The US’ American-ish TikTok awaits

DO YOU remember the World Wide Web? I ask, because increasingly, the world doesn’t seem that wide at all. Also, does anyone remember the US TikTok deal which was signed in December 2025? This seems like an eternity ago, but that deal is expected to close on Thursday (Jan 22).

Even before this wrangling over the social media platform had broken out between the US and China, the days of the Internet’s borderless, free-form proximity had long been numbered.

For years, the online clamour of strangers’ hyperfixations has become increasingly fragmented, splitting along microcultural and geographical boundaries. My TikTok “For You” page is nothing like yours (unless you, too, have an abiding obsession with a highly specific segment of K-pop).