Yep, Peter Drucker wrote about this all the way back in 1964.

> The competition is therefore all the other activities that compete for the rapidly growing “discretionary time” of a population

His examples were bowling ball manufacturers competing with lawn care companies, but the idea is the same, go up an abstraction layer, and the competition is for time.

This is a restating of an older idea that fancy restaurants aren't competing against other restaurants, they are competing against movie theatres. Because they are in the date entertainment market

It's not really that weird.

People who uses dating apps are on a very specific mission (to get laid, a.k.a "to meet more interesting people"). They'll optimize their profile to specifically archive that goal.

TikTok accepts wider range of interest-based (instead of goal-based) contents, and have much wider demographic spread. On that platform, you show more aspect of you and your life to your viewers, and that creates a degree of trust and maybe even empathy, both are beneficial in creating a closer relationship.

And it's not just on TikTok, I first noticed the effect in online games. For example, people who act kindly often get a lot of friends, etc.