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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

I'm in my mid-40s: there's nothing deep or mysterious to "get" about TikTok. It's short-form video snips/vignettes, mainly of people showing off for their friends, trying to cash in on short-lived audio trends and meme pipelines, and sometimes both. It reminds me of the kind of bravado/showing off my peers in middle- and high-school did: because that's essentially what it is. Edit for more context: I happen to be dating someone who is a young adult (early/mid-20s), so I have even more context/insight into what makes this app interesting to them: I stand by what I wrote.

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).

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> I'm in my mid-40s: there's nothing deep or mysterious to "get" about TikTok. It's short-form video snips/vignettes, mainly of people showing off for their friends, trying to cash in on short-lived audio trends and meme pipelines, and sometimes both.

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.

>For other people, they would barely recognize TikTok on the basis of this description.

Not following. Who are the "other people" and how would they describe it otherwise?

TikTok has a very good algorithm for suggesting content for users, and this can end up with different users being exposed to radically different subsets of content offered through TikTok: in scientific terms, it’s very easy to get stuck in different local minima.

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.

Yes, the algorithm is a poor algorithm that overfits. It is not a good algorithm by any reasonable measure, unless the intent specifically is to commit users to such a funnel.

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.

Of course the intent is to commit users to a funnel or funnels.

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.

Because Tiktok aggressively individualizes the content shown, people with different tastes get radically different videos shown.

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.

If you were writing this in 2019 I would agree with you.

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.

OTOH what happens to companies with teen users who grow up is that they lose their userbase and they die out along with other big influences of that current generation. You just don't have the time to stare at ticktock for 3 hours at 25 years old that you had at 15 years old, whether you are at the top or the bottom of the economic ladder. We see that trend in every social network.

In one large segment it has turned into a streaming platform like twitch, as in a side screen and additional chat people keep up while also streaming on twitch

I dont see a vine-like fate for tiktok

Bytedance is so much better positioned as well and already monetizing it

I'm not much younger and tried it after some HN thread. Basically the algorithm is really good, as it should be on more platforms. So if you don't like memes and dance and beauty contents, you won't get that. It can be just DIY videos, niche musicians and short science videos if that's what you want to see.

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.

The algorithm is really good! At overfitting. Snark aside, what you describe is short form videos intended to show off or cash in to a trend: that it’s not stupid cat videos, or dance-offs or whatever doesn’t change that.

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