Many lies get told on TikTok; also, many truths. One such truth came last weekend when a user with the handle @madallthatime explained that all the people looking for distinct Halloween costume ideas on social media were just being served the same videos by the algorithm—thus negating their uniqueness. Instead, this internet sage explained, they should be looking somewhere else: the #HearMeOut trend.
TikToks of the trend, also known as #HearMeOutCake, encompass a simple premise: A group of friends, or enemies, or coworkers, sets a cake on a table and then takes turns placing sticks in it. Upon each stick rests the image of a person—or fictional character, human or otherwise—on which the friend/enemy/coworker has an embarrassing crush. Sometimes it’s Mr. Burns, sometimes it’s Fidel Castro. Always, it’s uncomfortable. That’s the point.
What @madallthatime was suggesting, though, was that all the faces on those cakes represented a font of untapped Halloween costume potential—a series of obscure characters perfect for All Hallows’ Eve partying.
Every October the internet-savvy among us look for smart, creative outfits and decorations, and every year many of the best stem from bizarre memes. This is why that person who made a “Pink Boney Club” of skeletons in their yard in honor of Chappell Roan (er, Chappell Bone) has already been all over social feeds this fall. (Just me?) But meme-as-costume, as an idea, doesn’t trend the way it used to. If anything, it’s millennial cringe. When The Atlantic publishes “The Chronically Online Have Stolen Halloween,” it’s time to pack up your Target Lewis look and go home.
Which is where @madallthatime’s plan comes in. As algorithms, particularly TikTok’s, get more adept at serving viral-ready content, a homogeneity takes over. If everyone is going to be some version of Roan—or, perhaps, some green-clad Brat—then maybe the best costume is an obscure character from the C-plot of an animated series. Right now, the #HearMeOut trend is offering loads of them.
Four score and seven internets ago—OK, maybe more like a decade or so—celebrating what became known as HallowMeme was a cultural moment. People dressed up as “double rainbow” or Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women.” Unlike the “total slut” lore of Halloween costumes given by Mean Girls, HallowMeme outfits were mostly demure. Sometimes they were political. It was the Obama years, before the power of 4chan revealed itself as a true political force.
Let’s talk about contrast makeup. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have already seen the trend blowing up the FYP with a method of applying makeup that takes in your features to work out the most stunning and effortless look for you. Sounds good, right?
What is contrast makeup?
In a nutshell, the concept looks at the contrast between your hair, eyes and skin tone to determine the best approach to doing your makeup. It centres around the idea of keeping everything low contrast and unified so that your whole makeup look works cohesively, versus one feature standing out. Depending on your natural colouring, there are tweaks you can make to keep things looking effortless. The trend was spearheaded by French makeup artist, Alieenor, who has created a series of TikTok videos on finding your contrast and even created a filter to help you work out what your contrast is. You select your skin tone level, then check it against low, medium or high contrast examples to work out your match.
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Low contrast makeup
If you’re low contrast, it means your features – your skin tone, hair colour and eye colour – are similar in tone, whether they’re all deep, all medium or all fair. “When you have low contrast, you have more harmony on your face. Everything is less harsh, everything seems soft and very ‘the same’ because it’s in the same grey-scale [if you were to look at the image in black and white],” explains Alieenor.
As for how to apply this to getting ready, it means you get to do that no-makeup-makeup look. You have very unified features already. If you do a really intense eye or lip look, that would become the focus of your makeup, which means you don’t see your face as a whole, so it helps if you keep you makeup soft and in-keeping.
Low contrast: light-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Low contrast: medium-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Low contrast: deep-toned hair, eyes and skin
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Medium contrast makeup
If you’re medium contrast, it means your skin colour varies a fair amount from your hair and eye colour. For example, if you’re hair is a shade or two darker than your skin tone or vice versa, “you’re kind of in the middle,” says Alieenor. “Sometimes you have to tweak a little bit of your makeup to harmonise everything and have something that is a little bit less harsh, to appear more ethereal and natural,” she explains.
A new TikTok trend has taken over and I have never been happier. One of the biggest supporters of it is English Teacher star Brian Jordan Alvarez. He participated in this trend at least 7 times. And for Gilmore Girls fans, this one is for you.
Scrolling through TikTok, you can get treated to a series of videos of young men all posting their Ls in the best way possible. The audio being used is from Gilmore Girls when Kirk (Sean Gunn) makes a movie. In it, he says “I love your daughter” and when the father asks what he can offer her, Kirk responds “Nothing. Only this.” Kirk did a dance which is what the bulk of the videos on TikTok are about but some are getting more creative with them.
My favorite video is of a young man quite literally hitting the cue ball off of a pool table so badly it flies out of the shot.
For whatever delightful reason, Alvarez has used this audio in particular to promote the season 1 finale for English Teacher. On his TikTok, he has posted many of the videos with him dancing (as Kirk does) to the sound. Other videos include him pointing to posters for English Teacher as his “offer.”
Often the internet shows the worst of people. Men on the internet, in particular, really show their entire hand to people. But trends like this make me happy because it is just a bunch of guys being goofy and having some fun. If you’re willing to post you looking like a fool? All the better! I will forever be thinking about the guy at the pool table, it is my new favorite TikTok.
This is the kind of good boy content I love
It is hilarious to watch Alvarez do it as a marketing tactic. He posts the same audio multiple times often and this trend just makes me very happy so it is a win-win situation. But I do think that videos like this are what the internet should be for. More often than not, we let the annoying and gross moments online outshine fun things like this.
Look, I don’t know why this all brings me as much joy as it does but I can’t help but watch every single one of these videos I see. Maybe it is because Kirk is my favorite character on Gilmore Girls? Or maybe it is just that this is a good meme where a bunch of guys are having some fun making fools of themselves and that’s sweet to see.
Look, even the BIRDS got into it.
So if you have not yet spent too much time scrolling through TikTok, watching all of these boys dancing or just messing around to Kirk’s film from Gilmore Girls, now is your chance. At this point, I think we owe this joy it brings us to Alvarez because he really did use it over and over again so that we’d watch English Teacher. Stream it, get the show a season 2, and then maybe do a little TikTok dance to celebrate.
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“They are the architects of their own problems,” continues Sherwood. “By making so much of their products not about the tangible product, but about the intangible aspects of the brands – those sexy ads, the celebs who carry your products, the stores, the glossy ads, the slogans, the heritage backstory, all that stuff that isn’t actually the product itself.”
