By Reagan Puhak, 2027
Over the last few weeks there has been plenty of discussion over the bill that would require ByteDance, the parent company of the massively popular app TikTok to sell or face a ban in the United States. Recently, it has been announced that there is a new likely buyer with a big new vision for the app. Elon Musk has stated his plans to purchase TikTok and give it a sleek facelift by renaming it “?”.
After buying the social media app Twitter in 2022 and changing its name to X, Musk stated that he has “moved on from the boring, overdone alphabet” with hopes of conquering new terrain, punctuation marks. By 2030, it’s his goal to own every social media platform and give them all iconic new names. You can look forward to changes like Instagram, a well-known and popular app, being given the exciting title “!”. Snapchat being renamed to the very fun and playful “.” and Facebook, your aunt’s favorite place for lengthy rants about the man who stole her lawn chair, being called “,”. Other potential changes include the popular messaging app WhatsApp being renamed to “:” and Pinterest, every suburban mom’s go-to place for compiling pictures of beige living rooms, being renamed to “;”.
Musk hopes that these changes will attract a new user base and bring more attention to these platforms that have been around for years. Over here at The Lookout we are very excited for this new era of the grammatical internet. Whether good or bad, the new names are bound to stir up conversation, period.
