The “je ne sais quoi” of TikTok
daniel.do
daniel.do
Those older platforms were about your social networks (friends and friends of friends) - or at least they were before they started to ape TikTik.
For me, the much closer comparison to TikTok is YouTube, and I feel that TikTok is really just a mobile-optimized YouTube.
That's the same as the established YouTube creators
Facebook, SnapChat and Instagram are social networks.
YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit are social media.
Plenty of social interaction happens in TikTok comments and DMs. If Instagram is social media, so is TikTok.
At best its grist for the content mill. Cheap animal feed to fatten the livestock and attract the eye of advertisers.
I have no IRL links to any of the accounts I'm following on Insta. I'm interested only in seing beautiful pictures (and not awful "reels").
IMO it's all an illusion, but it's not much different from seeing a friend, family member, co-worker. or a prominent business-person/celebrity being more successful than you. The interesting (scary?) thing about TikTok is that it hyper-compresses that environment into a few seconds, then constantly bombards you with it via a neverending flow of videos. It's like keeping up with the Joneses on amphetamines.
Obviously, it heavily depends. I’ve looked at my friends’ feeds and it’s exactly what you’ve described.
Obviously we all like different things, and there is enough content to fill everyone’s feeds with it.
That's actually what got me to try it out. There were multiple cases where I heard that, so downloaded it and spent some time on it. After you've used it a few hours, you start really getting mostly the stuff you like.
You just have to be very careful not to engage with stuff you don't want to see. Scroll away as soon as you've determined it's not for you, as they'll notice if you watch things to the end. I made a conscious decision that I didn't want to engage in content where people were complaining about the behavior of other people and scrolled past as soon as I identified things as such, and I stopped getting them within a few days. My TikTok is all fun/funny stuff.
I've certainly seen friends and family compulsively scroll and obsessively check instagram and snapchat in a manner no different than what people are criticizing about tiktok. It seems like people witness their "their generation" using instagram/snapchat for hours on end; then they see the younger generation using tiktok for (the same number of) hours on end, and get the idea it's far more damaging.
I suspect the curated short video format is what really holds people's attention in a way that is different from "traditional social media".
*disclaimer: as reported by different sites, with different methodologies, and different reporting dates.
The amount of things I want to and do share with my wife and kids in there makes me thing of the items as small emotional payloads I can send which are themselves a message, sort of like sending an emoji or string of them.
They don't actually have much choice in how they run their products.
Not sure it matters much if you're at the bottom and have to bow to one for a while then the other.
So yes, I do actually believe that. If the hold on power is weak enough it doesn't count as a dictatorship.
Similarly many of today's tech giants are difficult to escape, especially as network effects drive toward centralization of power.
https://mignano.medium.com/the-end-of-social-media-a88ffed21...
Both of which of course have a lot to do with reduced attention span.
Over time, it becomes a culture signifier of sorts. MrBeast is bigger than Pewdiepie (embarrassed that I know these names), he obviously does not need to paper over mistakes with those cuts.
Same way he doesn't need to make exaggerated open-mouth face for the Youtube thumbnail, but they do anyway.
The only good things on youtube are music videos, DIY repair, and lectures / talks that gets uploaded.
This statement scares me a little. That type of attention/validation/connection seems a mile wide and an inch deep. I hope it's not really where the creator gets his needs met, and that he has actual friends and family who provide that for him.
From what I've seen of celebrities, the life that feeds off the attention and adoration of fans is usually not a healthy one. If TikTok (like other Internet media platforms, only more effectively) democratizes that lifestyle as well as its mirror image - parasocial relationships between fans and creators - I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's actually the fraying of our social fabric - making us feel loosely connected with a larger set of people, but at the same time, deeply alone.
I guess I'm old now.
I honestly don't think it's all that different than other technologies, even though I keep hearing people insist "this time it's different" about Tiktok. Over my life I've heard a similar sentiment of the decay of society regarding Instagram/Youtube/Facebook, about text messaging, about the mobile phone itself, emails, the personal computer/internet, video gaming, and probably other technologies. I grew up decades after television became ubiquitous, and I'm sure the same was said about that.
