All social medias multi-user blogs are. It's a behavioral thing. If a specific behavior always guaranties results, then it makes sense to only do it when you need results. But if that behavior only sometimes yields results, then the brain kicks in and goes, "Oh, I should do this frequently, so that I already have [results] if and when I need them." This is good tactics, evolutionary. The brain that persist and has [results] should generally be better suited for survival than the brain that gives up and has no [results]. On an individual level though...
...it's only good tactics situationally. When the behavior is [LOGGING ON] and the results are [GOOD POSTS], then it's more of a vicious trap than good tactics. Especially when your time almost certainly could be better spent doing anything other than sifting through posts. This doesn't just apply to websites. Gambling exploits this behavioral tendency as well. Most video games employ it, intentionally or unintentionally, to varying degrees.
much like a slot machine, it is a device designed to totally monopolize your attention for long stretches of time with randomized releases of dopamine rewards based on some minimal mechanical input from the user (the buttons in slots, scrolling in tiktok's case) for the purpose of monetizing you. it is weaponized psychology.
engaging arrangements of pixels and audio are beamed to your eyes and ears, ceaselessly. You make a simple swipe motion to get fresh slop. It certainly resembles a skinner box, whether or not those specific kinds of conditioning are literally happening. (and yes, other social media also functions like this, but far less refined, with more pretext of actually facilitating human interaction)
I don't hate it but I think the extreme short format combined with aggressive algorithm baiting leads to the most boring, brainless content imaginable. I've seen some fantastic content on Tiktok too - but I'm not sifting through the rubble looking for it.
Official reason: Because it's nonfree software that connects to an unfederared server. It also is a user-generated content factory with no goal but to grow. It's also really unmoderated if we are talking outside of Douyin (China's server).
Their webpage is pretty easy to navigate on desktop. That's based on, maybe, six whole minutes of browsing. Like all social mediablogs, the best way to interact with it is to let someone else sift through and find the gems.
Also, China has better captchas, but i don't get to poison some tech dork's data pool with malicious answers.
I prefer long-form video content. Also y'know the whole thing where the algorithm is optimized to exploit every vulnerability in the human psyche to keep people glued to their screens is a bit sus.
bc people typing like this make me feel older than i actually am. i dislike the self-censorship of terms such as killing, fuck, etc, and I don't mean that in a chuddy anti-censorship way it just comes off as insincere when people say shit like unalive or whatever. to actually unpack why i hate it when people type like shown in the screenshot - nothing of substance is actually being said, it's just a bunch of canned phrases being used in their context. i understand this isn't representative of tiktok as a whole but it sure as hell is what i associate with tiktok.
Those comments are meant to be stupidly funny for teenagers not have substance lol (tho theyre pretty clever sometimes imo). If you get it you get it (and are also probably terminally online)
The self-censorship is bc tiktok has a history of shadowbanning content that uses certain words
It's weird were treating certain words like voldemorts name but even weirder we all just agree on a really stupid sounding alternative that everybody knows means the exact same thing.
It's like it isn't the concept of suicide that people might not like, it's just the literal word itself apparently.
And now how long until you need another word because unalive just means suicide.
I know this is dangerously close to chuds arguments on why slurs aren't a biflg deal cus it just keeps getting changed but at least those are over a longer time frame and actually have the intention of changing the meaning and context of a term.
It's like it isn't the concept of suicide that people might not like, it's just the literal word itself apparently.
People don't beat around saying "suicide" because they're not trying to trigger anyone? It's a way of getting around censorship. Tiktok has history with hiding videos that talk about serious mental health issues from the algorithm (they even shadowbanned the word "depression" so people were using "d3pr3ssion" or some shit)
Sometimes people even self-censor while being intentionally triggering, for example they know if they said "kys" their comment would get filtered, so you might see people saying "unalive yourself" or "keep yourself safe"
the app is a fucking nightmare straight out of black mirror. there is something about people surrendering to an algorithm-generated never-ending barrage of "content" beamed right into their cabeza that makes my fucking skin crawl. whathavetheydonetous
I'm terrified of what it would do to me if i ever create an account/download it. I already struggle with being sorta addicted to content on youtube and IG, don't need another timesink.
Also, i'm hopelessly boomer, in the sense that I really prefer long-form content than extremely short-form ways of presenting it.
That being said, i don't think i hate it. It's just not my vibe.
