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Comment by jmkd | Hacker News Reader

This is a fantastic article that makes a sterling attempt to get to the bottom of why TikTok feels different to other platforms.

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.

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There's a difference between "not getting" something and deliberately avoiding it because of huge negative effects

This comment thread is so disappointing. The goal of the post wasn't to convince people to use TikTok. It was to try to explain it as a product and why it works so well.

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.

There's little difference between this comment and what people said about every single media advance of the 20th century.

Yeah, and most of those media advances, when consumed for as many hours per day as tik tok is, will have a huge negative impact on a person.

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

I don't know. I have listened to a lot of unholy radio, watched a lot of trash TV, played enormous amounts of the devil's rock and roll music and consume unfathomable hours of social media and in summary I feel I'm a better, more educated person as a result.

Isn’t this just ‘don’t knock heroin if you haven’t tried it’?

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