How to start a war on TikTok

“Have you seen this woman who said Canadians are going into battle?”

“… you know that lady who said she’s been in meetings with upper people from the government and White House and stuff…”

“1 Canadian specifically. Kat Arnett, she was the only one pushing it. Tell me you’re being paid without saying it, so sick of these influencers.”

To say this has been the weirdest week of my life would be drastically underselling it.

Last Saturday morning I got up extra early to attend the final three hour session in a writer’s workshop that I had been gifted a scholarship to attend. I had been battling a cold all week and was trying to down as much tea as I could to make my voice last through our breakout session. We were talking about the general state of disaster of the world (being a group of speculative fiction writers it seemed apt) and one person said how bad it was where they lived. As the rest of the people were Americans I laughed and said, “well up in Canada we’re preparing for war.”

And they all looked confused.

In the week leading up to that moment most of Canada had been in the will they/won’t they daily updates on the tariffs Mayor McCheese was threatening to put on Canada. I’ve always been quite tuned in politically and in possession of a big yap. On twitter, Facebook, instagram, TikTok, I will not back down from sharing my opinions. Just like I do in real life.

I’ve had two separate TikTok accounts (one for vegan food & one for life) for 5 years now. I find the app to be both inspiring and educational depending on the day. But it was the WorldTok phenomenon that really captured my attention.

There was about a 12 hour period when Americans were Thanos snapped off the app. And it was… quiet. Suddenly I was seeing Canadians, Aussies, Norwegians, South Africans, and Icelandic people. Normal people doing everyday things and living life. No commerce, no artifice, just pure connection. And it was funny! The shared dry sense of humour was refreshing. No one was getting hate comments because they didn’t understand a joke. No one was getting hate comments at all. And it seemed that all the bots had vanished.

And then the Americans came back. Sort of.

While the official ban might have been lifted WorldTok had taken off. We had started following each other and cries for “please don’t go!” in videos were everywhere. We helped train our algorithms to stay in that happy bubble. And from January 19th to February 8th I didn’t see any American content at all.

On February 3rd I made a video about how Canada needed to put on their oxygen mask first because we were in an economic coup attempt. I tried nicely to speak to any Americans who saw it, but there were none to be found. A lot of Canadians did though. During the start of our “Buy Canadian, Bye American” boycott it struck a chord with many people. And for that I was touched. About 80 thousand people saw it, I couldn’t believe it. Generally my videos hit a few hundred views, so I was pretty overwhelmed.

All week long as the news cycle marched I made videos. On being proud to be Canadian but not “Canada Proud”, on gun control, the FLQ crisis, Canadian banks, the Minister of Mental Health, the takeover of Gaza, Margaret Atwood… as you can imagine not the most riveting topics for many people but ones that sparked some great conversations with friends.

Then on Friday we got the infamous Justin Trudeau “hot mic” moment heard round the world. Or I guess at least round my house. I sometimes forget that not everyone is a news nerd and wouldn’t have watched the video and read 4 articles on his conversation about the very real threat we were facing from the US wanting to annex our country.

Everyone I knew was talking about it. The “joke” we’d been hearing for months that always sounded a little too ominous. We were five days into a fervent boycott already and Canada as a whole had come together in a way I’ve never seen in my lifetime (that didn’t involve hockey). It was particularly relevant for me as I live in a border town. I like to joke that I can see America from my house.

So when I finished up with my writing workshop I couldn’t stop thinking about the Americans I had talked to that didn’t seem to be on the same page. And as I’d been doing all week I picked up my phone and made a little TikTok.

For me the video was less about “preparing for war” and more about how strange the continued phenomenon of being siloed on the app was. That the Canadians I’d seen and talked to online were all having the same conversation but it was happening in this bubble that wasn’t being shown to Americans.

Then I put my phone down and went to eat lunch and watch Smosh. That was around 11 a.m. and by 6:45 p.m. it had 1.9 million views. The bubble was burst and the Americans had found me. And they were flying past the context of the video straight to “Canada has declared they’re marching tanks into the US? Good luck, we’ll destroy you.”

So I made another video trying to clarify and providing the news sources people kept asking for. As of writing this the viral video has 17.8 million views, while the follow up only has 213k. It was too late. The nuance toothpaste was out of the tube and there was no putting it back.

My DMs filled with spam, every time I opened the app I had another 7 thousand comments, it was like going for your first surf lesson by being dropped into the ocean. 24 hours later during a Fox News interview the President was asked about Trudeau’s statement and he confirmed that yes he did want to annex Canada. And still people called me a liar.

But worse they called me a fear monger. They said I was doing this for “likes and money”. I’ve been on the internet since the 90s and lived through the rough patch that was GamerGate on twitter. Name calling is not new to me. Accusing me of doing it for money though? Canadians can’t monetise on TikTok. And even if they could I would not want to profit off of the threat to my country’s sovereignty.

Is it fear mongering to say that people are preparing for war? No. Because the Prime Minister was literally preparing business people that the US was threatening us with one. Individuals were cutting ties to the America, mentally trying to gage what they would do if push came to shove, and getting emergency supplies ready. A Ukrainian man shared a list of things he wished he had done to prepare for the Russian invasion and Canadians were checking off that list.

Not to mention my tone was light and sort of incredulous about the situation. Not crying, panicked, or fearful. But that didn’t matter to dozens of huge creators that started ripping my video apart to explain what I was doing to manipulate others (without ever talking to me or seeing the rest of my page btw) and how I was pushing a narrative that US media is full of censorship (something I neither said nor believe). American creators who of course were making money off of me.

Which is maybe my biggest takeaway about going viral. Once it happens your image no longer belongs to you. No one cares about who you are, what your name is, or wants to add any context about your life. You exist solely in the 3 minutes you spoke and everything before and after, everything that lives outside the internet, is no longer relevant.

They put me on NBC News and I only found out because my mother was on YouTube and clicked on a random video.

You become a headline with a pulse.

I’m still making TikTok videos because the world continues to spin out of control and I need an outlet where I can yell into the void about a world “leader” calling my Prime Minister the “governor”. And because I genuinely find so many interesting voices there.

Nothing has changed about my life. I’m not launching a podcast or a crypto currency. I haven’t made a single cent off of this and I remain gainfully unemployed after being terminated without cause last October. My book still doesn’t have an agent. My boyfriend is still too busy for date night.

And while I am preparing for war, I am holding out hope that Americans can stop their out of control dictator before he crosses the line. Or in this case, the 49th parallel.