Yeah I've had it since I was 15, my brain is fucked 😭
I genuinely think the content is really good once you curate your fyp, but it's the biggest trap if you have an addictive personality. I'm trying to repair my attention span by watching movies and shows more instead, but it's difficult to not mindlessly scroll. Kinda been using it as a distraction from my problems lately and it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy thing where I just feel stuck
I agree with what everyone's saying here. I don't think I qualify as old. I was a teenager when it first blew up. It's designed to be addictive, extremely short form content has produced an absolute gutter of content. The success of it's brain-mining operation is now being mimicked by every other form of entertainment on the planet. Everything's got 15 cuts per second, 50 things flying around on screen at once, and so on. It feels like tiktok woke companies up to the fact that you don't need good content, you just need hyperstimulation.
As well as all of that, I think tiktok tracks with the rise of onlyfans. In itself, the whole debate of self-prostitution is difficult. I understand that onlyfans is a preferable alternative to every other form of pornography production. However, the way it's advertised on tiktok to kids doesn't sit right with me, especially when it's wrapped up as part of the brain goo. As in, you get the visual hyperstimulation of colours and noises, but you also get stimulation that appeals to a sexual desire which is so innate to being human. It gives you those brain chemicals to keep you on the app. Then these onlyfans models get a huge following of teenagers, and as a result you see a worsening of the already bad porn addiction situation that came about with the ease of access the internet provides. I'm not blaming the onlyfans models for it - it's a symptom of a much larger problem of capitalism induced isolation and commodification of our very minds.
Not quite. Tiktok is older than you think. When I was 17, OG Fortnite was around. Over the pandemic it was Among Us days. None of my friends know skibidi lore. I was a DasBoSchitt productions kid when I was 9 - the true GMOD animation series - The Idiot Box.
I don't have one but the amount of times I've heard people saying straight up bullshit while my gf watches them or my gf tells me something that doesn't sound right, I ask her where she heard it and she says ticktok and then I check and it is in fact bulkshit is also bad.
That and not being able to choose what to watch having it selected for you and randomly put in front of you is weird.
I like it specifically for the sound at the end of videos, zero other reason.
It is the most precisely crafted, most horrifying sound in existence. There is nothing which could ever precede it that could be powerful enough not to be flattened by it into 'content' and subsumed utterly into a morass of (post-)Nirony. The moment that sound plays, it smooths over anything: jokes, thirst traps, fascist propaganda, activewear ads, speeches that defined eras or concentration camp footage; it simply does not matter any longer and becomes nothing more than the last thing you watched, as your mind is reset to its receptive state to receive the next stimulus. It is the essence of 'scrolling' distilled so perfectly that even the vestigial act of scrolling is stripped away.
It is the sound of the human mind as it performs reification at the level of pure aesthetic, the thing than fills the screaming void where an Eldritch horror has not been perceived.
reading someone pretend to have deeply reflected on this cultural phenomena to present it as existential horror on the level of cthulu, while predicating it on something that proves they actually only know about it through reposts on their esoteric reddit clone and in fact have not once actually used the thing they're morally panicking about, is indeed profoundly funny.
open the app. some stupid person lies to me. next video. a cute animal with a stupid person explaining what the animal is doing. next video. a stupid person lies to me while a bad song plays. next video. a stupid fascist explains why i should die. next video. a stupid person pointing at another video. next video. a child. next video. a stupid person explains something they taught us in elementary school. next video. a stupid person accosts strangers with an inane question. close the app.
It is actually cool and good people just need to chill. Everyone acts like it is a fall from grace but the grace we had before this was zoning out watching TV. That was worse in multiple significant ways. I just watched two tiktoks about comunist theory, engineering theory, a cool activity, and then a person of type I like introducing new techniques I might try. In that time I could have watched one segment of the scripted TV show friends. I know which had been a better use of my time.
i don't like things where i am pressured to download and install an app instead of using a browser window. i'm old. my sister is even older than me. she loves the tiktok. all the time with the tiktok. this is not an age thing. i didn't really see the upfront appeal as i've been trying to be more intentional about my social media use. and my media use in general. i don't like "auto-play" features on streamers. i will look up the thing i want to watch and play it. unless i have created a playlist, i don't want something else to happen when it's done. i don't want some algo to just begin flashing the lights and making noise. it's way too much like old broadcast tv and channel surfing where people used to just tap the button until something on the screen was intriguing enough to slow down the tapping. the tiktok experience is not really that novel for media consumption, except now everyone has their own little screen/remote and the remote promises to learn from their channel surfing habits and show them only the good channels.
back to social media, i want to use social media to point me in the direction of new things to research and i want to be subjected to less advertising or the gamified avoidance of advertising
"stop thinking [ARBY'S MEATS--] and tap here to continue your train of thought..."
