Late last night, in one of my typical TikTok fugue states in which my eyes and ears are bombarded by Doja Cat songs and Twitch clips and Real Housewives fancams until my crippling anxiety evaporates, I stumbled upon something curious. It looked innocent enough—just some concert footage from DJ Fred Again’s November 2023 show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. But then I realized who the poster was: none other than The Game Awards creator and producer and (some might say) gaming royalty, Geoff Keighley.
“Hold on, did I just find fucking Keighley’s TikTok?” writes an incredulous commenter on the Fred Again clip. Another comment is from, hilariously, The Game Awards co-host Sydnee Goodman, who pointed out that she was at the show that night, too. (I guess they don’t text about it.) The third and final comment, which sent water spewing from my mouth like the Trevi Fountain, was: “Why did you say Titanfall like that?” referring to Keighley’s extra emphasis on the oft-missed shooter when introducing Respawn’s Vince Zampella at The Game Awards last year.
Read More: The Best Part Of The Game Awards This Year Was The Fashion
Funnily enough, Keighley’s TikTok has little to no connection to gaming (despite his profile saying, simply “I <3 video games”) except for his first-ever post from 2020 where he shows off the PS5 DualSense controller. There’s a clip of the Muppets (of course, it’s the Muppets) performing a Christmas Carol medley at the 2023 Disney Expo and one of David Blaine jumping off of some scaffolding at a Las Vegas magic show.
But almost all of his TikToks are clips from concerts he’s been to—Paramore, Halsey, Blink-182, Florence and the Machine, Adele (where he filmed Amazon owner Jeff Bezos from afar and set it to Bo Burnham’s song about him (Get his ass, Geoff — David)), Ed Sheeran, and even Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. He’s gone to Coachella. He’s been in the Vegas orb more than once. In addition to his account’s claim about loving video games, the man is a big music fan.
I’m fascinated by this discovery—not just because it’s the only social media account of Keighley’s that feels real and tangible (like an amiable uncle new to the app) rather than overly curated and somewhat robotic, but because he has such a small following there. At the time of writing, he’s barely reached 880 followers, whereas my unknown ass has over 4,000 thanks to a few 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 pictures posted. It’s like I’ve found a pocket of Geoff’s private little thoughts that he doesn’t run through a marketing filter. He rarely uses TikTok’s hashtag function, and if he does, it’s straightforward, just #Paramore or a tag of the band performing. He almost always geotags, diligently leaving an internet trail marker for some 800 or so people. His feed is like watching a springbok in its natural habitat.
Is this demure TikTok actually Keighley in his purest form? An August 2022 video of what appears to be a person wearing a dinosaur costume in a public square, captioned with just “what is going on?” suggests that it is. But Keighley hasn’t posted since that November 2023 Fred Again concert footage, and that’s left a chasm in my cold, dead heart.
Geoff, come back to TikTok.
Leave a Reply