In fact, take a look at this eloquent essay about digital social media:
>>
>it delivers only... brainless diversions that erode [the] ability to think, inquire, and judge. just another disintegrating toy. Just another medium... for advertisers to use in pestering us
>[They] operate by.. broadcasting so that one... can send his message to millions
>[People just] sit around... if they are feeling particularly loquacious, they may nod to each other. Thus dies the art of conversation. There is now very little danger that [people] will resort to the vice of thinking.
>>
Actually, this isn't an essay about digital social media. It's an excerpt from the essay "Radio - A Blessing Or A Curse?" By Jack Woodford, 1929.
Still, I do think it's a bit different each time - these technologies are incrementally more effortless and addictive, feedback loops are incrementally shorter, personalities we "meet" through these technologies incrementally more real and seemingly intimate.
It's a bit analogous to our diets. What our bodies fundamentally need hasn't changed much over the years. And it can be argued that we have constantly experienced changes to our diet throughout human history, and those changes are generally either benign or positive. Yet, it's easy to draw a line between certain "innovations" (trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) to obesity and other health issues. In the same way, we might be able to connect the gradual progress of technology with unprecedented anxiety, depression [1], and loneliness [2].
[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt3... (page 35) [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014019712...
Trans fat is absolutely harmful. The FDA banned adding partially hydrogenated oils (source of most trans fats) to foods back in 2015 and said trans fat is no longer generally recognized as safe.
More relevant to the article, is it a net good or net bad? It's easy to make a claim motor vehicles are dangerous and bad, as motor accidents kill over a million people per year. It is much more difficult to justify the counter argument that "the benefits of cars bring much more value to the world than the harm caused by the million deaths per year".
The author of this article states that tiktok brings him and the content creators enjoyment and in some cases livelihood. If the net societal harm of social media outweighs the net good, maybe we should get rid of it entirely.
But if the net good outweighs, perhaps it makes more sense to treat it like cars - enact regulations, restrictions, and safety measures, rather than trying to eliminate it completely.
Also describes Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I've seen a bunch of slippery slope arguments here but no justification for Tiktok being any worse than the previous generation of social media. I'll agree Tiktok is more addictive than radio, sure.
If the argument is "all modern social media is optimized to take advantage of human psychology" I would agree, but if the argument is "tiktok is worse than the previous generation of social media" then I'd need to see some data/studies/evidence supporting the claim.
It's why daytime talk radio has greatly contributed to the decline of discourse and civility in America; it has a giant captive audience that made divisive blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and many others enormous fortunes.
Cheap and relentless negativity scales much better than positivity and is more addicting. Nobody is happy-scrolling through social media, and the only people still making money on radio are shock jocks.
I don't think I'm old, but I completely agree with your take. People should base their satisfaction on healthier things than views and likes. Don't ask me what the healthier things are, I don't think I'm old enough to have figured that part out yet.
I forcefully broke the habit by disabling the YT app. Then I started watching them in the browser.
It took enormous will to break out of that addiction (and other addictions as well. I removed Reddit, Twitter, IG, FB and SC)
YET, I still spend an hour, randomly, on YT shorts.
I am worried for the future of my next generation, where their most productive time would be a relaxing break from social media.
Yeah. Not tempted to give all of it up.
I'm saying TT is closer to the second, when it comes to losing sleep. It may have some effect, if you dig deep enough, but it's a lifestyle choice that's legitimate to make either way.
Drinking coffee in the evenings and complaining that I can't sleep would be the alternative.
I'm using Newpipe more and more these days.
I only go there when I know what I want to watch
Per day?
https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/13/kids-and-teens-watch-more-...
And before sleeping at night.
Genuine question - because I tried watching them several times over, but they never really clicked with me?
Maybe I'm just old - but I honestly don't "get it".
That is the spot YT shorts (and TikTok, I guess) are hitting. It's the uncompromising equivalent of the nineties "Fishing with John" or "Beavis and Butt-head".
My brain would then make me listen do soft music in a darkened room. Watching videos so short that the entire context completely changes every few seconds would have been way too much.
The only thing I enjoy about it is that I can see clips from longer format YouTube videos that if I like I can go watch later. Kind of like a movie trailer would do. I wish YouTube would capitalize on that and make it easy to access the full video from the clip.
