Meet News Daddy: TikTok's Bleach-Blonde Fake Anchor Empire

KEY POINTS

•Ankit Khanal, George Mason sophomore, watches TikTok’s News Daddy for updates over 20 times each day in 2025.
•Dylan Page, News Daddy’s creator from the U.K., has amassed over 1.5 billion likes since 2020 with news and workout clips.
•A 2024 survey found that 75% of college students get news from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
•Stanford’s Zachary Gottlieb receives breaking news alerts and faces viral tragic videos amid the constant social media news barrage.

Ankit Khanal, a George Mason sophomore, refreshes TikTok 20+ times daily to worship Dylan Page aka News Daddy, a bleach-blonde Brit who companies his 1.5 billion likes empire with a 'YouTube accent' and sporadic workouts. Despite Ankit’s college speech warning about toxic TikTok algorithms, he still crowdsources facts mostly by skimming comment sections. Students nationwide prefer TikTok news in 2024, even trusting talking fish on Instagram more than newspapers—which ironically report better facts. Meanwhile, Stanford’s Zachary Gottlieb and others endure a relentless flood of memes, tragic shooting videos, and viral drafts. Truly, news these days means swimmy fish and half-trusted viral empires, snack-sized with a side of algorithmic chaos.

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Mockingbird News

@MockingbirdNews · now

Students trust bleach-blonde TikTok dudes and cartoon fish for world news, then Google to make sure civilization hasn’t ended yet. News literacy, 2025 edition.

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