Full disclosure: I have never had my own TikTok account, and I guess as someone who tends to skew more "Millennial" than "Gen Z" (basically, I'm an old goat by social media standards at 30 years old), I looked at the site with the same disdain and fear for future generations that my parents saw whenever I played my Game Boy Advance for more than two hours at a time.

It has shrunken attention spans to the point where you're all probably already thinking this blog post has gone on too long, and has been particularly bad for political discourse in the United States as a distressing number of "my fellow Americans" (read that in your best Barack Obama impression) decide some "influencer" screaming into their phone camera and immediately uploading their conspiracy rants onto social media is more trustworthy than the entire legacy news media of newspapers and TV news (not that legacy media has been much more truthful, to be fair, but at least they have to maintain the illusion of having fact-checkers screen their stories, first). If President Trump immediately tries to bring back TikTok after his Inauguration tomorrow, it will be for the self-serving reason that TikTok and its right-wing "influencers" were crucial in helping him win back the Presidency this time around--ignore the fact that he set off this process of eventually banning TikTok in the first place during the tail-end of his first term in 2019 or 2020.

But anyhow, TikTok's loss is kind of my gain, as in spite of my opinions on short-form videos where literally anyone can post their unhinged lies and get popular, I have been maintaining a presence on the TikTok-like YouTube Shorts website in an attempt to stay current with trends. A lot of it is just vertical, smartphone-friendly versions of the animations I already posted on the Movie Portal here, but I also post speed-paints and, if I get enough of a boost in viewership due to the US TikTok ban and people looking for their next "short-form video fix," I might take the time to start showing my process for 3D art and animation, too! Like with any animation-focused channel, though, don't expect frequent uploads, let alone daily episodes--even on my short-form videos, animation takes time, you know.

Here is a sample:

https://youtube.com/shorts/jB8kgVhkAkk?feature=shared

Can't embed YouTube Shorts like I can embed regular YouTube videos here, sorry.