MidReal Story
Revealed: TikTok Conspiracy
Scenario: TikTok Banned, CEO Shou Arrested and Jailed
Create my version of this story
I woke up from an insistent buzzing coming from the nightstand next to my bed.
It was 3:30 a.m.
Sunlight wasn’t even a distant possibility, and I was about to make Alex Chen pay for whatever reason had him sending me messages this late.
I could hear my mom’s voice in my head, telling me that nothing good ever came from people waking you up in the middle of the night.
Who knew she was so wise?
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of my phone screen, and when they did, the blood in my veins turned to ice.
It was a message from Alex, but it wasn’t asking me some stupid question or making fun of me for something.
This was straight-up urgent.
The government banned TikTok, he wrote.
I stared at the screen, expecting another message that would tell me he was just fucking with me.
I mean, what was the point of having BFFs if they couldn’t wake you up in the middle of the night to annoy you?
But no other message came.
Instead, I opened my phone and immediately went to TikTok, thinking that maybe I’d been hacked and someone had changed the news source to some fake-ass website.
All I got was an error message that said something about not being able to connect to the server or some bullshit like that.
And then I knew it was real.
The platform that had been our lifeline for over a year was gone.
No fucking warning.
No explanation.
Just . gone.
My fingers flew over the keyboard as I went to Twitter and typed in “TikTok banned” into the search bar, and what I saw made my blood turn cold once more.
An account called @GovernmentUSA had tweeted that due to national security concerns, TikTok would no longer be available for download or use as of 12:01 a.m.
I clicked on the account and saw that it had been created less than an hour ago and had already managed to get itself verified.
The tweets were getting retweeted at the speed of light—people were freaking the hell out in the comments section.
I don’t understand!
“We’re not China!”
What the fuck is happening?
I covered my mouth with my hand as I looked around my room—my computer was sitting innocently on my desk, my phone charger was plugged into the outlet near my bed.
It was all so normal and boring and yet at the same time completely terrifying.
And then Alex’s message came through: “What are we going to do?”
I needed to talk to him ASAP, but I also needed to have Lily on the line too.
She was our hacker in residence and would be able to tell us what the hell was going on.
As I waited for her to pick up, I paced back and forth in my room.
