The users of TikTok are mostly teenagers and young adults, that's why. Nearly everybody in journalism is late 20s or 30+. They just don't get it, though to be fair vine had a similar type of content and that failed.
Those late 20s and up journalists get it, but they recognize (correctly) that like all social networks of this sort the early adopters (kids/young adults) are going to turn into adults with spending power and either change the nature of the platform or move on to something else. In either case, what TikTok is now is largely irrelevant (not to mention trite and shallow).
I don't think it's shallow. I've learned a lot from it. It just gives you what you want to watch and what you want to watch may be based on the idea that you have about the platform.
This perception is just already 3 years old now and so that social network has already gotten its additional audiences and many of those high schoolers (and their influencers) have grown up.
There is a similarity of looking at Facebook in 2005 and looking at Facebook in 2008, and add in a much faster adoption cycle and infrastructure.
I dont see a vine-like fate for tiktok
Bytedance is so much better positioned as well and already monetizing it
What this misses is that TikTok is a radically different experience for different people.
For some people, this description is very accurate. For other people, they would barely recognize TikTok on the basis of this description.
This is what has led to so many mis-representations of TikTok in the media, and the misunderstandings that result from that.
Not following. Who are the "other people" and how would they describe it otherwise?
So for many users, TikTok will not involve “showing off to friends”, will not involve audio trends, and will not involve memes at all.
These users would describe it as containing short-form video content relevant to whatever their particular niche or interest may be.
Whether the content is stupid cat videos or a DIY isn't relevant to my original point: it's short-form video content developed by people attempting to cash in on some meme (or niche), and very much in the vein of showing off for one's peers. Some like to think that if it's not an audio meme, but rather an undergrad waxing poetic about just learning Schrodinger's Equation or some handy person displaying his DIY skills that it's not about cashing in/showing off. But it is.
I still don’t think you get that when you complain about the content being trite or juvenile or commercial(?), you’re outing yourself as someone who will stop to watch that kind of stuff.
If you skip past the memes, fads, dances, etc. it will show you other types of content until it identifies what you will stop scrolling to watch.
For example, my TikTok is full of LGBTQ+, PNW housing complaints, DnD and religion.
Edit: and a good percentage of them are around 30.