TikTok brought the TikTok Awards to the U.S. for the first time this year — and after attending the underwhelming show in person, I’m not totally convinced it should happen again.
The night was a total disaster: full of tech mishaps, hot mics, and an ever-growing absent 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 TikTok-famous faces. But the reach stopped there. None of the main cast members from I Love LA, a show deeply rooted in TikTok culture, were in attendance, and no celebrities beyond the FYP bubble — despite the fact that actors and musicians use the app constantly to promote their work. Of course, not everyone attends a carpet, but the absence was curious.
Then came the delay. The show started nearly an hour late. Inside the venue, rumors spread quickly that we were waiting on Paris Hilton, but once she got comfortable — trailed by an entourage fit for royalty, including one person whose sole job seemed to be holding a light inches from her face — we still didn’t start.
That’s when it became obvious where the real problem was.
All around the room, tech crew members dressed head-to-toe in black scrambled in the back of the venue. The screens weren’t working, which is a catastrophic issue for any award show, but especially for one built entirely around short-form video.
« We are running a little late because this is quite a powerful room. You are so powerful because you blew out our screens, » Kim Farrell, the global head of creators at TikTok, told the room of restless creators before the show finally began. The relief didn’t last long.
Almost every presenter’s bit relied on those screens. La La Anthony, hosting alongside Ashby Florence (who was seated in the crowd), opened the show with an interaction that required La La to show her For You Page on the big screen. Without it, the moment landed awkwardly — confusing for viewers watching at home and uncomfortable in the room.
And that set the tone.
Ashby, to her credit, carried the night. Her crowd work was charming, quick, and genuinely funny, and she managed to inject life into moments that otherwise would have completely stalled. I hope she was paid extraordinarily well, because she was doing the work of an entire production team.
Once it became clear the screens weren’t coming back, most presenters didn’t adjust their scripts at all. They continued gesturing toward blank screens while audio from unseen montages played. Tefi Pessoa’s presentation for Video of the Year worked regardless, but when the award went to Bretman Rock, he wasn’t there to accept it, which was another recurring issue. Roughly a third of the winners weren’t in the room.
That absence may have something to do with how the night felt less like a celebration and more like a very long advertisement.
Every award was, of course, tied back to TikTok, but the show was cluttered with sponsor integrations — Carl’s Jr., e.l.f. Cosmetics — and awards branded for TikTok-owned tools. There was a CapCut award instead of a general editing category. TikTok Shop presented an award. It was TikTok giving TikTok Awards to TikTok, and while all award shows are commercial at some level, this one felt especially on the nose.
As the night went on, more and more people quietly left their seats and the venue altogether. There were no seat fillers, so the empty chairs became impossible to ignore. Despite repeated reminders about an upcoming Ciara performance, the room was probably 15 percent empty by the time she finally took the stage.
To be fair, Ciara performed, and she absolutely delivered. Between her performance and Ashby’s relentless effort to keep things fun, the night stayed afloat. But just barely.
When Keith Lee accepted the Creator of the Year award, the tone in the room shifted. Lee was visibly emotional, and TikTok announced a $50,000 donation to Feeding America in his honor. It was a rare moment of sincerity in an otherwise uneven night. And it underscored how creators should be awarded for their work — they entertain us, make us laugh, help us learn, and inspire us. These kinds of creator-led award shows should exist. The Webby Awards and the Shorty Awards play a role in uplifting short-form content and its creators, for instance. But this attempt from TikTok fell short.
And maybe that’s because it broke its own unwritten rule. The platform that thrives on spontaneity and creator culture instead opted for moments that felt designed for clips, rather than genuine connection.
Earlier in the evening, before the show began, Mashable asked creators on the red carpet what their word of the year would be. Merriam-Webster had just announced « slop » as its official word of 2025, and we wanted to see what the Extremely Online would have to say. La La Anthony said « change. » Alexis Nikole Nelson chose « bold. » Kelsey Anderson said, « Period. » Tan France went with « C U Next Tuesday » (the actual word, not the phrase). And Ashby offered the most painfully accurate word of all: « conundrum. »
After being inside that room all night, though, Merriam-Webster might’ve nailed it the first time.
