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Do you remember all that went down in the virtual realm over the last fortnight? Did you add anything to your Steam library this week? Have you gone down any rabbit holes in the last seven days? No? Would you like to? Do you have a minute?
This week, we have everything from TikTok-fueled relationship drama to controversy surrounding none other than Elon Musk. 60 seconds on the clock — on your marks, get set, read!
— Rebecca Smith, Senior Arts Editor, and Holly Tschirhart, Digital Culture Beat Editor
Halley Kate and Sophia La Corte TikTok Drama
As always, TikTok has provided us with an endless stream of mind-numbing drama this summer. Most recently, many For You Pages, including my own, have been full of videos surrounding Sophia La Corte and Halley Kate McGookin, both 20-something influencers living in New York City.
Here’s the rundown: Last year, McGookin had a relatively public breakup with her boyfriend. She posted about it online several times, receiving immense support from both her followers and her fellow influencers. However, soon after, Reddit users reported seeing McGookin’s ex out and about with La Corte on a date. This was shocking news considering that — according to several now-deleted TikTok videos and comments posted by Kate — she confided in La Corte about the breakup and in response, La Corte went on McGookin’s Instagram, sought out her ex and asked him on a date.
The internet responded accordingly, utterly and completely flaming La Corte, but McGookin and her boyfriend got back together the following spring and the drama seemed to die down. That is until La Corte recently posted several videos on TikTok speaking about the time the internet tried to “cancel” her for going on a date with a single guy. She doesn’t use names, but given how much attention this situation has gotten, it was clear who the subject of the video was. Why she’s continuing to bring attention to this situation is beyond me, considering the man in question (who, by the way, is not worth all of this drama) is now in another relationship, and all it is earning her is more hate. My best guess? She’s willing to endure it if it means raking in more money from the creator’s fund.
Senior Arts Editor Rebecca Smith can be reached at rebash@umich.edu.
Sedona Prince’s “Apology”
Sedona Prince is a basketball player and TikToker who has recently run into plenty of controversy concerning her past relationships. Over the summer, you may have been introduced to this saga with Olivia Stabile’s series about her ex-Sedona titled “Who the fuck did I take to Mexico?” where Liv describes the awful behavior Sedona supposedly afflicted upon her on their now infamous trip to Mexico and the consistent harm Sedona caused throughout their relationship. This series gripped TikTok and effectively ran Sedona off of the internet — until this week.
Sedona came back to the internet with an apology that could not have possibly gone worse. She starts the video with a sigh and a grin, before saying “I have been holding myself accountable,” while never stating for what. She then states that for the “past four months,” she has been off of social media completely, a claim that can be disproved by one scroll on TikTok, considering she posted the day before. This nonapology has only furthered the Sedona hate train, which seems unlikely to die down any time soon.
Daily Arts Writer Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.
Brazil gets banned from X
In this week’s episode of Mr. Musk’s Wild Ride: Brazilians awoke Saturday to find that they were no longer allowed to access X. This comes after a months-long feud between the site’s owner, Elon Musk (formerly a well-respected individual) and Alexandre de Moraes, Brazilian Supreme Court justice, over the former’s refusal to ban several far-right accounts for spreading misinformation about former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral loss and a subsequent coup attempt. Musk has a record as a stalwart for freedom of speech — like when he removed links to a BBC documentary critical of India’s prime minister. But hey, at least you can say anything you want on X, the uncensored town square of the internet — unless, of course, what you want to say is the word “cisgender.”
As of now, the two parties find themselves at a stalemate: de Moraes hoping that the loss of X’s fifth-largest market will pressure Musk into complying with court orders, and Musk hoping that the backlash from right-wing users will pressure the Brazilian government to reverse this ban. Once again, Elon Musk’s penchant for meddling in Latin American politics and using X as a cudgel has hurt his bottom line, but it’s unlikely that he’ll back down.
So what about the millions of Brazilian users? Even with the threat of major fines, VPNs remain an appealing option to access X. On the other hand, many — including the country’s president — have opted to set up shop in the alternative social media site Bluesky, perhaps the only winning party in all of this. Let’s be honest, though — not being able to access X is probably a net positive for the nation of Brazil. You know what they say:
BRAZIL NUMERO UNO!
CAMPEÃO DO MUNDO!
Daily Arts Writer Ariel Litwak can be reached at arilit@umich.edu.
Internet archive loses its appeal
This week, in what I can only describe as a loss for the proliferation of knowledge, a Manhattan appeals court ruled in favor of four of the largest book publishers, and against the Internet Archive, a digital nonprofit library. The dispute revolves around the limited-copy scanning and digital lending of a variety of books from the past 100 years. Much like a digital library, this has allowed these books to be temporarily available free to a wide swath of people. This comes at the end of a saga that prompted serious debates online in 2020, as the case began.
Making a living as an artist is not easy, but once you begin siding against the people who want to share in the joy of that art, I think you start to lose the plot. Copyright, like any sound legal mechanism in this country, concentrates power where the money is. Every win for the little guy is 15,000 wins for Disney, who will use one chunk of that control to make things worse for the people this is apparently meant to defend.
On a personal note, this (now-illegal) digital lending is how I read Toni Morrison’s “Jazz” for the first time, which is now one of my favorite books. This was during quarantine, when the libraries were closed. It might feel small, but I think an alternate world where I couldn’t read that book would be worse, especially in the cases of deceased artists. Restricting the flow of art in this way can do no good. It only serves to line the pockets of a precession of self-replicating middlemen content to put themselves in between art and people.
Digital Culture Beat Editor Holly Tsch can be reached at htsch@umich.edu.
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