In turn they’ve created an enormous gap between what consumers are actually paying for and the real value of the product. As these companies have increasingly pursued the ultra-wealthy, they’ve left a gap in the market that other brands, eager to capitalise, are starting to fill. “They know that the prices at the very top of luxury are too high to reflect the actual value,” Sherwood says. “But have turned these notable silhouettes and styles into desirable items that a dupe brand can free ride off of.”
Then, recently, the veneer began to crack even further. In March, Italian luxury brand Loro Piana became embroiled in scandal after an investigation revealed the material behind their $9,000 sweaters was sourced by low-paid workers in Peru. Just a few months later, in July, Italian prosecutors alleged sweatshop-like conditions in factories supplying certain products for high-end labels such as Dior and Armani. The revelations triggered outrage among consumers, many of whom had long trusted these brands to uphold the highest standards of craftsmanship and ethics.
Across online forums like the r/handbag subreddit, once-loyal customers voiced their disillusionment. For many, these scandals revealed that the luxury brands they idolised were not living up to their promises. Both Loro Piana and Dior have denied the allegations. However, The Business of Fashion revealed that Milan’s public prosecutor said in a court document that they had found “an illegal practice so entrenched and proven [that it could] be considered part of a broader business policy exclusively aimed at increasing profit.” Neither company has been charged in relation to the probe.
Such reputational damage couldn’t have come at a worse time for luxury brands. Coupled with the rise of dupe culture, these scandals are forcing consumers to rethink their relationship with high-end goods. If craftsmanship is no longer exceptional, and ethical practices are called into question, what exactly are people paying for when they buy luxury?
Rebuilding the Dream
Recent sales figures underline just how far demand for luxury mega-brands has fallen from its post-pandemic highs. In July, some of the industry’s biggest players reported disappointing revenues for the second consecutive quarter. LVMH, the world’s leading luxury conglomerate, missed sales estimates, while Gucci’s parent company Kering, experienced a decline of 11%. Other major brands like Richemont and Burberry also reported disappointing figures, with first-quarter sales plummeting by a staggering 20%.
At the heart of luxury’s current struggles is the erosion of the very dream that once propelled the industry. The disconnect between the marketing mythology and the reality of production has left consumers feeling disillusioned, meaning the days of blindly paying a premium for a logo may be at risk.
The democratisation of information and consumer power through social media has played a huge part in this. Platforms like TikTok and Reddit are filled with conversations that challenge the industry’s value proposition, which has made it so much harder for luxury brands to control their narrative.
To regain their position, Brittany Steiger, principal analyst of retail & eCommerce at Mintel says they will need to focus on what once made them so desirable—authenticity, superior craftsmanship, and a narrative of prestige that feels both aspirational and attainable. Some experts suggest that embracing more transparent practices and truly living up to their ethical and quality promises could also be the way forward. Brands that fail to do so, may find themselves increasingly irrelevant in a world where high-quality dupes continue to gain ground.
It’s clear that the old model of luxury has been disrupted, and it’s no longer just about price anymore. In the battle between heritage and value, consumers are asking more questions—and luxury brands must have better answers. And if they don’t, there’s a whole industry on the sidelines who do.
So overall, the weight loss we see from these high-quality studies is very small, and mostly with no change in body composition.
The studies included people with different diseases, and most were from the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent. So we can’t be certain we would see this effect in people with other health profiles and in other countries. They were also conducted over different lengths of time, from two to six months.
The supplements were different, depending on the study. Some had the active ingredient extracted from cinnamon, others used cinnamon powder. Doses varied from 0.36 g to 10 g per day.
They also used the two different types of cinnamon—but none of the studies used cinnamon from the grocery store.
How Could Cinnamon Result in Small Amounts of Weight Loss?
It appears to allow blood glucose (sugar) to enter the body’s cells more quickly. This lowers blood glucose levels and can make insulin work more effectively.
It also seems to improve the way we break down fat when we need it for energy.
Finally, it may make us feel fuller for longer by slowing down how quickly the food is released from our stomach into the small intestine.
What Are the Risks?
Cinnamon is generally regarded as safe when used as a spice in cooking and food.
However, in recent months the United States and Australia have issued health alerts about the level of lead and other heavy metals in some cinnamon preparations.
Lead enters as a contaminant during growth (from the environment) and in harvesting. In some cases, it has been suggested there may have been intentional contamination.
Some people can have side effects from cinnamon, including gastrointestinal pain and allergic reactions.
One of the active ingredients, coumarin, can be toxic for some people’s livers. This has prompted the European Food Authority to set a limit of 0.1 mg per kg of body weight.
Cassia cinnamon contains up to 1 percent of coumarin, and the Ceylon variety contains much less, 0.004 percent. So for people weighing above 60 kg, 2 teaspoons (6 g) of cassia cinnamon would bring them over the safe limit.
Just days after multiple states sued TikTok for allegedly designing the app to addict children, new details have emerged about how they say the company does it. Jo Ling Kent reports.
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Then there’s Caroline Calloway. The influencer and author, who lives in Sarasota, drew the ire of the internet when she posted on X “where there’s a Callowill, there’s a Calloway” and said she wouldn’t be leaving her home, even as officials were stressing the importance 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 check on elderly neighbors, adding that her sense of humor is just “very dark.” On Thursday, she apparently sent a text to Intelligencer’s writer with a picture of herself and her cat with the message “I lived bitch.”
All of this wouldn’t feel so dystopian if the US—and the world—wasn’t hurtling toward a scenario when social media platforms, particularly TikTok, weren’t becoming a lot of people’s go-to news source. Even as Anderson Cooper braves the storm to give CNN viewers updates on Milton, a new report from Pew Research shows 52 percent of Americans who are on TikTok regularly get their news there. Not from media outlets, but from influencers and content creators.
While these accounts may be relying on reports from traditional outlets when they deliver news, their posts are “probably interspersed with a lot of very non-traditional content—like skits, funny dances or promotional content,” Aaron Smith, Pew’s managing director of data labs, told Axios. On-the-ground reporting from influencers, then, becomes mixed with entertainment. Watching it, or, admittedly, writing about it, feels like missing the point.
Loose Threads:
Lots of people were following the Waffle House Index during Hurricane Milton: If you don’t know, the Waffle House Index tracks whether or not a local outpost of the chain is open in a given location. If it’s closed, the coming storm is probably bad, because Waffle House prides itself on keeping its restaurants open as often as possible. When the chain closed several locations, people took notice.
