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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Yes, if anything, TikTok is more dominant among people under 25, who don't seem to care about Twitter or Facebook at all.

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Its probably just the algorithm but in my experience people over 30 love TikTok. COVID killed the idea that TikTok was only a young person's app.

Of the content creators I watch the women seems to talk a lot about Tiktok memes but none of the men has even mentioned anything from Tiktok. So I think 30+ male nerds basically don't use Tiktok, but women do.

> So I think 30+ male nerds basically don't use Tiktok

Your FYP must be very different than my mine. My FYP is filled with 30+ male nerds, many of whom have entire rooms dedicated to TMNT toys.

You don't get a good picture of how many in a group uses tiktok by looking at tiktok but looking at them in other places and seeing how many of them there uses tiktok. You can find nerds at instagram as well but that doesn't mean nerds in general are into instagram.

Maybe however you must remember there are magnitudes more people consuming content (lurkers) then are creating content on social media sites like TikTok, Reddit, etc. For example someone like cryptoknight [1] has over 38,000 followers and a million likes, majority of which are probably not women under the age of 25 and aren't nerdy.

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@cryptoknightus

38k followers is a really small creator. That doesn't really convince me there are lots of Nerds at tiktok, there are tons of nerdy channels at youtube with millions of subscribers.

> there are tons of nerdy channels at youtube with millions of subscribers.

which one of those aren't on TikTok?

Looked up some, yeah some of them also uploads to tiktok apparently but get more than 10x more views on youtube than tiktok.

Shadiversity for example produces content that you would think fits tiktok, but he gets an order of magnitude more views and subscribers on youtube than tiktok. Same goes for the other channels I checked. It makes sense for them to upload on tiktok as well since it is cheap to hire an editor for it, but I don't see them focusing on tiktok since the market for tiktok nerd videos seems to be much smaller.

If you look at channels that are a bit smaller, like half a million subscribers, they don't seem to even bother with tiktok, don't think it is worth it then to even have an editor fix it for that format.

So to me this looks a lot like "nerds aren't on tiktok", sure some big channels also uploads there but it doesn't look like they consume tiktok content.

I'm not arguing that there are more nerd creators on TikTok than youtube or which platform they get more views on. I am just saying that they exist and are a significant portion of the TikTok user base. So much so my FYP is filled with such creators.

If someone like marcus hutchins can get a half million followers or cryptoknight can get a million likes, there must be a significant number of consumers for their content.

You are now arguing semantics, the topic is whether 30+ nerds migrated to tiktok, we can from this discussion say that they overwhelmingly stayed on youtube unlike the other demographics discussed. A group having an order of magnitude less representation on one platform is "basically doesn't use" to me, it is hard to find more skewed population choice data than that.

The gender skew on steam is larger, but not much larger, and that is enough that you basically don't want to release on steam with a game made for women, instead you target mobile or similar because your target demographic basically isn't found at steam.

> the topic is whether 30+ nerds migrated to TikTok, we can from this discussion say that they overwhelmingly stayed on YouTube unlike the other demographics discussed.

That maybe what you're discussing but I made no such claim. The two examples I used aren't even youtubers. Cryptoknight only post on TikTok and Marcus only has 88k subs on YouTube compared to his almost half million on TikTok. Professional YouTubers will never migrate from YouTube to TikTok, its impossible to make a living with TikTok's creator fund.

What are FYP and TMNT?

FYP = TikTok's For You Page

TMNT = Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Each generation has its own social network

I refuse to use any social media like Tiktok, Insta, FB as I know how bad it is for my brain. The younger generation doesn't seem to get this yet. I'll stick to my highly curated X whereby I know I will learn something new when I open it.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are all fine but I've never felt any desire to explore them. For me, TikTok has been genuinely delightful and interesting to scroll through. I don't think the TikTok algorithm can quite keep up with my diverse interests (absurdist humor, dance, memes, antique machinery, home improvement, wind turbine and power transmission, cats, etc.), but it has still done a great job of showing me interesting, educational, and emotional (e.g. https://www.tiktok.com/@pinupandpigeons/video/71582333179874...) things. It definitely displays too many "Live" and "Shop" videos in my feed for my liking, but it also has the most prominent anti-influencer and anti-consumer content I've seen on social networks. TikTok has really changed my thinking about the youngest generation. Before I probably saw the youngest generation as spoiled brats who are ruining everything. Now I see there there plenty of interesting, creative, dedicated, and hard working young people who are probably the best hope for saving things from the spoiled geriatric ruling class that is too immature and selfish to not hoard and consume everything they can, future generations be damned.

I have found X/Twitter to be way more insular and less educational than TikTok, personally. TikTok has a lot of dumb trendy stuff, but also some really interesting niche channels.

I don't even use TikTok and I know this is a ridiculously naive take.

TikTok is where all of the content is. Its algorithm is designed to optimize for exactly what you want to see. That's why they're the biggest.

If you're into 3D zbrush art, that's what you're getting. If you like hardware hacking, HDR birdwatching, stem cell culturing, and Blender node exploring, guess what? You're getting that content.

Do you want to learn everything there is to know about kettlebells? You're in luck.

All of the creators, many of the best, are on there putting great stuff out all day.

You're sleeping at the wheel if you think everyone is equally logging in and just doomscrolling through dance videos.

the service inherently isn't bad, it's the lack of moderation that's bad, and that responsibility falls to the parents to moderate.

If you can't moderate yourself then it's good you're not on those platforms, I have them and only use them when I poop.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm

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