Late final evening, in one among my typical TikTok fugue states during which my eyes and ears are bombarded by Doja Cat songs and Twitch clips and Actual Housewives fancams till my crippling anxiousness evaporates, I stumbled upon one thing curious. It appeared harmless sufficient—simply some live performance footage from DJ Fred Once more’s November 2023 present on the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. However then I spotted who the poster was: none apart from The Recreation Awards creator and producer and (some may say) gaming royalty, Geoff Keighley.
“Maintain on did I simply discover fucking Keighley’s TikTok?” writes an incredulous commenter on the Fred Once more clip. One other remark is from, hilariously, The Recreation Awards co-host Sydnee Goodman, who identified that she was on the present that evening, too. (I suppose they don’t textual content about it.) The third and closing remark, which despatched water spewing from my mouth just like the Trevi Fountain, was: “Why did you say Titanfall like that?” referring to Keighley’s further emphasis on the oft-missed shooter when introducing Respawn’s Vince Zampella at The Recreation Awards final yr.
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Funnily sufficient, Keighley’s TikTok has little to no connection to gaming (regardless of his profile saying, merely “I <3 video video games”) apart from his first-ever submit from 2020 the place he reveals off the PS5 DualSense controller. There’s a clip of the Muppets (after all it’s the Muppets) performing a Christmas Carol medley on the 2023 Disney Expo and one among David Blaine leaping off of some scaffolding at a Las Vegas magic present. However nearly all of his TikToks are clips from concert events he’s been to—Paramore, Halsey, Blink-182, Florence and the Machine, Adele (the place he filmed Amazon proprietor Jeff Bezos from afar and set it to Bo Burnham’s track about him), Ed Sheeran, and even Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. He’s gone to Coachella. He’s been within the Vegas orb greater than as soon as. The person is an audiophile.
I’m fascinated by this discovery—not simply because it’s the one social media account of Keighley’s that feels actual and tangible (like an amiable uncle new to the app) quite than overly curated and considerably robotic, however as a result of he has such a small following there. On the time of writing, he’s barely reached 880 followers, whereas my unknown ass has over 4,000 thanks to some viral TikToks. This small social footprint is dwarfed by Keighley’s presence elsewhere: He has 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and 56.8K on his Instagram account, which has zero photos posted. It’s like I’ve discovered a pocket of Geoff’s personal little ideas that he doesn’t run by way of a advertising filter. He not often makes use of TikTok’s hashtag operate, and if he does, it’s simple, simply #Paramore or a profile tag of the band performing. He nearly at all times geotags, diligently leaving an web path marker for some 800 or so folks. His feed is like watching a springbok in its pure habitat.
Is that this demure TikTok really Keighley in his purest type? An August 2022 video of what seems to be an individual sporting a dinosaur costume in a public sq., captioned with simply “what’s going on?”, means that it’s. However Keighley hasn’t posted since that November 2023 Fred Once more live performance footage, and that’s left a chasm in my chilly, lifeless coronary heart. Geoff, come again to TikTok.