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The Fat Bear contest has a winner: Grazer beat Chunk to win Alaska’s Fat Bear Contest. It was her second win, and she defeated the bear who killed her cub earlier this year.
Stay safe hiking out there: Thanks to a video from @stanchrissss, lots of people are posting TikToks demonstrating the ways they show people who they are while passing on hiking trails. For @stanchrissss and friends, it’s showing women they’re gay/uninterested. For one woman, it’s saying things like “I shot him twice and he cried.”
The Ohio mystery rug discoverer says she got hacked: A lot has happened to Katie Santry since that whole haunted rug thing we told you about last week. Including, maybe, getting hacked.
More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the popular short-form video app is harming youth mental health by designing its platform to be addictive to kids.
FILE – The TikTok logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., March 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)(AP/Damian Dovarganes)
FILE – The TikTok logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., March 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)(AP/Damian Dovarganes)
More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, saying that the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health.
The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.
At the heart of each lawsuit is the TikTok algorithm, which powers what users see on the platform by populating the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits note TikTok design features that they say addict children to the platform, such as the ability to scroll endlessly through content, push notifications that come with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that create unattainable appearances for users.
“They’ve chosen profit over the health and safety, well-being and future of our children,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference in San Francisco. “And that is not something we can accept. So we’ve sued.”
The latest lawsuits come nearly a year after dozens of states sued Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. in state and federal courts for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing addictive features that keep kids hooked on their platforms.
Keeping people on the platform is “how they generate massive ad revenue,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in an interview. “But unfortunately, that’s also how they generate adverse mental health impacts on the users.”
The legal challenges, which also include Google’s YouTube, are part of a growing reckoning against social media companies and their effects on young people’s lives. In some cases, the challenges have been coordinated in a way that resembles how states previously organized against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.
TikTok, though, is facing an even bigger obstacle, as its very existence in the U.S. is in question. Under a federal law that took effect earlier this year, TikTok could be banned from the U.S. by mid-January if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell the platform by then. Both TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the law at an appeals court in Washington. A panel of three judges heard oral arguments in the case last month and are expected to issue a ruling, which could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In its filings Tuesday, the District of Columbia called the algorithm “dopamine-inducing,” and said it was created to be intentionally addictive so the company could trap many young users into excessive use and keep them on its app for hours on end. TikTok does this despite knowing that these behaviors will lead to profound psychological and physiological harms, such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and other long-lasting problems, the district said.
TikTok is disappointed that the lawsuits were filed after the company had been working with the attorneys general for two years on addressing to the issues, a spokesman said.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” the TikTok spokesman. Alex Haurek, said. “We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product.”
The social media company does not allow children under 13 to sign up for its main service and restricts some content for everyone under 18. But Washington and several other states said in their filings that children can easily bypass those restrictions, allowing them to access the service adults use despite the company’s claims that its platform is safe for children.
The District of Columbia alleges TikTok is operating as an “unlicensed virtual economy” by allowing people to purchase TikTok Coins – a virtual currency within the platform – and send “Gifts” to streamers on TikTok LIVE who can cash it out for real money. TikTok takes a 50% commission on these financial transactions but hasn’t registered as a money transmitter with the U.S. Treasury Department or authorities in the district, according to the complaint.
Officials say teens are frequently exploited for sexually explicit content through TikTok’s LIVE streaming feature, which has allowed the app to operate essentially as a “virtual strip club” without any age restrictions. They say the cut the company gets from the financial transactions allows it to profit from exploitation.
The 14 attorneys general say the goal of their lawsuits is to stop TikTok from using these features, impose financial penalties for their alleged illegal practices and collect damages for users that have been harmed.
The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.
High school students who frequently use social media more commonly have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted last year in which about 20,000 teenagers participated.
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok, alleging the company was sharing and selling minors’ personal information in violation of a new state law that prohibits these practices. TikTok, which disputes the allegations, is also fighting against a similar data-oriented federal lawsuit filed in August by the Department of Justice.
Several Republican-led states, including Nebraska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas, also previously sued the company, some unsuccessfully, over allegations it is harming children’s mental health, exposing them to “inappropriate” content or allowing young people to be sexually exploited on its platform.
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Associated Press writers from around the U.S. contributed to this story.
TikTok was sued Tuesday by 14 attorneys general who allege the social media platform is misleading the public about its safety. The app, they say, is harming children’s mental health, with some kids getting injured or even dying because of TikTok’s viral “challenges.”
The lawsuits, filed Tuesday, also claim that TikTok relies on “addictive features” that keep users glued to its platform, which in turn can hurt their mental health. These features include notifications that can harm kids’ sleep patterns and video autoplay that encourages users to spend more time on the platform, without the option to turn off the autoplay function, according to the complaint.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading. We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.
“We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16,” the spokesperson said, adding, “We’ve endeavored to work with the Attorneys General for over two years, and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
The lawsuits add to other challenges facing TikTok, which is also fighting a potential ban that was signed into law earlier this year by President Joe Biden. The law, which the social media service has argued is unconstitutional and should be overturned, would require TikTok’s owner, the China-based company ByteDance, to either divest the business or face a ban of the service within the U.S.
At the same time, TikTok is also facing charges from various states and children’s advocates about privacy issues and their impact on kids and young adults.
In the October 8 lawsuits, the attorneys general cite TikTok’s popular “challenges” as harmful to children, promoting dangerous behaviors that have caused injuries, some fatal.
“Challenges are campaigns that encourage users to create and post certain types of videos on TikTok, such as a video of a user performing a certain dance routine or a dangerous prank,” alleges the lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. “Challenge videos are a cornerstone of the platform and are among the most popular videos on the platform.”
The lawsuit added, “Numerous teen users have injured or even killed themselves or others participating in viral pranks to obtain rewards and increase their number of ‘likes,’ views, and followers, a foreseeable consequence of TikTok’s engagement-maximizing design.”
In one case, a 15-year-old boy died in Manhattan while subway surfing, a trend where people ride on top of a moving subway car. The lawsuit notes that his mother found TikTok videos about subway surfing in his account after he had died.
The attorneys general who are suing TikTok represent the following states and district:
California
Illinois
Kentucky
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Mississippi
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Oregon
South Carolina
Vermont
Washington
District of Columbia
Each attorney general filed a lawsuit in their own jurisdiction.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
This all started like four or five days ago. How many followers have you gathered in that amount of time?
