On the home of the brave, TikTok and flat-earthers

On the day before the inauguration of the orange genital grabber — The Donald — as the 47th president of the US, there was a TikTok blackout in the Land of the Free. It’s difficult to understand just how traumatic those 14 hours were for millions of Americans if you’re not raising young adults and teenagers.

My 20-year-old was walking round in a state of dazed trauma all morning, commiserating with the 120-million US TikTok addicts. The blackout was the result of a bipartisan Senate ban.. Hearings on the app last year dealt with the US government’s hysteria around its Cold War II with China, as well as fears of Chinese espionage and that country’s infiltration of impressionable American  minds.

Of course, the matter is far more complex than my clumsy summary of the situation in a country that is home to the “leaders of the free world” and the champions of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. In my defence, I have an 800-word restriction. In any case, during those hearings, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared to answer to allegations that he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and that TikTok existed primarily to spread communist propaganda insidiously.

I think this is a good moment to interrupt myself to say I have always had a serious issue with the adage, “There are no stupid questions”. But of course there are. To quote Scott Adams, the brilliant cartoonist and — paradoxically — a part-time Donald Trump and MAGA praise singer, “If there are no stupid questions, do dumb people get smart just in time to ask intelligent questions?”

Until last week, when my 20-year-old forwarded me a YouTube link to the questions Chew was bombarded with, I had two stock examples of stupid questions. The first I borrowed from my favourite group of people, the flat-earthers. It’s a question repeated in that great 2009 flick, Agora. It goes: “If the earth is spherical, why don’t people at the bottom of the globe fall off?”

Look, in the fourth century, the time of Hypatia — the philosopher, mathematician and main protagonist in the movie — the proverbial apple had not yet fallen on the head of the greatest scientist of all time, Sir Isaac Newton, squeezing the universal laws of gravity out of his humungous brain. All through Divine Inspiration, of course, just like the apple of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Back then, in the fourth century, it was just innocent ignorance. But in the 2025th year of our Lord, the question is good old-fashioned, spectacularly glorious stupidity.

The second example of a daft question, I stole from my favourite astrophysicist Neil Tyson DeGrasse: “What kind of cheese is the moon made of?” This question is wading gonad deep in a cesspool of stupidity. And if you’re thinking that surely no-one in 2025 would ask such a question, you clearly haven’t watched enough TikToks from the Bible Belt of the Home of the Brave. This segues nicely with those Senate hearings, which have given me more ammunition to support my assertion that stupid questions do exist.

During the “TikTok” hearings, poor Chew faced a barrage of questions about his personal ties with the Chinese Communist Party, which he denied vehemently by pointing out that he’s Singaporean. The bright sparks were not deterred, though. Yeah, yeah, you’re Singaporean, but have you ever applied for membership of the Chinese Communist Party, they insisted.

I have no desire to trigger an international incident that will culminate in US special ops and marines being parachuted into the jungles around Skukuza, ostensibly to bring us 'democracy'

As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, one senator hit rock bottom and suggested Chew was making up a nonexistent country because “I’ve never heard of a country called Signapore (sic), is it in Western Europe or mainland Europe?”

With rock bottom now hovering above the heads inside the hearings, the orgy of imbecile questions continued. If one puts on earphones, can TikTok access one’s brain? Can TikTok access one’s network through Wi-Fi? And, my personal favourite: If one switches to airplane mode during a flight, can TikTok talk to the plane?

At some point during this interrogation, Chew had a look on his face that suggested he was waiting for someone to jump out of a cake and yell, “Surprise! You’ve been punked!” Tragically, the senators were as serious as a nun’s positive pregnancy test.

This incident is a reminder of why there are no billionaire satirists. The job of a satirist is to take an absurd situation and — using extreme hyperbole — amplify the absurdity to more ridiculous levels through the use of metaphor, humour and sarcasm. There is, for instance, no publishing house that would have accepted a manuscript in which a sitting president would have allowed the fire department to demonstrate that he has gone into partnership with a chlorine manufacturer to use his swimming pool as a security measure in the event of a fire. That manuscript would be rejected on the grounds of being unrealistic.

It goes with another fictional manuscript, one in which a sitting president is in cahoots with a sofa manufacturer to make one with a built-in cash safe in which to stash US dollars. They’d say you’d lost all sense of reality.

I have no desire to trigger an international incident that will culminate in US special ops and marines being parachuted into the jungles around Skukuza, ostensibly to bring us “democracy”. So in mitigation of any collective punishment for my sins, allow me to say this: If this deranged columnist has offended, think but this and all is mended; that you have but slumbered here while these words did appear. If you, senators, pardon, this delusional columnist will mend.

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