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TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack

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

#171

Post by throwaway4good »

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…

They have good editors that know their audience.

Sure some what you see is supported by "algorithms"; but what you sense ("playful, authentic, and raw" ) is the result of a deliberate editorial policy done by a group of actual humans.

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

#172

Post by somedude895 »

kristopolous wrote: post #23

I've tried it a few times. Even ran an account for a project I do. I don't know. Maybe I'm not the right personality for this stuff but I found it annoying and taxing. Open it up and you get these obnoxious videos and then have to press a button to make them go away. The user-base and interaction is worthless and toxic. Lots of people love it so maybe I'm just too old. Perhaps they've "cracked some psychological secr…

> I found it annoying and taxing.

You've managed to find the word I've been looking for to describe why I don't like TikTok. It feels taxing. It makes my head spin and after a couple minutes I feel exhausted. Maybe my brain's just too slow and sensitive.

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

#173

Post by Gatsky »

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…

One explanation for the difference between tiktok and instagram could be that tiktok doesn’t have a crystallized business model yet and is just focusing on growing its network as much as possible. Presumably it will end up as bad as every other (profitable) social network over time (apart from twitter, which is more like an internet utility).

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

#174

Post by realYitzi »

I think the truth is pretty dark. Until TikTok most recommendation engines placed the most weight on your declared preferences.

TikTok doesn't seem to care about what you "say" you like." They watch your behavior to see what you actually like.

So you can "want" to be shown math videos and like tons of math videos and follow dozens of professors. But if TikTok observes that you are more likely to watch a professional wrestling video to the end, then that is what you'll be shown.

What you want to watch and what you actually "feel" like watching are not the same thing. Other engines show you what you want to watch but don't feel like watching, TikTok shows you what you feel like watching but not what you want to watch.

This same philosophy is observable when you try to exit the app. If you are on the screen the app opens to, the expected behavior of the back button is to exit the app.

TikTok however, doesn't care that you "want" to leave.

They know that it's important for you to leave so now is the time to show the video that they know you will find most irresistible. So when you try to leave they give you the "ultimate" video which you have been conditioned to expect to be "perfect".

In order to leave, you must fight this conditioning and reaffirm your desire to leave within a tiny span of time (feels like less than a second). If you miss the window and try to exit again, TikTok tries to hack your brain again by changing the video for the next video it thinks you'll stay for, and so on...

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

#175

Post by Sebguer »

dehrmann wrote: post #96
Sebguer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even to mention, in what world is TikTok "a weird Chinese app". It's just an improved and iterated upon version of Vine.

I wonder if there's a way Vine could have iterated and TikTok never caught on in the US. Was Vine just before its time, and that alone doomed it?

Twitter just doesn't know how to integrate products.

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

#176

Post by Jensson »

alar44 wrote: post #147
ipaddr wrote: post #20

Maybe it's me but tiktok content is boring to me. Videos too short to care. Finding videos by your keyword is difficult. The camera angles are too zoomed and the thin width and increased height creates ugly looking videos. The videos themselves are people picking an action or movement and isolating it for effect. I wonder how many others haven't been bite by the tiktok bug.

Anyone who would rather watch 1 good 2 hour video rather than 500 random 10 sec videos isn't going to like TikTok. It's the dumbest shit I've ever seen. Half the time I have no idea what the fuck I'm even looking at. Maybe I'm old, but I think maybe the kids are stupid too. Both can be true.

To some Tiktok is the best part of social interactions distilled to its pure form, and that is really addictive.

But to someone who doesn't like those parts of social interactions the whole thing is just boring or even revolting.

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

#177

Post by Jensson »

icelancer wrote: post #137
ryanSrich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but TikTok is an order of magnitude above other social media apps when it comes to learning what you like. It’s both scary and extremely impressive. Twitter on the other hand seems to promote monoculture, and tends to push you towards what everyone else likes. It essentially pushes whatever is popular. Some of the most interesting content and users on Twitter are shadow banned, either intentionally or through…

>> TikTok on the other hand doesn’t care what other people like Yes, it absolutely does. Nonviolent social activism, LGBTQ content, and anything judged to be "subversive" is downranked/shadowbanned.

Thinking takes effort, the goal is to make you keep watching videos and to do that the videos need to take no effort. So it makes perfect sense to downrank anything that makes you think.

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

#178

Post by nextaccountic »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #116
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…

Just out of curiosity what are you using to read RSS feeds

I use a Telegram bot.. I create a channel for each RSS feed (or a bunch of related feeds) and then add the bot to it and use some /commands, and the bot will send posts to it. I can invite other people to the channel too, and Telegram even lets you add a little chat to discuss each submission separately

The bot is @rss2tg_bot, if you don't want channels you can just begin a private chat with it and send a rss url. Or add it to a group and then it sends new posts to the group.

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

#179

Post by laurent92 »

icelancer wrote: post #137
ryanSrich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but TikTok is an order of magnitude above other social media apps when it comes to learning what you like. It’s both scary and extremely impressive. Twitter on the other hand seems to promote monoculture, and tends to push you towards what everyone else likes. It essentially pushes whatever is popular. Some of the most interesting content and users on Twitter are shadow banned, either intentionally or through…

>> TikTok on the other hand doesn’t care what other people like Yes, it absolutely does. Nonviolent social activism, LGBTQ content, and anything judged to be "subversive" is downranked/shadowbanned.

Oh that’s interesting. An entire platforms that hinges on not trying to social-engineer its users, and being successful.

I’ve also heard that TikTok wasn’t showing the same contents inside China than abroad. It would be flattering the dopamine receptors worldwide, while flattering nationalist values inside China. Is it true? It could easily be that the engine is personalized enough that it does behave a bit differently.

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

#180

Post by oefrha »

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 have no trouble finding thoughtful and educational content on TikTok. Digital design is an example of a tech industry-relevant category that is a good fit for TikTok, I regularly find high quality videos there. Since you mentioned MKBHD, there’s of course a world of PC building, laptop/phone/gadget review, etc. over there, which I don’t care much about. The nice thing about TikTok is that the videos are as long as they need to be and no longer, and brevity is rewarded, unlike on YouTube where every other two minute video is artificially stretched to ten minutes.
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