TikTok won't hold my name

Not in the way that you ask: so, stop asking.

I will show my age here.

I have a TikTok, but it sits mostly untouched, a digital corner I rarely sweep.
Instagram was hard enough—a space meant for images that demanded I strip my words bare,
and now it, too, lunges for relevance, reshaping itself into TikTok’s shadow.
I can barely keep up with its demands,
and I know—I know—I will drown in the uncharted torrents of TikTok.

They tell me I should be there.
My voice is needed. My work is wanted.
But I go only where water meets me with care,
where it cradles me, where it nourishes me,
not where it churns into a current hungry to swallow.

The algorithm has shown me the hollows where advocacy claims to thrive,
yet I find only shadows of what I once needed.
It is not primitive—it cannot be—
but I have long since outgrown the simple truths they regurgitate,
truths I have chewed through many moons ago.

I would exist in TikTok’s educational orbit,
a place where minds are plundered for resources
or scolded for the audacity of thinking deeply.
My brain is not wired to let such things slide.
I would engage. I would correct.
I would not rest until everyone learned not to come for me or for mine
or for those who look like us, breathe like us,
carry the weight of survival like us.

But in that space, my name would be dragged
into debates I never sought,
never cared for,
never signed up to endure.
The expectation to perform
would rise like a monstrous tide,
too heavy for me to carry.
And I have danced—
oh, how I have danced—
in spaces that refused to hear the music
or feel the beat I set with my feet.

Why would I ever touch the ground there?

I have a complicated relationship with social media activism,
an arena where we perform justice
from the comfort of a screen,
watching the world unravel beyond our grasp.
It lulls us into believing
that the work stops at a share button,
at a like,
at the soft glow of a phone screen.

The content is short,
the consumption endless.
Audiences gorge on advocacy,
only to find themselves too full to move,
too bloated to act.

Your worth as an advocate is measured in numbers—
likes, followers, virality—
and yet so many of the loudest voices
are hollow echoes in a cavern of complexity.

They tell you what autism is
as though it fits in their palm,
their experience flattened into gospel.
They speak in absolutes,
enemy to nuance,
and call it truth.

They take heavy words—words weighted with history,
with labor, with pain—and butcher them
into bite-sized misunderstandings.

It fucking irritates me.
A rash I can’t scratch,
a scab on my soul that refuses to heal.

And for what?
They want my presence, my energy,
so I can teach?
Debate?

They want my mind,
but they will not hold my heart.

And I refuse—
I refuse to let myself be consumed
by a machine that does not know my name,
does not know my dance,
does not know my worth.