I went from, let’s see, I haven’t honestly been on TikTok in hours. I went from 6,000 to 576,000, so I’ve gained 570,000 followers.
[Editor’s note: As of this writing, she now has 1.6 million followers.]
Geez.
This is insane. That’s the first time I’ve looked and seen it. This morning, I was at 200 something, so just today I’ve gone from 200,000 something to half a million people. That’s the first time I’ve looked.
I’m sorry I made you look, to be honest.
No, it’s so insane.
I’m interested in the sleuth aspect. I know because you’ve said in a couple of your TikToks that you are a true-crime aficionado.
Absolutely.
I’m sure you understand the sort of impulse of why people do this, but it seems like a reversal to now be potentially the center.
I feel like I’m in an episode of Crime Junkie. I usually just listen to it as I drive to work, and now I feel like I’m in an episode, so I’m like, where’s Ashley Flowers? Where is she at? We need to talk. Yeah.
I was alone for the first time, just now, for a minute without my phone blowing up. I just took a deep breath and I’m like, I’ve watched this happen to other people in movies, and the fact that it’s happening to me is blowing my mind.
Maybe this sounds like an obvious question, but does it feel different? There are a lot of conversations about the impact of people’s fascination with true crime. Has there been a moment where it got more real, in a way?
So when I was on the Live, I was singing Jeopardy! songs, because between the detectives getting here and the dogs getting here was 45 minutes. So I kept saying, “This is the commercial break,” and I full-on thought not a chance in hell was this going to happen. This was a fun ending to a crazy story, and what a cool way to end this whole thing. The dogs see nothing. They leave, case closed. That’s what I was expecting.
Then the dogs smelled something.
Yeah, that first dog sat, and I audibly in the video, you hear me go and I start shaking, and that’s when it became real to me. The second that white dog sat, I was like, “This just got so different.”
I bet.
You see things like this on social media and you’re like, “Oh, that’s so insane. One in a million.” To be that one in a million, I can’t even put it into words how out-of-body … I keep feeling like I am just going to wake up, and this was all just a crazy dream.
A couple days ago you were making T-shirts.
Well, back when we, I think we had just hit 10,000 followers, we made T-shirts that said, “Just keep digging.” Again, it was a joke. Then other T-shirts that said, “I’m just here for the update.” Pretty much what every comment on my videos would say.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against TikTok claiming the company violated a new child privacy law in the state. It’s set to be the first test of Texas’ Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act since it went into effect just over a month ago.
Under the law, parts of which were struck down by a federal judge, social media platforms are required to verify the ages of younger users and offer parental control features, including the ability for parents to opt their children out of data collection.
Paxton alleges that TikTok’s existing parental control features are insufficient. “However, Defendants do not provide the parents or guardians of users known to be 13 to 17 years old with parental tools that allow them to control or limit most of a known minor’s privacy and account settings,” the lawsuit states. “For example, parents or guardians do not have the ability to control Defendants’ sharing, disclosing, and selling of a known minor’s personal identifying information, nor control Defendants’ ability to display targeted advertising to a known minor.”
The lawsuit also argues that the app’s “Family Pairing” tool isn’t “commercially reasonable” because it requires parents to make their own TikTok account and because teens are free to deny their parents’ requests to set up the monitoring tool. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The app already prohibits most targeted advertising to anyone younger than 18.
“We strongly disagree with these allegations and, in fact, we offer robust safeguards for teens and parents, including family pairing, all of which are publicly available,” the company said in a statement shared on X. “We stand by the protections we provide families.”
The lawsuit adds to TikTok’s growing legal challenges in the United States. The company is currently fighting a law that could result in a total ban of the app in the United States. It’s also facing a separate Justice Department lawsuit related to child privacy.
Update, October 3, 2024, 8:05 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from TikTok.
Well actually WIRED shares a parent company with Reddit.
Good. Get rid of it.
What’s the part of all of it that feels the weirdest to you still? Is it weird to have something happen in your life and have to issue a statement about it on Instagram?
It’s weird that if I say anything, it’s going to get press. And sometimes I don’t think about that. So when I decided to post an Instagram Story two weeks ago and be like, “I have never slept with someone I interviewed,” I did not expect to wake up to an email from my PR team being like, “Here’s all the news, the press you got from this.” Or when I got a divorce, having paparazzi show up at my house, I was like: “A. How did they figure out where I live? B. Why do they need to take photos of me walking without a wedding ring on?”
It is kind of crazy. Are you in a good place in all of that personal stuff?
A lot of people still really give me a hard time because I’m no longer with my children’s father. I was 22 when I got married.
I didn’t know if we were going to talk about this. But I got married when I was 21.
Did you?
And I got divorced. I was going to offer to tell you about my divorce if it would help you talk about yours. Because I married an abolitionist vegan in college. Special. And I was also vegan and then was seeing a doctor. I was vegan because I was starving myself.
Oh my god.
I went to see a doctor and the doctor was like, “You have to start eating dairy. Katie, you have to start eating some sort of animal product. You have to gain weight.” So I started eating yogurt, and I called my husband, because we were living in different cities at the time, and I said, “There are two things I need to tell you. One is that I started smoking.” And he was like, “That’s hilarious. I never would’ve pictured you as a smoker.” And I said, “And the other thing is that I started eating yogurt.” And he was like, “I’m done.”
No way. Your husband.
My husband. And we got divorced because I ate—
Yogurt.
A Fage 0 percent plain.
It’s so easy to look at the future and be like, you get married and you stay married forever. We had kids immediately. I got pregnant 10 months after knowing him, maybe 11 months. And then at a year marker we’re getting married. We got married in the courthouse.
As a kid, I saw my parents being horrible together. Horrible. Truly, truly, truly. The worst possible couple that could be together.
Are they still married?
No. And I remember the day that my mom told us they were getting divorced was the best day of my life.
I read online that the best time to get a divorce and for it to have the least impact on your kids is before they turn 3. When my daughter was 3 I remember it was just, if we are going to do this, it needs to be now, because our kids won’t know. It wasn’t like my parents, but we weren’t in love.
And by then you must’ve had some financial independence.
The timing lined up perfectly with me getting a lot of money. Once I knew my career was going to take off, I was OK. And we had the conversation and it was a joint conversation of, “this isn’t good anyway.”
Do you want to get married again?
I would love to get married and have all of the things that I never got. I want to meet someone, date them for a while, have them surprise me with an engagement ring, and then get married and have a big wedding and lots of family and friends there. I want to be disgustingly in love one day.
