"Man and his search for meaning" on TikTok.

The government wants to ban TikTok or something. The alleged excuse is Chinese influence. The obvious real reason is the narrative that young people have been “radicalized” on Israel-Palestine by TikTok. OK, but at this point, you can be “radicalized” by reading a tepid Tom Friedman column. Why don’t we ban him instead?

Anyway like all social media TikTok is evil and has made us into digital addicts. But you cannot deny that more than any other medium it lets oppressed, suffering people transmit their stories and inner lives.

I wanted to repost a story about prison TikTok.

How to Cook Sausage When You’re Locked in a Cell

Inside the viral phenomenon of prison TikTok.

Jessica Kent, a TikTok influencer with impossibly shiny hair and giant brown eyes, smiles into her iPhone camera and wags her finger at her 1.3 million followers. “Did you know that in prison, the inmates who are on death row don’t actually call it death row?” she says, in a chipper tone. Kent spent seven years behind bars on a drug and weapons charge, she explains.  “Let’s go!” she adds, and points the camera at her friend and TikTok collaborator Michael Lacey, 45, known as Comrade Sinque on the site. 

Lacey, who spent 21 years in prison, pops in front of Kent’s phone camera. “They actually call it X row,” he says in the video. “I believe strongly that it has to do with the psychological effects that that term [death] can have on that population,” he explains.  At the start of his sentence, he’d been assigned to work on death row. He was a GED tutor. “Yes, people on death row — X row — do require GED tutors,” he adds. 

Why in the world do death, or rather, X-row inmates bother getting their GEDs? Lacey used to get that question a lot on his TikTok, he tells Truthdig. “Usually, it was people being snarky.” He cites two reasons: First, people like to learn, out of plain curiosity. He himself audited history and anthropology courses, despite the unlikelihood of working in either field. But the main reason? “They do it for their loved one’s on the outside, their moms, wives, daughters.” 

“One guy I got close with … he wanted to get his GED certificate so his moms would have the certificate before he went.”  

Lacey and Kent’s joint TikTok post, under a minute long, has 54.9K likes and 301 comments, starting with Kent’s strong denunciation of capital punishment, delivered in Digital-ese. “Idk who needs to hear this but many are innocent & our gov. Shouldn’t be allowed TO KILL ANYONE!”

They’re part of a viral phenomenon of former and current inmates who use TikTok to share stories about life behind bars. The content gets huge visibility — TikTok is the most popular short video app in the world. 

Using the platform, former inmates such as Lacey and Kent detail their journey to freedom and dispel myths about prison. Did you know that contrary to popular belief, inmates rarely use shivs? They’re more likely to put a metal lock in a sock as a weapon. 

It’s not just former inmates that post. Prison TikTok, a trending source of such information, comes to us courtesy of smuggled-in burner phones. In one post, the soundtrack to “Mission Impossible” plays as a very large man stuffs illegal cellphones in his armpits ahead of a guard check. Getting caught with an illegal phone in prison is a felony. But that hasn’t stopped a bustling black market from developing — including the creative use of drones from people on the outside. 

The videos are mostly horrifying: footage of “last man standing” fights, harrowing images of the “food” served behind bars. “I’ll just eat the cake. The rest looks iffy,” one inmate says, showing a styrofoam tray filled with brown mystery sludge ladled over rice. In another video, gospel music plays as a man glances off to the side against the backdrop of his corrugated metal prison cot. Overlaid on the footage is text saying, “when you been waiting on them to call your name to go home and be free after 17 years, but they keep calling everybody else.” 

They also show people behind bars being weird and having fun — the hallmark of TikTok. In one video, five guys in a cell crowd in front of a camera for a viral challenge. “Let’s try this trend,” a Siri robot voice intones. “Who got the most hoes?” The men laugh and point to a very handsome young guy, who gives a guilty-as-charged grin.  “Who can you count on to be there when you need them?” In unison, they all point to another man in the video. 

Why do prisoners risk a felony to post on TikTok? Keri Blakinger, a reporter who spent two years in a New York prison, says that it feels like a fun and slightly subversive outlet. “For a lot of people, clandestine social media posts from prison might be the only way to draw attention to inhumane and unlivable conditions,” she says. 

The novelty of the form, not to mention its entertainment value, creates an unprecedented space for education and change. By now, most people are familiar with the horrid criminal justice statistics that circulate in media and policy spaces: America incarcerates more people than any country on Earth. But did you know how to cook a sausage in a prison cell using a plastic cup, some wires and saran wrap? “I put it in some water like this … and I plug that thing up,” @Mister-Booker says, dropping a succulent treat encased in plastic into a styrofoam cup. The water starts boiling. “I’m probably gonna leave this thing in for 20 minutes, till it gets good and juicy. Look at that!” he says proudly.