ATTN WHITE PEOPLE who think the TikTok Awards backlash isn't justified

ATTN WHITE PEOPLE who think the TikTok Awards backlash isn't justified Okay, this is for white people. I'm gonna talk about the TikTok Awards. There's so many takes going around right now, like bad weather doesn't mean racism and talking about how the media knew who they were supposed to photograph and that's just how this industry works. As a media founder who was invited to do red carpet interviews on that red carpet, let me share a resource for any of the white people who are feeling confused. Author of this piece and founder of Zephie. Crystal Andrews breaks this down so well. She spoke to TikTok's PR, she spoke to Niyell, who's the main creator that's been speaking out about this. She spoke to other sources to basically gather a full picture of how so many creators left this event feeling like they were less than, like they experienced racism, like how this happened. I recommend you go read the piece, like I said, but at a very high level, we all know by now that a lot of attendees and creators have come out explaining that their experience there was really chaotic and it felt disorganized. While that may have been the result of the weather and the red carpet having to move inside very last minute when there are not proper logistical things in place to support a major shift like that, like when there is not clear signage of who gets to go on the red carpet, who's getting photographed on the red carpet, when there's not enough staff in place to actually facilitate different queues and make sure that creators who are invited understand where they sit. You know, like this is the TikTok Creator Awards. Most people there, even though there were thousands and thousands of people, most people there have a following. So they think they're being invited as talent and that they get to walk the red carpet and take those photos. If that's not the case, that needs to be made clear to them that only nominees get to walk the red carpet, get to do interviews, get to take photos. So when those things are not in place, that leaves the discernment up to the individual photographers, the media on the red carpet, whatever. And leaving the discernment up to individuals allows for bias to come through and bigotry and in this case, racism. So that is why this has to be on TikTok, because these are the logistical safeguards that were missing from this event that allowed for creators to feel discriminated against. Again, I highly recommend you go read that newsletter from Zee Feed because it explains this much better.