American TikTok accounts have been locked down. I can’t think of any other time this has happened. Whenever I heard about apps being banned it’d be happening in China or Russia and I’d think “Sucks for them but I guess they’re used to it since they’re oppressed”.
Back during the end of 2021, I uploaded a Calvin & Hobbes strip to TikTok. To my surprise (I had next to no followers), hundreds of thousands of people watched it.
I was uploading from “The Complete Calvin & Hobbes”, which contains the date each strip was published on. People started requesting their birthdays1 and I’d respond to their comment with the corresponding comic.
More and more people showed up to read them, and the comment sections were quickly filled with Calvin & Hobbes fans. Some reminisced about their childhoods, like how they grew up reading the comics alongside their older siblings, or how their pop pop would buy strips for them at Barnes & Noble. Some even admitted to petty crime…
Every so often, a comment would be deeply personal. One comment talked about their best friend who passed away in a car accident, and how the two of them used to swap their favorite strips with each other.
Bill Watterson is American, and Calvin & Hobbes is inspired by the midwestern state of Ohio. Can you imagine a world where Calvin & Hobbes didn’t exist? How about one where your government declares the author to be a threat to national security?
Footnotes
-
Privacy risk? Probably… ↩