There are few things I hate more than NBA Twitter. I hate the way it emphasizes and celebrates the dumbest thing you've ever seen, propped up by analytics and engagement numbers.

When players go up to dunk on each other, there is this idea that the defender is, at the very least, a mountain worth climbing. There is respect in the attempt, no matter how violent and career defining it may be (I'm looking at you Brandon Knight).

Yet, NBA Twitter is the opposite. There is rarely if ever respect or acknowledgement in discussion. There is only unveiled rage and player profile pictures attached to fan accounts that don't even like basketball.

TikTok was supposedly different. 

I have personally never had TikTok (and experienced their videos the way anyone who doesn’t have TikTok did, by waiting until they showed up on Instagram reels) but have had my growth as a person and journalist shaped by the repression of free speech in the USA. There is a conversation to be had about the pursuit the United States has made to increase their hold on American-owned social media sites, notably Meta and X’s use as powerful tools of not just conservative voices, but the perpetuation of the status quo.

The TikTok ban went into effect this week. It will change the career courses of many, many content creators. From shitposters to fancam makers to AI voice-over users, and it’s worth saying that – although I trust the Chinese government about as much as I do the American one, which is to say not very much – a social media app and quintessential part of the zeitgeist of the last five years, is being taken down for largely xenophobic reasons.

Unfortunately though, I’m not sure I’m the man to have that conversation. I can hint at things, I can talk about suppression of free speech and the rise of modern fascism not just in America but all over the world, and I can present the objectively true statement that banning media leads us to a communication desert where the only things you see are the things served to you by an oligarchical corpo-government.

If that last paragraph reads as paranoid or unnecessary, I can understand why. It is filled with hyperbole attempting to highlight truths. Lucky for you though, it will not be the crux of this article. Instead, I want to talk about something fun and wholesome.

Shortly after the TikTok ban went into effect, many Americans began to download Chinese Pinterest x Instagram x TikTok replacement RedNote, also known as Xiao Hong Shu and Little Red Book. It became the number one downloaded app on Google Play, with reportedly over half a million people joining within two days of the ban.

The cynic in you might scoff at protesting the removal of a social media app with spyware by installing a social media app with spyware, but it has initiated one of the funniest cultural exchanges I’ve ever seen. Currently, my DMs are host to 1) a Luffy profile picture who sent me a translated version of his family’s mapo tofu recipe after I mentioned I liked to cook (including pictures of the original index cards), 2) a Julian Phillips stan who has claimed the tag “easymoneysniper” before KD could, and 3) someone who is telling me about the drama in the Chinese Basketball Association.

It’s fun. It’s beautiful. It’s simple.

It is what basketball discourse should be.

That brings us back to NBA Twitter. There is a phenomenon there today in which every single fan wants to be an analyst. Everyone wants to talk about trades and signing before they happen, to opine about contract values and grade transactions. In reality, everyone got into basketball because they loved the sport. Either they loved watching or they loved playing, but one way or another, they got to basketball from a place of joy. That has been lost.

Xiao Hong Shu is certainly not perfect. More than a few people on there still think I am an NBA player because I uploaded a picture of Timberwolves legend Cam Reynolds as my first post. However, the toxicity that has invaded sports has not yet reached there.

What started as a bit of a joke foray into a space that was clearly not ready for a mass arrival for American fans became a genuine connection and an installation of WeChat. 

The cultural presence of basketball has been worldwide for the greater part of three decades. Without the ubiquity it experiences in the US, fans from other countries use social media as the primary way to both communicate and engage with their own fandom. It is an inherently altruistic and trusting view of the cesspool that is social media. 

That same cesspool defined my view of online discussions. We take forum posts that started with a question about working out four days a week and turn them into melted abominations of insults and idiocy. We tear others down for not knowing as much as we assuredly do before screaming at someone who pulls the same patronizing sentence structure on us.

I thought this was universal, that the only way words could be plastered on a screen was with dripping lines of superiority and derision. To say that RedNote has shaken that perception to my core is an understatement. Not only is it full of positivity and excitement for new worldviews, people are actively learning languages to overcome the language barrier! People here still don’t even use alt-text correctly!

The only conclusion we are left with is that we are the problem. Clearly, there is something wrong with a society that lionizes not just negativity, but blind and confident incorrectness. It is not universal. We can’t hide behind Hobbesian perception of the human condition, that all men are inherently evil creatures. 

NBA Twitter is the worst of us. But, it also is us. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that hate is not omnipresent. Stop with the high-nosed analysis. Stop with the beef posting. Stop with all the other BS.

Go find someone who will share their family’s recipe with you, a total stranger. Go find a WeChat group that Tyrese Halliburton is also in (for some reason). Go find something worth doing. 

God knows you won’t find it on Twitter.

EDIT: After about a day and a half, TikTok service was unbanned in the States, although the app is not available on app stores. Unfortunately, it seems like more than anything, this was a favor from TikTok to Trump himself, a favor that is intended to convince millennials that it was, in fact, Trump who revoked the TikTok ban, when the ban was largely lobbied for by his party and supporters.

It’s also worth noting that TikTok’s algorithm and reporting system have been changed. Comments of “Free Palestine” are being flagged as hate speech when a tech billionaire did a Nazi salute multiple times at Trump’s inauguration. That salute is being used to infantilize neurodivergency and being framed as a simple mistake by claimed anti-semitism task forces and organizations that have spent months doxxing people.

The ADL is unfortunately an unserious defender of their own personal agendas, and not an actual protective measure. Twitter is run by a Neo-Nazi who still probably calls Zimbabwe “Rhodesia”. The US government under Donald Trump, within a week of inauguration, has repealed tens of laws and statutes that protect and help people. Notably, they've changed education laws, laws that sought to prevent the anti-intellectual propaganda that the right is built on, the same type of propaganda NBA Twitter is built on.

It is truly a dark period in American history and one that is built on what the NBA has stood against. While the league itself will hopefully defend its reporters and players, its fans and future, NBA Twitter will continue to show us everything wrong with a culture that celebrates loud idiocy and blatant lying.

Welcome to a new era of American history. Welcome to the final resting place of the internet, something that could’ve been – and still can be – used for such good. Welcome to the final ending point of an intentionally flawed two party system, and an oligarchy.

It’s bad. It will be bad. I’m sorry there’s no real spin I can give.

Depend on each other. Depend on me. Depend on us. We’ll be here.