Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: This is written by a non-user purely about observations made about TikToks that were posted elsewhere. It is also not a statement of any kind of china issues with TikTok.

What I see is amazing. Sea Shanties that were mainly for seamen and some German metalheads became popular again, suddenly everyone knew Wellerman, there were tons of covers, everything.

Remixes, something that YouTube long ago forgot about (probably copyright laws, those tend to stifle creativity) are commonplace, people build on releases of others over and over again, creating a completely new and amazing endresult.

What I see from TikTok, is a return to the creativity of years ago.

edit: Because people thought of established artists when I mentioned remixes, I’ll clarify. I mean taking some person singing or playing an instrument, adding yourself playing guitar, putting it to the side of the original and releasing it. Then the next person adds a violin. And so on. Just non-commercial remix culture.

It can be both a playground for expression and a tool for attention hijacking. Those are not at odds. Indeed, in the history of "Rock'n'Roll" it's an old pattern.

It's amazing that this great stuff is out on TikTok. Creative diversity and self-determination for artists is something I value enormously. Yet TikTok remains a vector for addictive, manipulative and vacuous content and is an application designed for spying and data harvesting.

A more interesting question is; How did this happen? We (our western media industry) created TikTok - by suffocating authentic art for decades with Svengalis running amok in an over-managed, tightly curated winner-takes-all pageant for primadonnas.

It started with the assault on peer-to-peer, and the copyright lobby are absolutely to blame. In that sense TikTok is just the latest round of cassette swapping and "illegal" rave parties. It's the latest thing the culture police can't control and want to crack down on. If we hadn't been overbearing "parents" our kids wouldn't have an appetite for this stuff.

BUT - The powers behind TikTok are clever. By simply giving kids what they want (easy connection, expression, and novelty) - things we've failed to give them - elements outside our culture are able to leverage subtle control.

But a time will come when the fist closes. While TikTok is a product of the mediocrity of our own offerings and is simply exploiting a gapm it's larger aims remain dubious.

Very well written, and something I mostly* agree to

*: "Mostly" only, because partially I lack the knowledge to agree or disagree.

> is a return to the creativity of years ago

What year was that exactly?

I hear a lot of remixes of the same songs, and a lot of the same intro meme music (shanties or otherwise). I don't hear much from any artist's deeper discrography. Your average clearchannel FM radio station has 10x the variety as you'll hear in any given tiktok stream, easy, and those are already playlists that are outrighted determined by record companies.

I don’t mean any established artists. I meant remixing stuff from other, private people that posted to tiktok. Those videos where you add your video to ther side of the existing ones.

>remixes, something that YouTube long ago forgot about

you have to be joking.. Everytime I see a song I like I search for it, can often find all the remixes official / unofficial, extended mix, and instrumental (official or amateurs using cross filtering techniques.)

Also Sea Shanties are on youtube as well, maybe moreso, and easier to find and save to a playlist..

I hate the new youtube UX decisions and limitations but it still blows tiktok completely out of the water(spotify too(spotify is for normies))

> Also Sea Shanties are on youtube as well, maybe moreso, and easier to find and save to a playlist..

The new popularity of them started on TikTok. Of course it spreads afterwards, otherwise I wouldn’t even encounter them ;)

And with remixes, I’ll edit my comment, I don’t mean remixes of some chart artist.

> What I see from TikTok, is a return to the creativity of years ago.

And since Tiktok is barely moderated, we also see a return of the "creative" bullshit. Tide Pods, filing down one's teeth, dancing on graves, licking random public stuff to catch COVID intentionally, the "Skull breaker" challenge...

Tiktok is cancer, and additionally it's spyware of an enemy government. It should be banned.

>Tide Pods, filing down one's teeth, dancing on graves, licking random public stuff to catch COVID intentionally, the "Skull breaker" challenge...

I've used it extensively, same with girlfriend and acquaintances and whilst that's perhaps just the result of it's really good content personalisation algorithm i have seen these things not once despite seeing plenty of articles.

I suspect these are the type of things that whilst probably a thing somewhere (as on other platforms) are much much bigger in shock media and peoples minds.

>Tiktok is cancer, and additionally it's spyware of an enemy government.

They're a pretty open book to US law enforcement and 3 letter agents. If I ever get spied on by a foreign gov I kind of expect it to be more from that end. Also somehow youtube tries to pull me in with suggestions/notifications for shorts that are very obviously based on what i watched on tiktok.

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