In truth, I bargain that no one on the internet is exempt from this, except for people who use computers like they are DARPA interns (which I think is the best way to go about it these days).
TikTok is appealing to people because it appeals directly to their desire for mindless consumption (mindless as in engagement, not necessarily always in content, for the “I learned how to book bind on TikTok!” crowd), whether they are aware of it or not. People have been using social media for some decades now, you think the average person can tell that’s what they’re after these days? “I want to simulate the feeling of enlightenment but I don’t want to it in any effort”.
The people who say, “But they said bad things about TV and radio and…” are missing the point. Because those suck too and were precursors to the shenanigans that resulted in TikTok…TikTok…TikTok…we’re wasting our time.
If you swap that out with drugs you will not be saying the same thing.
Does it bring "joy" though ? or does it bring a quick feel good response in your brain that pushes you away from activities that actually bring joy ?
> All men of this stamp, I maintain, are pressing on in pursuit of joy, but they do not know where they may obtain a joy that is both great and enduring. One person seeks it in feasting and self-indulgence; another, in canvassing for honours and in being surrounded by a throng of clients; another, in his mistress; another, in idle display of culture and in literature that has no power to heal; all these men are led astray by delights which are deceptive and short-lived – like drunkenness for example, which pays for a single hour of hilarious madness by a sickness of many days, or like applause and the popularity of enthusiastic approval which are gained, and atoned for, at the cost of great mental disquietude.
Seneca
We’re talking about an app you watch on the toilet or while waiting in line somewhere.
I doubt I spend 45 minute per week in my bathroom, let alone on the toilet. We're talking 20 to 45 hours per month, that's enough time to read two to four 400 pages long books instead of absolutely brain dead content
Are you saying watching, let's say, cat videos for 30m a day is toxic?
It sounds like you're just describing joy. It doesn't bring long-term contentment and fulfillment if that's what you mean, but that's a different thing.
I personally think there’s something profoundly sad about a wealthy, privileged, able-bodied young person with nothing to do but lie in bed and watch video after video of nothingness. I’d call it sad if they spent every afternoon with a bag of heroin too, but in neither case is it my position to tell them they can’t.
I am the author of this blog post. I found it while scrolling Hacker News.
I think this thread is really interesting. I actually spend a good amount of my leisure time reading. But I don't think that one of those activities is more virtuous than the other.
Here's screen caps of my phone usage for the last 2 weeks: https://imgur.com/a/XUaIxaF
Does this fit the dystopian picture you painted of how I live my life? What if instead of TikTok, the app was Netflix? would that be better? Should my overall screen time just be less in general? How should it change to make it less profoundly sad?
Classification on a binary basis ("that person will like that video or not") is on a much better ontological basis than multiple class classification ("out of 50 links, that person picked will pick the 39th") For one thing it is possible to calibrate a yes/no decision, TikTok knows that there is an 80% chance that you're going to like this video and a 30% chance that you are going to like that video and make a rational decision about what to show you. Multi-class classification is a shot in the dark in comparison.
Google and everyone else in social media wants to look like the image in
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Funny/Idiocracy
They give you 50 things to click on and make a big deal about having a privacy policy and how "data is the new oil" but the clickthrough data is absolutely worthless because out of 50 things there were 5 things you might have clicked on and you could only pick one. In particular, they can't come to any conclusion that you didn't like any of the other 49 things.
The HR office hires one black woman for their DEI initiative to work in "AI Ethics" to claim this technology is so powerful that it's actually dangerous and when they get into some spat with management and get fired they are doing their job because it legitimizes the idea that this "artificial intelligence" is so powerful it's dangerous but the web brought to you by Google, Facebook, Twitter and such is artificial stupidity inspired by Idiocracy just as Facebook's metaverse is inspired by Sword Art Online.
TikTok on the other hand really is dangerous, not because it's algorithms are better (they are, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit) but because their whole approach gives them meaningful data that can be put to work. It vindicates the idea of looking at one piece of content a time or a "Tinder for documents" that I talked about here https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/
If you thought this comment was insightful, remember to vote it up because it helps the Hacker News algorithm.
