This form of content is bad regardless of platform.
There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century.
This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby.
The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
Exactlym that's the feeling I get with it.
I noticed a lot of "creators" are constantly repeating the same skit over and over and over too. With different backgrounds etc. Clearly a way to try and get noticed by the algorithm. But also a great way to get them blocked by me of course.
Out of curiosity, I asked my wife about this trend specifically, and while she was familiar with the joke, she has yet to see any instance of it on her page. I have to wonder if people who are experiencing stuff like this are mostly just getting stuck in a bubble and not pushing through to other content. There's an argument that learning how to interact with the app to make the algorithm work for you isn't a great experience, but there's a large volume of people who use and enjoy the app without complaining about this issue. I'm not particularly convinced that all of these people have gone numb to brainrot to the point that they enjoy seeing the same joke 20 times in a row compared to them just having a better experience from seeing a wider variety of content.
> complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution
This feels like a reflection of what the person feels posting on the internet signifies. Are you publishing something, and thus you should attribute sources etc, or are you just having a conversation?
You would never attribute sources when making a joke in real life. I guess you could but it would be a pretty dorky thing to do.
congratulations on discovering mimesis
Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.
The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters.
(And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.)
Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions?
Even if you have a 3-minute video that yammers off back-to-back facts to maximize info density, it's still low value because you've only spent 3 minutes with those facts.
There's nothing a 3-minute video can do to compete with a good video 2-3 hour video due to the limitations of the medium.
I would wager a 2-3 hour video of something you find worthless, like celebrity gossip, is preferable to the same thing in TikTok form because at least the longer video challenged you with following a narrative of some length.
When you fill your time with TikTok videos, you're basically regressing to the mental activation normally relegated to babies and toddlers. I think it's fair to demand a little more aspiration of ourselves.
this level of reductive thought termination goes nowhere
But no one will say why
It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles.
There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system.
If I'm on the toilet not having a fun time, pardon me for wanting to see some cat videos instead of solving a Rubik's Cube, I guess?
But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom.
But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice.
But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back.
Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me.
This is a great writeup on why short-form content is overall a net negative for us with a human brain.