Well, I’m sure all your fans on Reddit will read this interview and take notes.
Oh, they will.
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor atmail@wired.com.
Along the way, the aesthetic and style of these videos started to change. The early viral renovation videos from Designer Bob were silly but could sometimes be mistaken for genuine design content. Newer videos were more ludicrous, the renovations more fantastical, their action narrated by a droning AI voice. That’s just the way TikTok’s remix culture works, says Alex Turvy, who studies digital culture.
“We’re going to see trends like this become more and more absurd until they burn out,” he says.
There’s even a spin-off meme specifically about “galvanized square steel,” to the point where some users have questioned whether the whole meme is a viral marketing campaign for galvanized steel.
“I think lore is a really good word to use here. Now the videos blow up and do well because there is lore around them,” Karten says. “Lore sustains virality.”
The more I watched these videos, the more desperate I was to understand who was making them. In the case of Designer Bob, the account bio links to an online candle and crystal store run by a company based in China called Whisper Wisp. And the Designer Bob Facebook page lists Hong Kong as a base on the Page Transparency section. Still, it seems unlikely this is a covert marketing campaign for a candle shop. None of Whisper Wisp’s social channels are nearly as popular as the Designer Bob account. (Whisper Wisp didn’t respond to any of my messages.)
Details about who’s behind the Dy02449xjp account are even more scarce. There is a Facebook page with the same username sharing the same videos. Beyond that, nothing. No other connected accounts, no storefronts or identifying information. If there’s a scam or an upsell coming, it hasn’t dropped yet. For now, at least, Dy02449xjp appears to be pursuing TikTok engagement for its own sake.
Many of these accounts use some variation of the name “Home Designs” and similar logos of a small house, which strongly resemble the branding of an architecture and interior design program called HomeDesignsAI—a major clue, I thought, toward solving the mystery. I was able to track down HomeDesignsAI’s COO and cofounder, Denis Madroane. But he was just as confused as everyone else about how popular these renovation TikToks have become.
HomeDesignsAI is a Romania-based startup that launched in 2023. The app allows users to upload a photo of a room or floor plan and transform it using AI. Madroane says he started seeing TikToks that used HomeDesignsAI last year. He says he and his team thought they were pretty funny—but they’re not seeing much upside.
Madroane confirmed that Home-DesignsAI does have a TikTok account, though it doesn’t really participate in the memes. It has a little under 900 followers, and its biggest video has around 195,000 views. Which seems fine—until you compare it to the unofficial Home-DesignsAI accounts on TikTok. The biggest one, @homedesign369, has 2.4 million followers and is consistently getting millions of views per video.
“Our official account is severely underperforming compared to the numbers averaged by user-generated content,” Madroane concedes.
But as it turns out, none of the most viral Little John TikToks were made using HomeDesignsAI software. So, mystery unsolved. And before this summer, no one on TikTok seemed to know where these videos were coming from. That is, until Candise Lin, a Cantonese and Mandarin tutor based in the US, noticed the trend going viral and revealed the missing piece of the puzzle—at least for confused Americans—in a TikTok video of her own.
A judge has denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against a Hubbard Inn customer who in March posted a TikTok video claiming the venue’s bouncer dragged her out of the bathroom and shoved her, sending her “flying down the staircase.”
The customer, Julia Reel, is the subject of a defamation lawsuit filed by the Hubbard Inn’s lawyers. In the filing, the bar’s council claims that her social media post, which was shared more than 100,000 times, defamed the business, leading to more than $30,000 in canceled reservations, threats to their staff, and negative publicity with their Yelp page review bombed.
“I will never be going back there, and you shouldn’t either,” Reel said in her now-deleted video.
Reel’s video showed her sitting on her bed, calling the March 10 incident “the craziest experience she’s ever been in” and that she was “manhandled.” Cook County circuit court judge Patrick Sherlock denied her motion to dismiss the case on Tuesday, September 25, and ordered a response to the court by Tuesday, October 15.
After Reel posted her video in March, in an unusual move for a restaurant, Hubbard Inn responded with its own video spliced with Reel’s voiceover that included security footage allegedly showing the Tiktokker and a friend walking down a staircase with a bouncer following them. The Hubbard Inn video claimed Reel was “politely escorted off the premises, ensuring a safe exit.” A week later, the club filed the lawsuit against Reel.
Reel quickly turned to a law firm, Corboy & Demetrio, which put out its own TikTok video with a statement defending their client; it’s since been deleted and Reel has since switched attorneys.
Part of Reel’s new council, Rebecca Kaiser Fournier, an attorney at Henderson Parks, didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Reel is also represented by Forde & O’Meara, according to Cook County documents.
As the drama unfolded in March, online observers sat back and took their shots at Reel. The popular social media account Know Your Meme even posted about the conflict.
Reel filed a police report following the alleged altercation at Hubbard Inn claiming she was treated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a bouncer removed her from a bathroom while she was urinating. She claims the bouncer pushed her down the stairs causing her head to hit the ground. Reel, 22 at the time, told police she suffered bruises to her head and arm. No arrests were made.
A Hubbard Inn rep says police never contacted the bar for any follow-ups to Reel’s report.
In the motion to dismiss, filed on Wednesday, September 4, Reel’s attorneys argue her client’s video was “not a statement of fact but rather an internet review and her opinion of the business — not grounds for a defamation claim.” Reel’s attorneys also cite a classic piece of Chicago restaurant lore: a lawsuit filed by Peter Schivarelli, the founder of Demon Dogs, a hot dog stand that once stood under the CTA’s Fullerton Red and Brown line stop in Lincoln Park.
Schivarelli, a former streets and sanitation supervisor (who also managed the rock band Chicago), in 1999 sued CBS Chicago over a commercial that referenced a 1997 news report about Schivarelli’s involvement in a ghost payrolling scandal. The ad touted the channel’s investigative reporting unit and featured a clip from Pam Zekman’s piece with the reporter telling Schivarelli “you are cheating the city.” Schivarelli would argue that the clip lacked context and counted as defamation. The case was dismissed in 2001.
Hubbard Inn’s attorneys claim Reel ignored multiple requests in March to remove her post and that pushed them to sue.
When Grace Carter heard from The Right Stuff’s account on Instagram, the person controlling the account introduced himself as John. He also offered a phone number with a Southern California area code—a number that a WIRED reporter has used in the past to contact McEntee.
