TikTok users are responding to the recent United States congressional hearing on concerns about the app’s privacy and data collection in the most typical TikTok fashion: by turning TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, into a folk hero. Chew, a Singaporean businessman and early investor in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, joined Tiktok as CEO in 2021. Now part meme, part object of thirst, Chew has gone from relative obscurity to internationally famous almost overnight—a change reflected in his TikTok follower count. On March 23rd, he had 24,000 followers; within a week of his testimony before Congress he had gained 3 million.

While many followers have been singing Chew’s praises—calling him their hero and the GOAT (greatest of all time), proclaiming they have no choice but to stan him—others have taken it a step further by making fan edits and videos designed to celebrate Chew’s looks. One user wrote “he can spy on me any day” while others have made quintessentially TikTok-style edits using clips of his appearance before Congress, including ones calling him “Shou oppa” and “Daddy.” In an even stranger (or sweeter) twist, one candy company posted a video where they created an edible portrait of Chew.

While Chew has become an icon for many app users, not everyone involved in the hearings has gotten the same treatment. Some TikTok users have satirized members of Congress who asked clueless questions during the hearing, like Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC), who asked how the app connects to a user’s Wi-Fi network. After seeing success with his first video making fun of Representative Hudson, one Canadian comedian went on to post 14 more increasingly similar videos about the hearing, ultimately devolving into a thinly-veiled Cliff Huxtable impression.

Other users have called out Congress for being hypocritical for focusing on TikTok when rival companies like Meta are also deserving of scrutiny. In one Under the Desk News post, journalist V Spehar’s video details how Representative John Carter (R-GA) asked Shou Chew about whether TikTok tracks users’ pupil dilation in order to decide which content should be made to go viral. Perhaps, notes Spehar in their video, Carter was thinking of Meta, which was recently hiring for a Technical Program Manager role in a team dedicated to Eye Tracking Research. Spehar also wonders aloud whether Meta planted questions in the hearing, which many believe Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg helped prompt because he has said Meta-owned Instagram faces an ”unprecedented” threat from the app’s success.

Others have taken the idea of Zuckerberg as TikTok saboteur and run with it, and in the past week, users have flooded Facebook’s App Store listing with one-star reviews. Many recent negative reviews mention genuine complaints, such as Facebook’s decision to charge for verification, and the app’s lack of a dark mode. But others are clearly from disgruntled TikTok users, with one user claiming that Facebook “stole all my data and sold it to the South African government;” another managing to poke fun at both tech-illiterate Congresspeople and Meta by writing, “It’s an app which connects to my wifi and it needs to be banned;” and another posting, “We the people have had enough US interference with our lives. I have deleted fb for the disgusting acts of Mark z. Slava Russia.”

Beyond making videos about the government inquiry, TikTok users have done little to mobilize in support of the app—and ultimately there isn’t much they can do to reverse a decision by the U.S. government. With the threat of a ban looming as of the end of March, TikTok’s future in the US looks uncertain. 

Considering Twitter’s decline following Elon Musk’s takeover, and Meta’s perceived failure to keep up with its competitors, the next logical question is, where will diehard TikTok users turn next? More broadly, it feels like a key moment for social media platforms at large—will somebody innovate and offer a viable alternative to these increasingly unpopular (or banned and inaccessible) apps? Or will this moment accelerate the increased use of dark social—messaging apps and private spaces without centralized newsfeeds and timelines? For now at least, it seems TikTok users are putting their faith in Daddy Chew to save them from having to wrestle with these questions.