What if no one missed TikTok?

Maybe this is how TikTok ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Over the past few weeks, as the Jan. 19 deadline approached for the forced sale of TikTok by ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, I’ve been struck by how few Americans seem concerned about the prospect that one of the country’s most popular social media applications will simply disappear.

Of course, there are people who call themselves “TikTok refugees” and join Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media app, to jokingly protest the US government’s decision to ban TikTok on national security grounds. (The joke part is: OK, Congress, you want to stop us from using a sketchy Chinese social media app? We’re going to download an even sketchier Chinese app. social media app and use that instead.)

There are the TikTok creators who fear losing their audience and are frantically trying to persuade their fans to follow them on Instagram and YouTube, and the e-commerce brands and dropshippers who are going to have to find other places to sell their products. .

And there’s TikTok itself, which fought to save itself in court, alongside a handful of lawmakers, free speech activists and industry groups who argued that the ban of the application would do more harm than good. (On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law banning TikTok if the company retained Chinese ownership.)

But over the next few days, as the TikTok eulogies pour in, notice what you don’t see. There were no #SaveTikTok rallies to speak of. Hordes of angry Zoomers with filled lips and broccoli haircuts aren’t marching through the streets demanding justice for their favorite short-form video app. Even among the most die-hard TikTok addicts I know, the dominant mood these days is gallows humor, not outrage or sadness. (A popular meme on TikTok this week was users jokingly saying goodbye to their Chinese spies.)

Is it really possible that TikTok, an app with about 170 million users in the United States – or about half of Americans – could disappear with this little fanfare? And if so, what explains why an app that so completely transformed American culture will have so few mourners?