I wasn’t even supposed to be there. Or maybe I was. The universe has a funny way of aligning moments just right, like slipping into the perfect dress without realising it would be the one that turns heads all night. The TikTok Awards Sub-Saharan Africa 2024 wasn’t just another industry event—it was a masterclass in digital culture, a room filled with the people shaping what we see, hear, and obsess over online.

And even though it’s been a week, it still feels like I left the Galleria in Johannesburg just yesterday, ears buzzing from the energy, eyes still adjusting to the spectacle of it all.

There’s something about walking into a space where every face is familiar, but only through the glow of a screen. These are the voices that interrupt your workday, the dances you swore you’d try but never did, the beauty tricks that almost made you buy another lipstick. But seeing them in real life, with the kind of presence that doesn’t need a filter, is a different thing altogether. It’s one thing to watch someone own a moment through a phone screen. It’s another to watch them step onto a stage, golden light catching the edges of their confidence, their names being called in a room full of their peers.

Anyanwu Chioma, better known as @anchi_vibes, stood there, accepting the Creator of the Year award, and you could feel it—the weight of every video, every late-night edit, every moment she made the internet sit up and pay attention. I don’t know if people outside of this space really understand what it means to build something out of pixels and ideas, to be more than an algorithm’s favorite but a voice people seek out on purpose. She’s done that, and so have so many others that night, like @zerobrainer0, who turned sports commentary into a 12-million-strong community, or @flaqoraz, whose comedy and social takes remind us that laughter can also make us think.

But the thing about moments like this is that they don’t just belong to the people on stage. They belong to everyone who’s ever hit ‘post’ not knowing if anyone would care. To the people who made content in their bedrooms, in bad lighting, with nothing but an idea and the nerve to share it. They belong to the trends that came and went, to the ones we’ll pretend we were too cool to participate in. The TikTok Awards weren’t just about winning. They were about showing up, about proving that digital culture is just as real as the fabric of the dress I kept adjusting that night.

I should probably tell you who wore what, who had the best moment, who gave the speech that made everyone pause—but if you’ve ever been in a room where energy is contagious, where people are there not just to be seen but to celebrate something bigger than themselves, then you already know.

The best part wasn’t on stage. It was in the in-between moments: a creator fixing another’s hair before they took a photo, someone whispering “you got this” before a big award, the shared glances of people who understood exactly what it took to get here.

A week later, the internet has already moved on. That’s the nature of it. New trends, new sounds, new viral moments. But for the people who were there, who felt the electricity of that night, who saw the magic that happens when online and offline collide—it’s still lingering. And maybe that’s the real win.