The Dystopia of Watching Hurricane Milton on TikTok

Then there’s Caroline Calloway. The influencer and author, who lives successful Sarasota, drew the ire of the net erstwhile she posted connected X “where there’s a Callowill, there’s a Calloway” and said she wouldn’t beryllium leaving her home, adjacent arsenic officials were stressing the value of evacuating. (“You are going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned anyone who stayed put.) In an interview with New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, Calloway said she was staying to cheque connected aged neighbors, adding that her consciousness of wit is conscionable “very dark.” On Thursday, she seemingly sent a substance to Intelligencer’s writer with a representation of herself and her feline with the connection “I lived bitch.”

All of this wouldn’t consciousness truthful dystopian if the US—and the world—wasn’t hurtling toward a script erstwhile societal media platforms, peculiarly TikTok, weren’t becoming a batch of people’s go-to quality source. Even arsenic Anderson Cooper braves the storm to springiness CNN viewers updates connected Milton, a caller report from Pew Research shows 52 percent of Americans who are connected TikTok regularly get their quality there. Not from media outlets, but from influencers and contented creators.

While these accounts whitethorn beryllium relying connected reports from accepted outlets erstwhile they present news, their posts are “probably interspersed with a batch of precise non-traditional content—like skits, comic dances oregon promotional content,” Aaron Smith, Pew’s managing manager of information labs, told Axios. On-the-ground reporting from influencers, then, becomes mixed with entertainment. Watching it, or, admittedly, penning astir it, feels similar missing the point.

Loose Threads:

Lots of radical were pursuing the Waffle House Index during Hurricane Milton: If you don’t know, the Waffle House Index tracks whether oregon not a section outpost of the concatenation is unfastened successful a fixed location. If it’s closed, the coming tempest is astir apt bad, due to the fact that Waffle House prides itself connected keeping its restaurants unfastened arsenic often arsenic possible. When the concatenation closed respective locations, radical took notice.

The Fat Bear contention has a winner: Grazer bushed Chunk to triumph Alaska’s Fat Bear Contest. It was her 2nd win, and she defeated the bear who killed her cub earlier this year.

Stay harmless hiking retired there: Thanks to a video from @stanchrissss, tons of radical are posting TikToks demonstrating the ways they amusement radical who they are portion passing connected hiking trails. For @stanchrissss and friends, it’s showing women they’re gay/uninterested. For 1 woman, it’s saying things similar “I changeable him doubly and helium cried.”

The Ohio enigma rug discoverer says she got hacked: A batch has happened to Katie Santry since that full haunted rug happening we told you astir past week. Including, maybe, getting hacked.