Late Night Last Week: John Oliver Grapples With TikTok’s Hold on Us in Season Finale
Every Monday, Late Night Last Week highlights some of the more notable segments from the previous week of late night television. This week, John Oliver dissects the future of TikTok, Emma Willmann makes her Tonight Show debut, Amber Ruffin and John Lutz commit to the bit on Late Night, and The Daily Show reacts to Trump’s prospective cabinet.
John Oliver began his Nov. 17 broadcast (the last one until February; I’m not crying, you’re crying) as many late night hosts did, merely listing the names and backgrounds of folks Donald Trump has put forward to serve in his cabinet (more on that below).
But Oliver, as he so often does on Last Week Tonight, pivoted away from the news of the day, news that so often is designed to distract and outrage, and instead focused on the bigger picture. Or, rather, the smaller pictures that have come to dominate more than a billion lives: TikTok, the social media platform that, as Oliver noted, may very well be banned in the United States come Jan. 19.
Oliver, with nuance, grappled with the proposed ban of the platform, including noting how it mobilized teenagers to political action, with some even calling their members of Congress to protest. The host was shocked. “Teens hate doing that. If you ever need to scare one,” Oliver said, “just hand them a ringing phone and say, ‘It’s for you.’”
If you’ve been too busy scrolling TikTok to actually read a history of it (we’ve all been there), Oliver provides a fantastic overview of the platform, one so good it will probably end up being chopped into bits and shared on TikTok. He discusses possible national security threats, the intricacies (and invasiveness) of the algorithm, and similar concerns when it comes to data collection by other apps. “Think of TikTok as a soft drink company in the 1800s,” Oliver said. “Sure, its product is mostly cocaine, but, hey, show me a child’s beverage that isn’t.”
Following a discussion of the legitimate critiques and concerns one could level at the platform, Oliver discussed some of the more unfair ones. This includes the apparent xenophobia that fuels some of the concern over the platform’s ties to China, and the fact that many US tech companies would benefit from a ban of TikTok, including Google and Meta.
Near the end of his monologue, Oliver closed with one of the more frustrating aspects of the TikTok debate: that many lawmakers say they are pro-ban based on classified information that they, in turn, cannot publicly share. Because if there is one group of people we trust, it is non-transparent members of Congress.
“In a world where Instagram knows your location, Uber knows your childhood fears, and DoorDash has a 3-D rendering of your small intestine its executives use as a screensaver,” Oliver said, “claiming you’re protecting Americans’ privacy by banning TikTok feels like claiming you’re fighting climate change by banning the Kia Sorento.” “Sure,” he added, “it’s technically not nothing, but it is, in a larger sense, basically nothing.”
Watch the full episode on Max, wait for the monologue to appear on YouTube later this week, or maybe, just maybe, you can find it elsewhere.
No One Commits to the Bit Like the Late Night Crew
Of all the late night shows, no host and crew are better at taking a joke, driving it into the ground, and then rebirthing it from the ashes in a bit of hilarious, conceptual comedy than Seth Meyers and his team over at Late Night. That was on display in two hilarious segments last week featuring the Late Night staff.
Writer and former late night host Amber Ruffin returned for another addition of “Amber Says What,” her semi-regular updates from the world of pop culture. But this week, she, like so many around the world, had the election on her mind. No matter the topic, Ruffin, like an MSNBC viewer on a lunch date, found a way to pivot back to the election, rehashing despondent cliche after despondent cliche.