Can someone explain the public fascination/obsession with TikTok to me?
From The New York Times:
The D'Amelios Are Coming for All of Your Screens
TikTok's most famous family wants to reintroduce itself on TV. Whatever that means now.
..."We just want you to take a look into our lives and take what you want from it."
"I've heard that people like to come to our pages for a little bit of an escape," Charli said dryly.
And should that escape feels like a trap, the most popular girl on TikTok offers the simplest of solutions. "I feel like it's very important to take some time off whenever you feel like you need it," she said. "You don't even tell yourself, 'Time to take a break.' You kind of just let it go." She waggled her fingers again, as if sprinkling magic dust. "Drop your phone for a little bit."
nyt
From The New York Times:
The D'Amelios Are Coming for All of Your Screens
TikTok's most famous family wants to reintroduce itself on TV. Whatever that means now.
..."We just want you to take a look into our lives and take what you want from it."
"I've heard that people like to come to our pages for a little bit of an escape," Charli said dryly.
And should that escape feels like a trap, the most popular girl on TikTok offers the simplest of solutions. "I feel like it's very important to take some time off whenever you feel like you need it," she said. "You don't even tell yourself, 'Time to take a break.' You kind of just let it go." She waggled her fingers again, as if sprinkling magic dust. "Drop your phone for a little bit."
nyt
I'd like to think that Tiktok gives us a chance to progress beyond the screens of social media while holding onto the positive sides.
ReplyDeleteYou get to communicate with people around the world, see a few instances of their lives, but most importantly, you get a chance to see that you're not alone. Tiktok's algorithms allow people to interact with other like-minded people and, especially during this pandemic, allow you to see you're not alone in your quirks.
It is because of this that people can be on that app for hours and not realize it.
Hmmm...
DeleteI wonder, though, why a family like that featured in the article are so eager for us to "take a look into our lives"... Am I wrong to think that social media has turned a lot of us into exhibitionists who lack a sense of decorous privacy?
I know I'm old-school, but I've always gained a sense of not being alone by reading. The less I read, correlative to time spent grabbing increasingly short takes on the internet, the more detached from my own and others' humanity I feel.
Maybe that's just generational and I'm just an old fogey. But I'm not taking the Parnassus sticker off my bumper--the one that says "Save the Book!"
I'd call this a case of Kardashian-itus. People live and breathe the "reality tv life". Sure, the D'Amelios give up the small semblance of privacy they had left, but they've secured their bank account.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't have the don't have the TikTok app, I have seen some videos on friends phones before. Just shooting the _____ here but, my guess on one of the reasons it has become so popular is not particularly a happy one.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite interesting to me that, depending on your environment and cultural circles, many people today now have the option to exist in two identities that exist simultaneously. Let's call them the "internet persona" and the "personal persona".
I think there's a lot to be discussed about these two but regarding TikTok; I think the one of the incentives for one to exist today in both of these identities can come from dealing with the overwhelming feeling of loneliness that has came about as a side effect of certain social medias and how they've became popularly used of individuals.
Obviously, loneliness is not new. But FOMO just might be...
To try to keep this as short as possible, it seems only sensible to me to entertain the possibility that scrolling through page after page of a glorified highlight reel made up of pictures and videos from people you know (and some you don't) living their "best lives" cannot be particular positive in its effect on self-esteem and self worth (this doesn't apply to everyone of course).
Assuming this is true, surely the most straightforward way to combat this is to, well, join the party. Surely participating in the community you admire will give you the same satisfaction you think the current members are already getting. Right?
Also, getting famous overnight for making a 15 second video of yourself dancing, what's not to love there?
Well, I guess...everything if you have two left feet. Hmmm.
Yeah I second this, dopamine hits are like comfort food in the sense that they're far more addicting to turn to in sadness. Speaking from personal experience, my Chick-fil-A consumption AND Reddit consumption both plummeted when I got my soul back.
Delete**sadness, but especially social and communal deficits
DeleteComing from an advertising major, I feel like Tik Tok is a social media phenomena. The algorithm for Tik Tok is quiet literally unmatched. The level to which it is able to piece-by-piece build a perfect puzzle of who you are, what you like, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry, etc., is absolutely insane. I've neve seen any social media be able to hit their target markets/audiences with such precision. I think that is the biggest playing factor in the obsession aspect, because very rarely are you ever scrolling past something on your Tik Tok for you page that you don't like or you don't think is funny. The more accurate read they have on you, the longer you will sit and scroll.
ReplyDeleteI'd just point out that the philosophical meaning of "phenomenon" is APPEARANCE... in contrast to REALITY. TikTok's success in getting us to "sit and scroll" is not unlike the shadows' success (in Plato's Allegory of the Cave) in getting us to sit and stare dumbly at unrealities. And then we die.
Delete