAY:

John F. Plumb, the principal cyber adviser to the secretary of Defense, describes TikTok as a “potential threat vector” to the United States. In 2023, Plumb told a House Armed Services subcommittee that China, using TikTok, might be able to spread misinformation and collect data on a massive swath of Americans.

Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, also testified about the dangers of the app: “If you consider one-third of the adult population receives their news from this app, one-sixth of our children are saying they’re constantly on this app, if you consider that there’s 150 million people every single day that are obviously touching this app, this provides a foreign nation a platform for information operations, a platform for surveillance, and a concern we have with regards to who controls that data.”

So if this is all happening, why is the Supreme Court getting involved?

Because ByteDance wants the court to overturn the ruling. The argument against them — again, per USA TODAY — “states that the legislation’s infringement of free speech rights is justified because of national security concerns.”

When is this all going down in the Supreme Court?

Arguments will be reviewed on January 10, just over a week until the deadline.

Is there a TikTok replacement or alternative to use if it’s banned?

I’ve heard things about Lemon8, which is also owned by ByteDance. But what if the ban extends to all of their properties?

So is TikTok REALLY going to banned?

It’s a great question, and one that we might be able to answer more clearly after Friday. Stay tuned. Until then, keep scrolling to enjoy those videos … for now.

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