@stephantradez thought he was going to be fine. In his first TikTok about Hurricane Milton, he vowed to stay at his Tampa apartment. In a follow-up video, he said the media was “rage-baiting” everyone into thinking the storm “was going to be some catastrophic thing” but that it wouldn’t be that bad “as long as you can swim.” Late Wednesday night, he posted another video saying that he thought he’d survived but then lost his power. “This is so much worse than I expected,” he said while pointing the camera out the window of his home, showing the destruction from several floors up. Thursday morning, he posted a video saying he’d survived, adding “They have to ban hurricanes at night, that was the most stressful thing I’ve ever been a part of.”
I attempted to reach the creator through TikTok and Instagram DM, but got no response. @stephantradez, though, was one of many people who kept posting on TikTok and other social media platforms throughout the storm, despite, as the warning on one of the creator’s videos noted, “participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt.”
When Milton made landfall Wednesday night local time in Sarasota, it was a Category 3 hurricane. As it traversed Florida, it took the roof off of Tropicana Field, left millions without electricity, and killed several people. It also became the subject of TikToks with millions of views, and, according to a report in Rolling Stone, turned the platform into “a hellscape of people staying in Hurricane Milton’s path for clout.”
While it’s true that some people likely stayed, and kept posting, because there was nowhere for them to go, others definitely seemed to be sticking around in an attempt to keep attention on their feeds. Rather than a hellscape, it became a demonstration of the best and worst of TikTok.
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For every mom getting told to flee the storm’s path even as she explains that she can’t afford to, there’s someone saying they’re in an evacuation zone but sticking around while also offering up sports betting tips.
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 where social media platforms, particularly TikTok, function as 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 nontraditional 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.
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.