There was no obvious reason why he would have reached out to her in particular. At the time he contacted her, Carter had about 17,000 followers on TikTok, she says, and still has only a modest 1,500 on Instagram. “I actually have no idea how he found me,” she says. “Based on the other accounts I follow and things I post, it’s very leftist. So I was surprised when he found me.”
Carter says she never used McEntee’s phone number, though she did accept his offer of a free branded hoodie. While messages viewed by WIRED indicate that Carter sparsely responded to McEntee, he repeatedly offered to fly her and a girlfriend to Los Angeles. “My treat,” he wrote.
“I remember I told my boyfriend about it, and I was joking that he was going to be the other girl,” says Carter, who says that she continued to talk to McEntee as a kind of “trolling.” “I was like, I could use a free trip, that’s initially why I kept the conversation going.”
In messages seen by WIRED, McEntee says to Carter, “I think you’re a liberal” but tells her, “as long as you’ll be fun I don’t care.” The conversation, she says, died out after Carter declined to visit McEntee over her winter break.
“I would have been uncomfortable with him in person,” she says.
Following the presidential debate on September 10, McEntee posted a video saying, “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.” The comments section of that video were soon flooded with women across the country sharing their experiences.
It was this post that Carter says made her feel like it was important to share her experience. “That video he made about abortions really upset me,” she says. “And I was just like, it needs to be called out.” Carter posted a video on TikTok sharing her messages with McEntee and says that she has received messages from several other young women who allege similar experiences.
One of those women, who spoke to WIRED and asked to remain anonymous because she’s concerned about her security, says that she connected with McEntee on The Right Stuff dating app before moving to texting him. The number provided matched the one given to Carter and the one used previously by a WIRED reporter; messages reviewed by WIRED also included selfies that clearly appear to be of McEntee. Like Carter, she was 18 at the time.
“I would label myself as semi-conservative,” the young woman says. Unlike Carter, she knew who McEntee was and at first thought his profile on the app was an example for users, as opposed to his actual account. (Last year, a series of TikTok videos showed McEntee going on first dates with women he matched with on the app in various cities.) “I had seen him on TikTok. I’d see him on the news. My family is quite conservative, so I had seen him before.”
Creed is having a moment. Actually, if we’re being precise, it’s having innumerable moments, over and over again, all across the internet.
On Instagram, the band has been repurposed as a comedic device for dunking on President Joe Biden; on TikTok, shitposters imagined what it would be like to explain the butt rock legends to an alien race; and on X, Creed is an easy punchline for commenting on political theater. All the while, those memes are collectively accumulating millions of likes, views, and shares.
It’s safe to say that if Charli XCX hadn’t already made 2024 a “brat summer,” then this—as far as memes are concerned—would be Scott Stapp season. And Stapp, for his part, seems to be fully aware of it. “I’ve seen so many [memes],” the Creed frontman says. “Some are hilarious and I find myself just laughing, and some are really heartwarming in terms of how much time and energy the fan has put into creating the video.”
The wildest part of all isn’t that Creed is being memed to death—it’s that the band is seemingly being memed back to life. In 2024, Creed quietly clawed its way back from internet punchline to real, honest-to-god, record-selling rock band. By June, the band found itself back in the charts—the top 40 no less. Last month, the band’s Greatest Hits was climbing in sales.
As a result of its unexpected resurgence, Creed is even back touring, playing sold-out shows with fellow postgrunge staples like 3 Doors Down. On top of that, they’re selling tickets for arena gigs for upwards of $100. For the super Creed-core, there’s the band’s second-annual Miami-to-Nassau “Creed cruise” in 2025, which lists top-tier tickets for an eye-watering $4,300. Those tickets, by the way, are sold out.
Sure, old music finds new audiences all the time, often with a bump from the internet—but Creed isn’t other bands. Creed is a band that hasn’t released a new studio album in 15 years and has spent most of that decade and a half as the butt of internet jokes. By industry standards, Creed was, at least until recently, six feet under.
“Back in 2020, Creed hadn’t toured since 2012, so we were kind of intrigued, I think would be the word, to see the interest and to see the songs having new life and resurgence and renaissance,” says Creed’s agent, Ken Fermaglich, who has been with the band for decades.
All of that begs a couple obvious questions: Why here and why now?
According to YouTuber Pat Finnerty, whose channel “What Makes This Song Stink” ritually roasts bands of Creed’s ilk, the equation for Creed’s comeback is a simple one: time + cringe = popularity.
Creed, Finnerty says, are now past the 20-year mark after which most old bands can feel new again. “But then there’s the meme thing—you see all these memes of like ‘this band sucks,’ but now, to use the parlance of our time, ‘this band fucks,’” he adds. “They’re switching it from ‘this band sucks’ to ‘this band fucks’ and it’s actually funnier for them to get into it.”
A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.Weighing 49 pounds (22 kilograms) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said Friday.In contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango, weigh 24 pounds (11 kilograms) each.Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world have viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.He has eaten more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 53 pounds (24 kilograms), Early said.The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.His keepers expect him to trim down to around 33 pounds (15 kilograms) in the process.”He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.But she expects Pesto to remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.For now, he’s a star attraction.”Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.Having hatched on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there were none last year isn’t clear.Adult king penguins weigh between 21 pounds (9.5 kilograms) and 40 pounds (18 kilograms), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.They are the world’s second-largest penguin species after the emperor penguin.
MELBOURNE, Australia —
A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.
Weighing 49 pounds (22 kilograms) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said Friday.
In contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango, weigh 24 pounds (11 kilograms) each.
Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world have viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.
He has eaten more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 53 pounds (24 kilograms), Early said.
The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.
His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.
His keepers expect him to trim down to around 33 pounds (15 kilograms) in the process.
“He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.
But she expects Pesto to remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.
For now, he’s a star attraction.
“Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.
Having hatched on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there were none last year isn’t clear.
Adult king penguins weigh between 21 pounds (9.5 kilograms) and 40 pounds (18 kilograms), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.
They are the world’s second-largest penguin species after the emperor penguin.
A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.Weighing 49 pounds (22 kilograms) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said Friday.In contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango, weigh 24 pounds (11 kilograms) each.Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world have viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.He has eaten more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 53 pounds (24 kilograms), Early said.The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.His keepers expect him to trim down to around 33 pounds (15 kilograms) in the process.”He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.But she expects Pesto to remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.For now, he’s a star attraction.”Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.Having hatched on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there were none last year isn’t clear.Adult king penguins weigh between 21 pounds (9.5 kilograms) and 40 pounds (18 kilograms), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.They are the world’s second-largest penguin species after the emperor penguin.
