Alex Pearlman shut the door on dreams of a standup comedy career almost a decade ago, pivoting from the stage to an office cubicle where he worked a customer service job.
Then he started posting random jokes and commentary about pop culture and politics on TikTok. Just over 2.5 million followers later, he quit his nine-to-five and recently booked his first nationwide tour.
Pearlman is among the many TikTok creators across the U.S. outraged over a bipartisan bill passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday that would lead to a nationwide ban of the popular video app if its China-based owner, ByteDance, doesn’t sell its stake. The bill still needs to go through the Senate, where its prospects are unclear.
Content creators say a ban would hurt countless people and businesses that rely on TikTok for a significant portion of their income, while also arguing TikTok has become an unrivaled platform for dialogue and community.
Pearlman, who lives outside Philadelphia, said TikTok has transformed his life, allowing him to live a dream, provide for his family, and spend the first three months of his newborn son’s life at home. His customer service job only offered paternity leave equivalent to three weeks off, with two weeks paid.
“I don’t take a day for granted on this app, because it’s been so shocking,” said Pearlman, 39. “In reality, TikTok has been the driver of American social media for the last four years. Something will step into that place if TikTok vanishes tomorrow. Whether or not that will be better or worse, Congress has no way of knowing.”
TikTok, which launched in 2016, has skyrocketed in popularity, growing faster than Instagram, YouTube or Facebook. The push to remove the app from Chinese authority follows concerns from lawmakers, law enforcement, and intelligence officials about the insecurity of user data, potential suppression of content unfavorable to the Chinese government, and the possibility that the platform could boost pro-Beijing propaganda, all of which TikTok denies.
To date, the U.S. government hasn’t provided any evidence showing TikTok shared U.S. user data with Chinese authorities.
The move comes as the pandemic saw huge growth in digital marketing as people were stuck at home consuming — and creating — content at levels not seen before.
Jensen Savannah, a 29-year-old from Charlotte, began making TikToks of her travels around the Carolinas during the pandemic. Now a full-time influencer, she has tripled her income since leaving her telecommunications sales job.
“‘Social media Influencer’ is almost to be looked at as the new print and the new form of radio and TV advertising,” she said. “It’s going to bring your dollar much farther than it is in traditional marketing.”
Some creators describe it as a digital equalizer of sorts, providing a platform for people of color and other marginalized groups to get opportunities and exposure.
“I’ve always had Twitter, I’ve had Facebook, I’ve had Instagram. But TikTok was the first one where, if you want to find somebody who looks like yourself and represents you in any type of way, you can find it,” said Joshua Dairen, a Black, 30-year-old content creator in Auburn, Alabama. Dairen makes videos about his state’s ghost stories, urban legends, and history.
Growing up, he loved researching everything paranormal, but he didn’t see a lot of Black representation in the field. Exposure to TikTok has led to jobs writing freelance pieces and contributing to documentaries about paranormal occurrences and unsolved mysteries. The app also gave Dairen the flexibility and confidence to open his own coffee shop, where he gets visits at least once a day from fans of his work.
He thinks banning TikTok sets “a dangerous precedent about how much power our highest levels of government can wield.”
Others say the app is both a financial and social safety net.
Chris Bautista, a food truck owner in Los Angeles catering to television and movie sets, started using TikTok during the pandemic to connect with members of the LGBTQ+ community and show support for those who might be having a hard time.
Bautista, 37, grew up in a conservative Christian community outside LA and didn’t come out until his late 20s. As a young person, he struggled with his mental health and considered suicide. He wanted to create a platform he could have used as a teenager, one showing that someone like him could go to that dark place and come out the other side a “well-adjusted, confident person.”
“I just find the corners of TikTok that I find myself in to be so wildly important and profound,” according to Bautista, who said it would be “heartbreaking” if the app was banned.
Bautista didn’t start posting with the intention of monetizing the experience, but money from projects tied to the app came at the right time: If it wasn’t for the extra income he earned through TikTok during the pandemic and then the Hollywood strikes last year, his business would have shut down.
Almost since its inception, concerns have been raised about the addictive nature of the app, especially for young audiences whose minds are still developing. Marcus Bridgewater, a former private school teacher and administrator who owns his own business and posts TikTok gardening videos, wants Congress to be focused on those issues, and not on whether the app is Chinese-owned.
“Social media is a powerful tool,” said Bridgewater, who lives in Spring, Texas. “And powerful tools are just that: They are capable of helping us transcend ourselves, but in their transcendence, they’re also capable of completely severing us from those we love.”
Pearlman said he has long feared politicians would come after TikTok. He compared the experience of finding out about the House vote to finally getting the call that an ailing loved one has died.
“The part that’s disturbing to me is, I feel like for a lot of Americans, TikTok, and social media in general is a release valve — it’s kind of become a default complaint box,” he said. “So to many people, it feels like they’re trying to ban the complaint box instead of dealing with the complaint.”
