Remember Charlie Billingsley? He was the character in Friday Night Lights who had been a running back at Permian when they won State. Charlie told his Permian running back son Don “This is the only thing you’re ever gonna have. It carries you forever.”

You may also remember the SOPA assault on the U.S. Capitol that essentially shut down the Congress from conducting its official business because Google did not want to be held accountable for massive copyright infringement. And of course you’ll remember the massive investigation by the Select Committee on SOPA and its devastating prosecution of the perpetrators when Eric, Larry and Sergey went to prison.

Well, actually that last part didn’t happen. But what the SOPA onslaught did demonstrate was how tech companies could use the Internet to harass the bejesus out of Congress and make it look and feel like the world was coming to an end, or at least the political part. And it also educated Congress on how to spot fakery. And they were ready for the next time that Big Tech used trickery to try to stop legislation they didn’t like.

Big Tech did not really learn that lesson because they had so much vindication of their methods with SOPA. And like Charlie Billingsley’s trip to State, they kept bringing it up for years afterwards.

And then TikTok.

According to Axios:

“Zoom in: The flood of calls to congressional offices, which began Wednesday night, was triggered by a notice on the TikTok app warning users of a “total ban” that would “damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience.”

• After asking users to enter their ZIP code, TikTok then directed them to call their representative in Congress to let them “know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”
• “Phones are completely bogged down hearing from students, young adults, adults, and business owners who are all concerned at the option of losing their access to the platform,” a senior GOP aide told Axios’ Juliegrace Brufke.

Zoom out: The authors of the bill responded furiously to what they called a “massive propaganda campaign,” emphasizing that TikTok would not be banned if ByteDance divests its ownership.

• “TikTok is characterizing it as an outright ban, which is of course an outright lie,” House China Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) told reporters.
• “I guess if you’ve got a bajillion dollars, you can come up with some crazy public affairs strategies,” a senior GOP aide told Axios’ Andrew Solender. “But it’s backfiring as members are livid about all the calls and misinformation.”
• “So bad we turned phones off … Which means we could miss calls from constituents who actually need urgent help with something,” a senior Democratic aide added.”

The difference is, of course, that the TikTok legislation is going through and Google–employing largely the same stunt with their bajillion dollars–got away with it. It’s starting to look like TikTok ain’t got no mojo.