The CEO of TikTok will be the honorary chair at the next Met Gala

Yesterday, the traditional announcement of the theme for the upcoming Met Gala was made, which will be the floral "The Garden of Time," along with the presentation of the list of co-chairs, who are honorary figures "presiding" over the event contributing to the definition of the theme and all the various details of the evening. The appointment of the co-chairs is often a formality: their function is to represent the values of the event, bring visibility, and serve as ambassadors for the evening. This year, the co-chairs will be Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Hemsworth, and Zendaya – so far, so good. But the trouble started with the appointment of the "honorary presidents," who will be Jonathan Anderson and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. It's the first time a social media mogul has found themselves in such a position – and this has raised alarm bells, from fashion insiders who see it as a sad commercialization, to Washington politicians who, considering the Met Gala as somewhat the pinnacle of American fashion, do not view Chew's choice (who is from Singapore) as very patriotic, quite the opposite. Several US senators have already strongly criticized the choice, considering how TikTok has, for example, been banned on devices belonging to federal government staff and is viewed with great suspicion by the US government, seeing it as a kind of digital Trojan horse for the Chinese government. Needless to say, TikTok is one of the main sponsors of the event.

While in Europe, the potential issues surrounding TikTok's spread are not particularly felt, the debate about the app in America is quite heated. Specifically, over the past few years, the government has almost unanimously passed a series of restrictions on the app's spread in administrative and governmental contexts, but during the recent presidential campaigns, the current president Joe Biden joined the app amidst a thousand doubts and precautions about data security. This comes on the heels of some scandals in recent months involving government staff members who had filmed sex tapes in the workplace, fueling a climate of deep distrust by American institutions towards potential leaks and security threats. Just last spring, Chew was summoned before the US Congress to answer politicians' questions about the app's privacy and data collection, and he returned before Congress two weeks ago alongside big social media figures like Mark Zuckerberg and X's Linda Yaccarino, to discuss the social implications and risks that the spread of social media was having on the collective of young Americans. The tone of all these hearings was far from friendly, by the way, but it gives an indication both of the mistrust with which the American executive branch views social media and of how their titanic spread (TikTok has around 150 million users in the USA alone, to give you an idea) has reached the dimensions of an irreversible cultural phenomenon.

As some more moderate voices have pointed out, however, Anna Wintour's choice to make Chew the honorary chair of the Met Gala 2024 is not entirely crazy: both because the Met Gala is seen as a fashion event but is attended by all kinds of billionaires, and because these kinds of appointments ideally reflect the cultural relevance of the guests – even if one might argue that there is a huge difference between Zendaya, Jonathan Anderson, and the CEO of TikTok. Now, ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, had already had a foot in the door in past editions, following the practice of all social media today being the connective tissue of the fashion industry and its communication apparatus, and so the decision to make the CEO the guest of honor certainly means that the app will have poured huge sums into the fundraising efforts of the evening, whose success is always and in any case the success of Anna Wintour, who therefore had an interest in ingratiating herself with such a powerful man and securing his substantial financial support. Those looking at the matter from a cultural standpoint will simply have to accept that TikTok is now an indispensable tool and that its president, like it or not, plays a key role within the industry and in shaping its culture. The choice is therefore unusual, but not out of place – to quote alongside the iconic Logan Roy from Succession: "Money wins."