It seems like a bizarre mishmash: A former Trump cabinet official is saying he wants to buy TikTok just days after leading a group that pumped $1 billion into a beaten-down bank. But it all actually fits in with the complicated career of Steven Mnuchin.
The man who served as former President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary is well-connected in the world of finance, after all. From 1985 to 2002, he worked at Goldman Sachs, one of the most storied — and criticized — investment banks on Wall Street.
Mnuchin also has a history in media and entertainment. Among his Hollywood credits are “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Lego Movie,” where he was one of the executive producers. Think of them as much bigger-budget versions of TikTok videos.
And Mnuchin certainly has experience taking risks with troubled institutions. He famously swooped in to turn around the struggling IndyMac bank after its failure in the financial crisis of 2008.
But for critics, Mnuchin’s dealmaking also raises concerns about ethics. Robert Weissman, president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, points to TikTok in particular, where the U.S. government may force its Chinese owners to sell. Imagine something similar happening in another country, where its former finance minister ended up as the buyer, he said.
“When you’re at the top of the financial policymaking hierarchy, you don’t jump from that to figure out how you can help yourself,” Weissman said.
Other former Treasury secretaries have gone to Wall Street after their terms ended, including Robert Rubin, a Goldman Sachs executive who served under President Clinton. In all cases, the move carries the appearance of cashing in on their time in government, Weissman said.
Mnuchin, who couldn’t be reached for comment through a request via his private equity firm, has often generated controversy as he has generated cash.
After leaving the Treasury Department in January 2021, he launched his private equity fund, Liberty Strategic Capital, which raised $2.5 billion by that September, according to news reports.
Much of that money was from government-controlled investment funds in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, which Mnuchin had frequently visited as Treasury secretary. He was in the Middle East just weeks before leaving office, cutting the trip short after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The rapid shift from his government travel overseas to business dealings in those same countries prompted a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, to call for a one-year ban on senior government officials doing business overseas after leaving office.
Earlier this month, Mnuchin jumped back into the headlines when his PE firm led a roughly $1 billion investment in embattled New York Community Bancorp.
NYCB was looking for a lifeline, and its stock had at one point plunged more than 80% from the start of the year. The bank is struggling with falling values for investments tied to commercial real estate and the growing pains associated with some of its past acquisitions.
It all hearkens back to the move that may have defined Mnuchin’s career.
In 2009, OneWest Bank Group, where Mnuchin was chairman and CEO, bought the troubled IndyMac after federal regulators took over the bank. Other big-name backers included funds tied to George Soros and hedge-fund manager John Paulson.
OneWest bought all of IndyMac’s deposits and assets at a discount of $4.7 billion following an auction by the Federal Deposit of Insurance Corp. The FDIC also agreed to share in the losses created by some mortgages tied to single-family homes.
Kevin Kaiser, an adjunct professor of finance at the Wharton School, said such investors can profit by buying at steep discounts when markets are panicking. To ensure the investment pays off, however, investors like Mnuchin have to play hardball with borrowers at risk of default, he said.
“They’re a little bit sharp-elbowed,” Kaiser said, referring to distressed-property investors as a group. “And what that means is they’re not shy to get into a bit of a conflict situation.”
After OneWest, Mnuchin was Trump’s top fundraiser in the 2016 election. He came under fire in Congress when he was nominated for the Treasury post after it came out that OneWest foreclosed on tens of thousands of homes after the U.S. housing bubble popped.
Advocates found the bank particularly difficult to work with under government mortgage modification programs. Some of those who lost their homes had voted for Trump in 2016 and were disappointed in Mnuchin’s nomination.
Maxine Waters, the top Democrat of the House’s financial committee, at the time called Mnuchin the “foreclosure king.”
In testimony before a Senate committee considering his nomination, Mnuchin said he had worked to help homeowners remain in their homes and that his company had extended more than 100,000 loan modifications to borrowers.
Mnuchin was Treasury secretary in 2020 when the Trump administration brokered a deal where Oracle and Walmart would take a large stake in TikTok. That deal eventually fizzled for several reasons, but the popular video app is again under pressure after the House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday to ban it in the U.S. if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake.
On Thursday, Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC that he had spoken with “a bunch of people” about creating an investor group to buy TikTok.
And Mnuchin may not be done.
Mnuchin has plenty of potential, distressed targets given the banking industry’s troubles, said Chris Caulfield, who runs the banking practice at West Monroe, a consulting firm.
Besides having a history of bringing in new leadership teams to right struggling banks, Mnuchin also has experience in the potentially thorny world of regulations.
“He also has access to capital,” Caulfield said of Mnuchin. “Should there be the need for more capital, he’s somebody who’s very adept at putting consortiums together.”