Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 434 posts

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#101

Post by rvz »

kpennell wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't…

> Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.

On to the next 'hit' then.

The addictiveness of the drug 'Instagram™' has now worn off and has no effect on many long time 'users' of the drug since first introduced in the 2010s. A new 'digital crack cocaine' with a new innovative algorithmic black-box formula has been on the streets called 'TikTok™' amassing over 1B 'users' designed to glue you to your screen as much as possible.

There will be a time where this drug will wear off for another generation and they will find the next addictive hit to scramble and hype over just like they did with Facebook™, and Instagram™.

The only way to really win is to not play the game and to not become a regular 'user', which is what they call people addicted to a particular drug. Interesting that nothing there has changed since the CEOs, VPs, VCs and product managers know that their products are compared to addictive drugs.

Rinse and repeat I guess. But we'll see in a decades time on what the next 'hit' will be.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#102

Post by julianlam »

ogwh wrote: post #45
htrp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder what Bytedance is doing differently compared with other social recommendation tools (aka why does no one rave about Twitter's suggested follows). My sneaking suspicion is product management designed a product that is literally perfect for a recommendation engine.

Other platforms only look for similar content to what you've already seen. They don't take novelty into account. If you like one picture of a dog on Instagram it'll just show you more dogs and you get bored. Watch a few YouTube videos about one topic and the algorithm gets fixated on it. YouTube is so bad now that if you use it to listen to music the autoplay gets into an infinite loop of songs that sound near identi…

Huh... I guess I never really noticed, but you're right. I used to listen to entire genres on YouTube and let the recommendation engine pick the next video. I discovered some cool songs that way.

Now, maybe I'll type in a song title, listen to the song, and the next video is a live performance of the same song... Followed by a lyric video of the same song.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#103

Post by madeofpalk »

kpennell wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't…

I understand (and mostly agree) with what you're saying, but as someone who watches lots of tiktok each night, there definitely still a(n un)healhty amount of pretending-to-be-authentic-but-actually-isnt content on the app. Or at least on my FYP.

Tiktok definitely does have its own aesthetic and style, with different people leaning into (or out of) it to varying degrees.

I will say - I've never seen a social network that's as queer as my tiktok experience is. It's great. I wish I had this when I was younger.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#104

Post by ALittleLight »

productceo wrote: post #44

I am having difficulty finding TikTok's addictiveness. My job depends on understanding consumer apps, so in the past 1.5 years, I've been trying TikTok anew every 3 months, each day at least trying to spend 10 minutes on it no matter how uninteresting I find the content to be, but end up giving up after 3 to 7 days each time I try. I swipe quickly past uninteresting content, stay on mildly interesting ones, and make…

I think of Tik Tok as being like Pringles - as in, once you pop, you can't stop. Something about being able to easily flip to the next thing, combined with TikTok's excellent recommendation engine, makes for a very addictive experience - for me, at least.

If you're not enjoying it, despite using the product as intended, then I'd just guess you and it aren't a good fit. That doesn't seem to be any huge mystery - all products and services have fans and people who aren't interested.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#105

Post by 0F »

I tried tiktok for a few months last year. It was refreshing and engaging in a way that nothing else is. The vitality and originality of tiktok really reminds me of Reddit in 2010 or 4chan in 2007. When a ton of dynamic younger people pile their energy into something, it gives that thing a special energy and power that cannot be created artificially.

It’s leading edge in the way it consolidates what came before. All the little optimizations to our memes and videos, all the quirks of online etiquette that have been born in the last 10 years were built into the culture of tiktok from its inception. The result is content that is more frictionless than ever before. Even after tiktok, this is here to stay.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#106

Post by [deleted] »

kpennell wrote: post #4

I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#107

Post by akomtu »

I dare to guess that TikTok's secret is their objective: they want to know what's on your mind and they want to foresee your thoughts and actions. The end goal, I believe, is a database of comprehensive personality profiles on the american youth, so by the time they become adults, CCP will have profiles on them. Those profiles will be so accurate that TikTok will know you better than you know yourself. TikTok's doesn't care about profits, so greed doesn't constrain them. Our big tech, on the other hand, is blinded by greed and by desire to "school" us into thinking the aporoved thoughts. In other words, FB and the like, don't want to understand us - they want to "fix" us, and sell ads in the meantime.

Re: TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

#110

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

I had this realization the other day that I felt connected to someone through TikTok. Like I got a real view into their life. It was a woman homeless and traveling with a group of people. And she was scraggly, tattooed, no money, but absolutely in love with life. And its funny, because I have walked by people like her many times, but her TikToks are just about life on the road, the people she has met, and the experience of it all. And it made me so happy that I could just see her life from her perspective.
Post reply on HN