MELBOURNE, Australia —
A huge king penguin chick named Pesto, who weighs as much as both his parents combined, has become a social media celebrity and a star attraction at an Australian aquarium.
Weighing 49 pounds (22 kilograms) at 9 months old, Pesto is the heaviest penguin chick the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever had, its education supervisor Jacinta Early said Friday.
In contrast, his doting parents, Hudson and Tango, weigh 24 pounds (11 kilograms) each.
Pesto’s global fame has grown with his size. More than 1.9 billion people around the world have viewed him through social media, an aquarium statement said.
He has eaten more than his own substantial body weight in fish in the past week: 53 pounds (24 kilograms), Early said.
The veterinary advice is that that quantity of food is healthy for a chick approaching adulthood.
His growth will plateau as he enters his fledging period. He has started to lose his brown feathers and will replace them with the black and white plumage of a young adult.
His keepers expect him to trim down to around 33 pounds (15 kilograms) in the process.
“He’s going to start losing that really adorable baby fluff. It might take him one to two months to really get rid of it. Then he’ll be nice and sleek and streamlined,” Early said.
But she expects Pesto to remain recognizable as the sought-after TikTok celebrity he has become for another two weeks.
For now, he’s a star attraction.
“Such a small head for such a big body,” one admirer remarked Friday as a crowd gathered against the glass of the penguin enclosure at feeding time.
Having hatched on Jan. 31, Pesto was the only king penguin chick to hatch at the aquarium this year and the first since 2022, a year when there were six. The reason why there were none last year isn’t clear.
Adult king penguins weigh between 21 pounds (9.5 kilograms) and 40 pounds (18 kilograms), according to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a global environmental group.
They are the world’s second-largest penguin species after the emperor penguin.
Washington — A long-brewing legal standoff over the popular video-sharing app TikTok got underway on Monday, with arguments in the challenge against a possible ban kicking off.
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been under fire by U.S. officials for years over warnings that China’s government could gain access to users’ data and use it to manipulate or spy on Americans. But a renewed push against the app gained momentum in Congress earlier this year, as lawmakers approved a foreign aid package that included provisions requiring it to be sold or be banned from U.S. app stores. President Biden signed the legislation into law in April, teeing up a countdown for TikTok’s sale.
TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department in May over the law, arguing that it violates First Amendment rights of users, among other claims. With the petition, the parties asked the court to block enforcement of the legislation, which they said would force a shutdown of the app by early next year, arguing that the sale of the app is untenable before then.
Given the timeline, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit fast-tracked oral arguments. The parties appeared before a panel of three judges in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Monday, where TikTok sought a preliminary injunction against the law.
TikTok has argued that the potential ban would be a “radical departure” from the U.S. supporting an open internet, while setting a “dangerous precedent.” Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers and security experts stress that the Chinese government could tap TikTok’s trove of personal data from millions of U.S. users.
In a July filing, the Justice Department outlined that the concern “is grounded in the actions ByteDance and TikTok have already taken overseas, and in the PRC’s malign activities in the United States that, while not reliant on ByteDance and TikTok to date, demonstrate its capability and intent to engage in malign foreign influence and theft of sensitive data.”
The arguments over the law that could ban TikTok
On Monday, TikTok and the Justice Department each had 25 minutes to present their case.
Representatives for TikTok presented their arguments first. Attorney Andrew Pincus asserted that for the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific U.S. speaker, banning its speech — and the speech of 170 million Americans. And he urged that it’s the government’s burden to prove the law’s constitutionality.
“No compelling reason justifies Congress acting like an enforcement agency and specifically targeting petitioners,” Pincus said.
Pincus repeatedly asserted that the Justice Department has not demonstrated evidence of China’s ability to steal data at will, while working to draw a distinction between foreign ownership and foreign control. He questioned why other foreign-based or China-based companies aren’t being targeted, and why there haven’t been less restrictive attempts to regulate TikTok outside of a possible ban or forced sale.
Asked by one of the judges about the possibility of the parent company’s divestment in the app, Pincus argued that not only is it infeasible, but it also puts a burden on TikTok even if “it would be possible.”
“So this isn’t just about divestiture. It’s really about a ban,” Pincus said.
Representing a group of prominent TikTok users who also filed a lawsuit challenging the law, attorney Jeffrey Fisher argued that in American history, the answer has never been suppression of speech, noting that the idea that a foreign adversary might spread its ideas about political and social issues “has never in our history been a basis for suppressing speech in this country.” Fischer argued that the law “directly implicates the First Amendment rights of American speakers to speak,” urging that the Justice Department’s government’s content manipulation rationale is “wholly illegitimate and invalid.”
On the other side, attorney Daniel Tenny represented the government. He argued that the bottom line is that the app’s code is written in China, outlining the sheer amount of information gathered about users and saying that the problem arises out of the data being “extremely valuable to a foreign adversary trying to compromise the security of the United States.”
Tenny drew a line between expression and protected expression, arguing that what is being targeted is not protected expression.
IT is the first far-right party to win German state elections since the Nazis – and the success of Alternative for Germany is down to younger supporters.
Paramedic Severin Kohler says that it is now trendy among Generation Z TikTokers to back the organisation known as AfD, which is led in the state of Thuringia by a man who has been labelled a “fascist”.
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AfD fans Severin Kohler and Carolin LichtenheldCredit: Paul Edwards
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AfD MP Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestryCredit: Paul Edwards
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Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the postCredit: Paul Edwards
Severin, 28, a leader of the party’s youth wing Junge Alternative, told me: “It’s a matter of a rebellion against their parents. Being from the right is punk now.”
Almost 40 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old voters backed the AfD in Thuringia, central Germany, last week. In neighbouring Saxony, 31 per cent did the same.
Yet the local branches of the party in the two states have been classified as “right-wing extremist” by the nation’s domestic intelligence agency.
On the Instagram page of Carolin Lichtenheld, who leads Thuringia’s Junge Alternative, the 21-year-old trainee pharmacist is shown brndishing a megaphone at a rally, with the caption: “Ready to fight for the preservation of our homeland and for our future. We are the youth who are ready to resist a woke society.”
The image is hashtagged with the word “reconquista” — a reference to the recapture by Christian kings of Spain and Portugal from the Muslim Moors.
