So You Remember 9/11 But Also Want to Get Active on TikTok...

So I caved. I have a TikTok now.

This video is also on TikTok

I guess it’s not exactly “new”, I opened the account a couple years ago, but I never really did anything with it. It’s an interesting moment in the life of a Gen X-er or a Millennial, when a tech development happens when you’re in your upper 20s or so and you have a horrifying moment of realization that, “Oh. This is not for me, is it?” I say Gen X and Millennial here because I don’t necessarily believe technology has moved this fast prior to our generations while we were coming of age, and my generally unfounded hypothesis is that Gen Z and beyond were just born into this world and know how it works; whereas Boomers and before had already come of age before tech started developing at the breakneck pace it moves now.

I’ve never felt I’m “above” TikTok per se, I get the appeal intellectually, but when I opened it for the first time a few years ago was definitely overwhelmed (for reference, I’m one of the youngest Millennials, born in 1995). As a holder of a bachelor’s degree in communication, if I had to define the TikTokization of social media, and how it’s an evolution of Instagram (which in and of itself was an evolution of Facebook), I’d say it’s this drift towards communicating information through digestible visual means, rather than making the audience do the work of reading something, such as a blog (that thing you’re reading right now!). At their inceptions, Facebook was mostly text posts, Instagram made them mostly still images, and TikTok has animated those images into videos.

Don’t count me with the millennials and older who think this evolution is a sign of the inherent dumbing down of the human race, but rather, in some ways I feel added accessibility like this can make for real positives in the way we reach people and process information. I say this with the heavy, heavy caveat clarifying it’s only a good thing when that information is good. But that’s how social media and the internet at large has always been, right?

When you give anyone the microphone to say anything that could potentially reach anyone, yeah, there’s a fair chance you platform some assholes who will want to use the power of the internet to reach impressionable people and their rhetoric, communicated via social media, might make those impressionable people more hateful and that might make the world a worse place. I don’t feel a need to necessarily go into examples here, but… you can picture it. This is a tale not unique to the rise of short-form video content on TikTok, this story is as old as the internet itself, and taken to its logical conclusion, perhaps even as old as the printing press itself.

So I wouldn’t say Gen Z and beyond is playing a completely different game on TikTok than we’ve played on Instagram and Facebook, it’s just a new arena. And I’d say, if you want to reach people, go to where they are. And when in Rome, we do as the Romans do.

Knowing that I’m primarily writing dark comedy contemporary theatre plays for young adults, I’ve crunched the numbers. I need to meet the people I want to reach where they are. The theatre kids, the film nerds, the outcasts like me. So here I am, I’m on TikTok. And I’m actually pretty excited!

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About Peter Fenton

Peter Fenton is a writer and director creating stories for stage and screen that make audiences laugh, think, and occasionally squirm. His Off-Broadway debut, dark comedy Abandon All Hope, premiered at Theatre Row in 2023, and I Think We're Lost, his young adult retelling of Peter Pan will see its professional premiere in Philadelphia in 2026. His film work, including Night Voices and his directorial debut, Inherently Special, has earned awards on the international festival circuit. Based in New Hope, PA, Fenton works in marketing at Passage Theatre Company and freelances with McCarter Theatre Center and other regional arts organizations. www.byPeterFenton.com @peterfent