Within the Season 11 Final Week Tonight finale, John Oliver tackled TikTok‘s ongoing litigation in opposition to the U.S. authorities’s makes an attempt to ban the platform owned by Chinese language firm ByteDance.
Oliver kicked off this system with a rundown of the “horrendous headlines” of the week, which included Mark Zuckerberg dropping a single with artist T-Ache as the 2 lined “Get Low” — a venture the comedian-host likened to “Kidz Bop for adults, the place all of the swears are intact however there’s nonetheless a deep lingering sense that music was a mistake.”
He additionally touched briefly on Donald Trump’s flurry of cupboard picks which have sparked backlash from each side of the aisle, together with Matt Gaetz’s nomination for lawyer common: “A person who my legal professionals insist I can’t name Jeffrey Epstein if he went to sh—ier seashores.”
Nearly all of the final episode, nonetheless, lined the dueling pursuits of TikTok and the U.S. authorities. Oliver started the section by displaying a clip of a social media consumer reacting to fashionable chocolatier Amaury Guichon, who was developing what at first appeared to be a NSFW chocolate creation.
“What a journey! And truthfully, I don’t know the way TV is meant to compete with that. I completely would watch that man host a recreation present known as Dick or Snake? It’s mainly Is it Cake? solely with considerably greater snake-on-dick accidents,” Oliver quipped.
Some of the contentious parts of TikTok is the platform’s hyper-fast algorithm, which operates by gathering and monitoring consumer information: “That method it could actually rapidly work out precisely what you want and feed you extra of the identical factor again and again, not in contrast to a doting grandmother or Marvel Studios,” Oliver stated, throwing a jab on the studio relating to client superhero fatigue.
Subsequent, Oliver performed a collection of TikToks that includes girls who stated the platform helped them understand they had been queer, saying the platform is “speed-running individuals’s sexual awakenings. Earlier than, a revelation like that may have taken years of remedy or a complete episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. I truthfully don’t suppose a machine has been liable for extra sexual awakenings since The Iron Big, and I’m not explaining myself to you about that. I’m not doing it. He’s an objectively sizzling robotic, he’s tall, has type eyes, is nice with youngsters and, I’m positive, has a vibrate setting. Don’t be bizarre about this. You’re being bizarre.”
And although Oliver stated he’s hesitant to place his belief in a multinational company that income off of client information, “its conduct is fairly per Silicon Valley’s personal very sh—y requirements. Consider TikTok as a delicate drink firm within the 1800s. Certain, its product is generally cocaine, however hey, present me a baby’s beverage that isn’t.”
He concluded, “In a world the place Instagram is aware of your location, Uber is aware of your childhood fears and DoorDash has an in depth 3D rendering of your small gut its executives use as a screensaver, claiming you’re defending Individuals’ privateness by banning TikTok seems like claiming you’re preventing local weather change by banning the Kia Sorrento. Certain, I imply it’s technically not nothing, however it’s, in a bigger sense, mainly nothing.”
In closing out the present and teeing up Season 12 in 2025, Oliver took half in a viral TikTok pattern of his personal, mimicking Charli XCX’s “Apple” dance.
“In 2025, I’d like Elon Musk to leap so excessive, he by no means comes again down,” he stated of his New Yr’s resolutions. “I’d prefer to go simply sooner or later with out listening to in regards to the Depraved film. And in 2025, I’d like the ultimate Mission: Unattainable movie to finish with Tom Cruise taking off his face masks to disclose Shelly Miscavige.”