"what was i talking about... oh right..."
but she kept sending me the links and finally one of the content creators was really amusing. the web interface is such a disaster i downloaded the app so i could follow that one person and look at all their content. after going through their back catalog and checking what i could about where else to find their content, i would check it once a day to see if they had anything new. of course, that entire process is constantly being interrupted by tiktok trying to show me some other b.s. i didn't ask for. this lasted for maybe a month before i realized none of this was worth it to me. i was spending a minute or more every day following an unpleasant process experience just to look and see if there was a funny new 30 second video.
then i also admitted to myself that the "funny" tiktok links people would send me pretty much blow 90% of the time. it's very clear that they sat and scrolled through so much literal garbage that the very first "not garbage" clip that came up amused them and tricked them into thinking it was good.
anyway, it's just not the sort of thing i am trying to use my phone for. the format doesn't align with what i'm after.
I like it because it's the leftest of the major social media platforms by far. I started making short videos on youtube and my friend told me to cross-post them all on tiktok just for the hell of it, and only the tiktok ever really took off. I can't seem to get youtube to reliably get my videos in front of people who want to see them, but it's pretty easy to do so on tiktok.
Like on tiktok I'll get 20k, 100k, or even a million views and the comments are like trans zoomers saying lmao and go off,
Same video on youtube and it gets 10, 100, 1000 views and 2 comments, one comment is trying to argue with the video and the other is like "asdfgjgkj"
Yeah, Tiktok is one of the reasons I wish I was born later. I was a bit of a creative and the technology is even better and more accessible these days. Now I'm older and maybe have the time to upload a song once a month onto Youtube.
I just don't like video content. I get annoyed when I click a link here and it takes me to YouTube. I just want articles and other text based slop because I am old.
I don’t hate it. I just don’t find it useful. I do hate how every trendy thing happens on there so when my coworkers ask me if I’ve seen some video I say no and they awkwardly walk away
I actually like tiktok. The only real problem I have with it is that I don't get to choose what content I consume, the feed is chosen for you, some other social media sites, while they do have recommendations and algorithms you can still pick and choose what you watch or read or look at. There is no thumbnail or preview image on tiktok, it just starts playing.
without the data harvesting nightmare, i would almost argue that TikToks culture-ish improved a bit, but even then i don't really feel the need to use it
I don't hate it, it's fine but I don't really use it, except if somebody sends me a link. I just went and scrolled a bit after seeing this thread, it's fine but also seems like it's already worse than the last time I did that since it was mostly showing me boring stuff I don't care about
I don't hate it, video isn't my vibe. I didn't use Snapchat, or Shorts, or other similar features on social media.
I prefer text like Hexbear/Lemmy/Fediverse, The Website Formally Known As Twitter, Discord/Slack, and the like. In previous lives I used , Digg, Tumblr, AIM/ICQ/MSN, old-ass phpBB forums, etc. In fact, you can usually chart my participation through an inverse of how much it privileges multimedia.
People who remember what they were doing during 9/11 hate Tiktok, people who don’t remember what they were doing during 9/11 (or those who weren’t even born yet) all seem to love it.
It was 9/11’s fault. It was Osama’s fault. It was Bush’s fault.
The idea that you should intentionally be gimping yourself to a certain amount of seconds/text just seems fucking stupid. Forums are the superior way to post.
I dont hate it. Make content on there and get paid pretty decently. I am concerned with how it's going to make a population with an already short attention span even worse.
I think it's fine in general, just annoying for me to use.
Every time I try to use it, I end up staring in befuddlement at something I hate, whIch only pushes more of it to my fyp. Last time it became 90% disgusting recipes that were mostly cheese.
I'm kind of jealous of people who can use it and not have their algo become trash. There's obviously good content there.
I don't, though no real love for it either. I have a couple friends who are painfully addicted to it
I watch them when my friends send me them, but never installed the app or made an account. recently I watch them through proxitok because I like that kind of bullshit and being able to easily download the video if its good
I think their reporting system is dogshit and they basically do almost fucking nothing about reactionary content on the platform including outright nazi content.