TikTok brought the TikTok Awards to the US for the first time this year – and after attending the grueling show in person, I’m not entirely sure it should happen again.
The night was a total disaster: full of bad tech, hot mics, and an ever-growing crowd.
The red carpet itself looked promising at first. Creators like Yasmine Sahid, Ashby Florence, Alexis Nikole Nelson, and Janette Ok walked the carpet, and there was no shortage of famous TikTok faces. But the access stops there. You would have expected great characters from them I love LAan exhibition focusing on the TikTok culture, to be seen. Not to mention, there weren’t too many celebrities outside of the FYP bubble – except that actors and musicians regularly use the app to promote their work. Of course, not everyone walks the carpet, but the absence was curious.
Then came the delay. The show started about an hour late. Inside the venue, rumors quickly spread that we were waiting for Paris Hilton, but when she got comfortable – followed by an entourage fit for royalty, including one person whose job seems to be holding light inches from her face – we didn’t start.
That’s when it became clear where the problem was.
Across the room, tech crew members dressed head-to-toe in black boarded the backstage area. The screens weren’t working, which is a fatal issue for any awards show, but especially one built entirely on short-form video.
“It’s too late because this is a really powerful room. You’re so powerful because you’ve taken out our screens,” Kim Farrell, global head of creators at TikTok, told the room of restless creators before the game began. (A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to Mashable that a “geographical power issue” affected screens on the site, causing delays.) Help didn’t take long.
Almost every small presenter relied on those screens. La La Anthony, co-hosting the show with Ashby Florence (who was sitting in the crowd), opened the show with an interview that required La La to show him the Page For You on the big screen. Without you, the time came badly – confusing the viewers watching at home and uncomfortable in the room.
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And that set the tone.
Ashby, to his credit, carried the night. His crowd work was likable, fast, and genuinely funny, and he managed to inject life into moments that could have been completely stopped. I hope he was paid very well, because he did the work of a whole production team.
Rei Ami and Ashby Florence shoot the Labubu cannon.
Credit: Phillip Faraone and Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for TikTok
When it became clear that the screens were not coming back, most of the presenters did not fix them at all. They continued to point at the blank screens while the sound played from the invisible montages. Tefi Pessoa’s presentation of Video of the Year worked no matter what, but when the award came out Bretman Rockhe was not there to receive it, which was another story that kept repeating itself. About one-third of the winners were not in the room.
That absence may have something to do with how the night felt like a festival and like a very long advertisement.
All of the awards were tied to TikTok, but the show was filled with the inclusion of sponsors — Carl’s Jr., Elf Cosmetics — and awards written on tools owned by TikTok. There was a CapCut award instead of the regular editing section. TikTok Shop has given away the prize. It was TikTok that gave the TikTok Awards to TikTok, and while all awards shows are sold to some degree, this one was especially in the nose.
As the night wore on, more and more people quietly left their seats and their place. There was nothing to fill the seats, so the empty seats became impossible to ignore. Despite repeated reminders of Ciara’s upcoming performance, the room was about 15 percent empty by the time she took the stage.
The princess is here to save us.
Credit: Phillip Faraone and Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for TikTok
To be fair, Ciara played, and absolutely delivered. Between his performance and Ashby’s relentless effort to keep things fun, the night hasn’t changed. But slowly.
When Keith Lee accepted the Creator of the Year award, the tone in the room changed. Lee was visibly upset, and TikTok announced a $50,000 donation to Feeding America in his honor. It was a rare moment of sincerity on an uneven night. And it emphasized how creators should be rewarded for their work — they entertain us, make us laugh, help us learn and inspire us. These types of creator-led award shows are a must-have. The Webby Awards and Short Form Awards play a role in promoting short form content and your creators, for example. But this attempt of TikTok failed.
And maybe that’s because it broke its own unwritten rule. A platform that thrives on the spontaneity and culture of creators has instead opted for moments that feel designed for clips, rather than genuine interaction.
Earlier in the evening, before the show began, Mashable asked the creatives on the red carpet what their word of the year would be. Merriam-Webster had just announced “slop” as its official word for 2025, and we wanted to see what Extremely Online had to say. La La Anthony said “change.” Alexis Nikole Nelson chose “brave.” Kelsey Anderson said, “Time.” Tan France went with “CU Next Tuesday” (a real word, not a phrase). And Ashby gave the most accurate word of all: “conundrum.”
After being in that room all night, however, Merriam-Webster may have nailed it the first time.