Felix Steiner, from German far-right monitoring group Mobile Consulting, agrees that young voters are attracted to the AfD.
The activist told The Sun: “Almost no other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok. The message is, ‘Young people, come to us. We are the next movement’.”
Youth campaigner Severin wears a T-shirt bearing the name Bjorn Hocke — the AfD’s leader in Thuringia who has twice been convicted this year of using Nazi slogans.
Former history teacher Hocke harnessed the power of TikTok to target the youth vote during the election.
Incredible story of Nazi hunter and holocaust refugee
In one post he leads a cavalcade of motorcyclists riding models made by Simson — a brand associated with national pride by the far right — in the old Communist East Germany.
Yet critics say that behind Hocke’s glossy social media campaigning is a man who is a political “danger”.
In 2019 a court in Thuringia ruled it was not libellous to call Hocke a “fascist” as the opinion had a “verifiable, factual basis”.
Thin-lipped and greying, Hocke once described Berlin’sHolocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame” and demanded a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance.
The father-of-four once spoke of the Germans “longing for a historical figure” who would “heal the wounds of the people”.
Ulrike Grosse-Rothig, leader of Thuringia’s left-wing Die Linke party, told The Sun: “Hocke is a die-hard fascist. He’s a danger for German society, its voters and to democracy.”
Former AfD Thuringia MP Oskar Helmerich has called Hocke “a dangerous man”.
Little wonder Thuringia’s small Jewish community has been fearful.
Professor Reinhard Schramm, who lost 20 close family to the Nazi extermination camps, has had death threats and bullets sent to him in the post from unknown sources.
Speaking at a synagogue in Thuringia’s largest city Erfurt, the 80-year-old Holocaust survivor told me: “The Jewish community is insecure and some are afraid. They are quite allergically against the AfD. This is not a normal party.”
Of Hocke’s demand for a “180- degree turn” in Germany’s culture of remembrance, the grandfather-of-three says: “So does this mean that I am not supposed to speak about my grandmother who was gassed to death in a German gas chamber?”
‘Some are afraid’
Severin insists the AfD is “against political violence”, adding: “We don’t have anything in common with people sending bullets to synagogues.”
The AfD won Thuringia — a largely rural state in central Germany — with just under 33 per cent of the vote.
It’s the latest European convulsion of the far right which has seen rampaging thugs attempt to torch migrant hotels in Britain and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally topping parliamentary elections in France.
In Germany — as elsewhere — the touchstone issue has been immigration.
Days before the Thuringia vote, a Syrian asylum seeker went on a knife rampage, killing three in the west German city of Solingen.
It emerged that the man — linked to Islamic State — had previously had his claim for asylum turned down but he had not been deported because the authorities could not find him.
Germany’s lame duck premier Olaf Scholz promised to speed up deportations and other mainstream parties followed suit with tough talk on immigration, including the conservative Christian Democratic Union.
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Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrongCredit: Paul Edwards
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A CDU poster calling to stop illegal migrationCredit: Paul Edwards
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An anti-multicultural bannerCredit: Paul Edwards
Yesterday, it was reported that Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser has told the EU that controls will be brought in on all the country’s land borders, to deal with the “continuing burden” of migration and “Islamist terrorism”.
Britain, where populists Reform won four million votes at the General Election, will be watching whether moves towards the AfD’s turf will win back voters.
As well as a hardline stance on immigration, the AfD is also against what it says are over-zealous green policies, and it wants to halt weapons supplies to Ukraine.
At the Thuringian parliament in Erfurt, I met key Hocke lieutenant Torben Braga — who, curiously for a German anti-immigration party, was born in Brazil and is of Brazilian and Welsh ancestry.
The 33-year-old Thuringia MP says: “Bjorn Hocke doesn’t have a single fascist vein in his body.”
‘Political firewall’
Of his boss’s infamous “shame” reference to the Berlin Holocaust memorial, Braga says he meant it was “a shameful part of our history”.
Braga believes the security services are monitoring him and suggests “provocateurs” from those agencies were behind the “two or three cases” of people doing the Hitler salute at a recent rally in Erfurt.
Picturesque Erfurt is, at first glance, perhaps an unlikely setting for a far-right upsurge. Half-timbered town houses crowd flower-bedecked medieval squares where tourists enjoy beers on its many restaurant terraces.
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A far-right mob gather at a demonstration in Solingen last monthCredit: EPA
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Far-right AfD supporters wave German flags, including one adorned with an Iron CrossCredit: Getty
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The AfD party’s slick TikTok videosCredit: tiktok/@afd
This summer the England squad had their Euro 2024 training base a short drive away and Three Lions star Jude Bellingham was spotted having coffee in the city of 215,000.
Yet Thuringia has seen too much history in the 20th century.
After the Americans liberated Thuringia, it fell under Soviet control.
From 1949 to 1990 it was part of the Communist state of East Germany.
Post-German reunification, Thuringia and other eastern states struggled economically, with many youngsters heading to western Germany.
Immigration became a key political battleground after conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to a million refugees in 2015 and 2016.
Last year around 334,000 people claimed asylum in Germany — more than France and Spain combined. In the UK the figure was just under 85,000 people.
The AfD — formed in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party — has seen its fortunes rise as it hammered home its anti-immigration stance.
No other party is so active on social media platforms, especially TikTok.The AfD post pictures of demonstrations. The message is: ‘Young people come to us. We are the next movement’
It called for a ban on burqas, minarets, and call to prayer using the slogan, “Islam is not a part of Germany” in 2016.
In Thuringia, Hocke led a radical AfD faction called The Wing, deemed beyond the pale even by many in his own party.
Andreas Buhl, a Thuringian MP for Merkel’s CDU, concedes that the former Chancellor’s open border policy was wrong.
He told me: “In hindsight, it should have been clearer that you can also push people back at the border who have already entered another European country.”
He pledged, as other mainstream parties have, not to work with the AfD, creating a political firewall likely to block it from taking power.
It raises the spectre that those who voted for it may come to believe that democracy is failing them.
But anti-far-right activist Felix Steiner says only around half of AfD supporters are wedded to their hardline doctrines, with the rest supporting them as a protest vote.
He added: “The AfD result could be halved if voters were satisfied with other parties’ policies.”
The fight for the political soul of Germany’s Generation Z goes on.
It’s a battle of ideas that may be won or lost on the feeds of TikTok and Instagram.
