The fact that you may not have experienced it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist :) There is actually a lot of socializing on TikTok, for example in the "BookTok" community. The format is a little different than on a message board, or IG, but it is there.
Perhaps at risk of reading too far into it, but it seems the implication is that while Tiktok is called "social media", it seems to be the exception that socialising occurs. World of Warcraft, and many similar games of that era would often be canned as anti-social, but fundamentally facilitated the pursuit of common goals and deep bonds for those otherwise isolated or barred from such engagement in other avenues.
Yep. WoW was problematic because the mainstream had already decided that the participants were problematic, not because of any careful analysis of the game's merits. TikTok is okay because the mainstream participates, not because of a careful analysis of the platform's merits.
MMOs are people being together, alone
Social media is people being alone, together
Either way, you're doing socializing wrong. the only acceptable way of socializing is how our parents did it. In person, with lots of alcohol, and the only qualifier was physical proximity.
i was meeting with my MUD playing friends almost weekly for dinner and drinks, and the wizards met to plan work on the game. every holiday weekend we travelled to other cities to meet player friends there. i didn't drink any alcohol though. i fondly remember when a guy fell asleep during such a meeting someone attached a note to his back saying "idle", like inactive players were marked in the game.
Netflix is curated and not user created, so I’d say TikTok is more like YouTube. Then of course everyone copied the format including YouTube, IG, X, and even LinkedIn (saw this one just today). But even with that slight naming difference, I couldn’t agree more with you that MMOs are rich cultural hubs compared to endless short videos. It’s a low bar :)
Even Spotify. Just saw their short audio clips feed of interesting sections of songs, tracks.