Just like the Kelley criterion tells you how to turn predictions into bets, the multi-armed bandit tells you how to keep a user engaged in the short term by showing them things you know they'll like but also keep them engaged in the long term by showing them things they might like occasionally which, if they pass the test, will expand the range of things that you know they like.
> What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country. > And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.
source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
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This being said, guarding my gps history like it's treasure does absolutely zilch to stop political manipulation, when you have stuff like corporate control over mainstream media and PR firms. See NYT's coverage of FTX, for a contemporary example.
Or, well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
How they came to that opinion is where the manipulation comes in.
You do these things with social media bots, trolls, misinformation, etc.
Brexit wasn’t brilliant. It was an empty slate people could project their worries on. That’s why actual implementation, where details mattered more than slogans, is where the difficulty lay.
They had access to both sides' discourse. They voted. They made a choice.
Instead of taking this information and learning from it, you're just blaming the very progressive-leaning social media.
Oh, why am I even trying. It's ok, it was Big Corp, they're the ones to blame.
However, the data of your city, state, country, gender, race is very valuable because then, for example, companies/government/foreign actors can know exactly what is this town, state, country, gender, race is thinking about any given topic. This is enormous value and this is why companies like Cambridge Analytica are so profitable.
Those people then typically complain about election results or corporation bending them over, without ever questioning their own responsibility in the outcome.
A man dancing poorly. A woman riding a train? What's so compelling?
I guess i am finally middle aged.
But it's definitely not just fluff. More than once my feed got overly intellectual and long form, and I had to keep liking every not-very-dressed female video just to get back to "funtok".
It's also moderately good to keep up to date with news, at least in the areas you're interested about. At least for the James Web telescope I basically got the front seat, with every little detail explained from several PoVs.
It's uncanny how specialized it is - every time I try showing my feed to friends, they're at most lukewarm. Sure, there are videos we share and all like, but the overall content is very very personalized.
Just for fun: for a long while a good 10% of the videos TT was showing to me were... backhoes.
s/entertainment/value/ , it's true of software engineers. Plumbers. Construction workers. Homemakers. Traders.
Find what you love and let it kill you.
The platforms should offer a granular way to influence the algorithm, e.g. creators could mark their videos 'onbrand' and 'offbrand'.
It's lovely.
(almost) None are healthy since their motivation isn't healthy in the first place. It's just triggering our monkey brain part which seeks attention, the problem is that it was never designed to be world wide scale, you end up with an army of mimics doing the most random shit ever for internet points, 99% of it being either useless or borderline pornography
To be fair, TikTok has a lot of videos that do end with "hit the + or heart on the right" or "what do you think? leave a comment" or "if you want part 2" etc.
IMHO those videos are just trash. I have better things to do than watch fake videos.
I only wish for Google+ to make a comeback in the way it was in the beginning, not the redesign version.
I'm also tired of YouTube. 99% of the time I use it, it's for music. And then it prompts me if I'm still watching...
Twitch was interesting for a while but it's also becoming stale, always the same "give me money" begging. This one guy yesterday seriously did a 6 hour begging stream so his viewers purchase sonic toothbrushes. Disgusting. Compared to a shopping channel at least the shopping channel presents the product. He was just like pleaaaaaseee buy this toothbrush, I need at least 15 sales. And some people actually did it. I couldn't watch it. Every now and then I switched back and he was still at it, begging for sales.
Facebook is dead to me. Censorship. Fake News. Walled garden. It has destroyed so many friendships. Should I ever meet that red haired bastard I'll punch him.
Twitter is the same. Even more censorship. And only outraged people there. The home of cancel culture.
It's all shit. Gimme my G+ back.
Then it all got serious and messed up by The Algorithm and the need for FB to make money off our irrelevances.
I believe TikTok will succumb to the same forces, and end up in the same place.
Until we learn that we have to pay for our social media, we're going to repeat this cycle over and over again.
If you're someone who doesn't get it yet, consider it a sign that it's worth your investment in time and energy to really try and get it, if you want to stay on top of how younger people think, work, act and play.
From the article and some comments here a few suggestions:
- TikTok is 'showing' while other platforms are 'telling'. - You don't 'hunt' videos you 'gather' them. - Flaws are truth, so they are typically welcomed rather than scrubbed.
I would say the same about someone watching that much TV, and do think the same of myself when I used to play video games that much. It's pleasurable and feels good, but for long term mental health (not to mention physical) it's catastrophic.
I'm not talking about hopping on and watching 15 mins of tik tok in the evening, but that's not how it's usually consumed
So many comments on here saying "It's just short form YouTube" - did you read my blog post? It's literally the opposite. That's why the clones of TikTok don't work
The audience of this post wasn't potential users of TikTok, it was for people who make software in various capacities.
Is that accurate? I would have said in English that French phrase names a concept - we say 'it has a certain je ne sais quois' etc. - but in French it's just words right? Sure a phrase, but isn't this like saying 'in English this concept is called "this is a hill I will die on"'?
Anyway, if you're addicted to using something and do not know why you should probably make a conscious effort to cease.
The author says it's not about the algorithm, but rather the content, but the examples seem to provide evidence for the reverse. People are uploading millions of videos daily, the algorithm is why he's seeing something that's of interest to him.
Maybe what's gone unmentioned here is that people originally used Youtube like a search engine. You typed something in, and clicked a video on the topic. TikTok is like cable TV, it autoplays as soon as you turn it on, and you can "channel surf". Maybe that's the appeal; finding something by perceived "serendipity" releases more dopamine than clicking on a search result.
maybe this is too niche of a sport?
our social media platform brings the soma to you!
And how does it deal with companies? Facebook and Twitter seem quite focused on providing marketing departments (i.e. advertisers) with a way to connect to their customers and doing promotions.
The self-promotion of regular users this article decries is enabled by those same tools that those companies need for marketing promotions...
I don't use any of these social media products, but I applaud his joy.
Twitter is the short form of blogs.
They're only 'social networks' in the sense that you can follow people. But not really your social circle, more like your circle of interests.
Facebook is where the family and friends hang out.
Somehow I strongly doubt that.
As others remarked here, TikTok has this aspect of freshness. Companies still have to learn how to monetise on it. People just share their lives quite randomly. They are just people. They are not trying to look their best, they are not "Instagram" kind of influencers. All new platforms are like that. Every revolution lowers the entrance barrier and allows new people to become popular or get their message across.
People really miss the times when YouTube just started. There was nothing there, just boring people doing nothing in front of the camera. No makeup, no script, no light, no production value. It was the time before mobile phones, so these were videos made with webcams. Someone opened a box with a new purchase. There wasn't a concept of unboxing. It became a format and made many people rich. There was no concept of daily routine or makeup, or yoga. There were people living their lives and sharing it online. That was very appealing, but these formats were discovered, and companies saw business opportunity because there were so many people watching YouTube. And then the commercialisation killed this early democratic and "flat" YouTube.
YouTube has become professional - it's no longer "You" TV, it's large studios, production companies, big money is involved. If the quality is not good enough, if you don't have backgrounds, good cameras, microphones etc., you won't make it on YT. The barrier of entry has become increasingly high.
TikTok on the other hand has a very very low barrier of entry and it is sort of expected to be consisting of short single hand-held shots, unpolished etc. This will definitely change, and marketing companies will be willing to pay big bucks to make a video look like an amateur youngster's video but at the same time it will be totally controlled and crafted production. It won't last long.
TT as a YT optimisation for mobile is an understatement. The interface and tools for editing videos on the phone are done exceedingly well. Some things could be improved, but the editor is advanced enough to enable creativity and restrictive enough to have a distinct "rough" TikTok style. And frankly... I like it a lot.
And finally - the social aspect. I have reached out to some Tiktokers and met them in person in real live. Some of them I follow and I really like them as human beings. I can imagine we could be friends if we lived in the same place. There is also a lot of interesting people that maybe are not someone you would like to hang out with, but you can learn from them in a light and interesting way. There is a Vietnamese guy who makes sculptures in clay. There are Chinese potters and carpenters that show really brilliant pieces. There are lawyers, statisticians, biologists. They are all really interesting - to me - and without TikTok I wouldn't be able to know about their existence. There is crap there too, but I can just skip the dancing teens and I soon get to the content I like. It works well for me.
No matter how terrible it may sound, I really feel my life has been enriched.
Lol this article is a bunch of woo.