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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

#231

Post by henrikschroder »

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 legitimately laugh my ass off

Same here. And then I read all the other comments on this post by people who don't get it, don't think it's funny, isn't getting "good" content, and I start to wonder if I'm lucky?

Except, I haven't really liked or disliked anything on the app. I'm just scrolling, flipping away videos that I don't like, staying on videos I do. Sure, there's a lot of crap, but there are just so many diamonds on there! I can easily laugh my ass off every night, because the format is just perfect for a bunch of quick visual gags.

The duet feature and the re-use song feature enable so much absolute hilarity, because of the repetition humour.

Which is why I watched a TikTok of someone putting a 3D-printed magic wand on top of a sea urchin, set to the sound of someone saying "Avadakadavra" in a really high-pitched voice, and I just fucking lost it. It's brilliant! Brilliant!

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

#232

Post by math-dev »

bagels wrote: post #48
ogwh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reddit made a change recently (in the last week or so) along these lines, to start injecting new subreddits in to your feed. They've picked up on this too.

Reddit is getting / is pretty good in my opinion

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

#234

Post by zem »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #212
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 subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters and RSS feeds, check Reddit and Twitter daily, and check HackerNews morning and night, and I have no problem finding interesting content every time I open these things (Twitter being least interesting to me out of this list). I think we have the same "problem": "content" doesn't engage us, "discussion" does. It's not so much about the exact topic as much as the ability to…

that would also explain why (as someone asked in a different subthread) twitter's recommended posts don't get the sort of engagement tiktok does. on twitter you're there to see discussions among people you follow, and pushing random recommendations into the stream just adds noise and clutter.

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

#235

Post by math-dev »

Gatsky wrote: post #173
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).

Good point

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

#236

Post by zfxfr »

I have been using Tiktok for the last 2 months. I have also posted some videos of myself talking alone about various subjects. My last serie of videos were about "what I like and what I hate about tiktok". I have even gained some "followers" (around 1200) so I can use the live streaming function of Tiktok (one needs to have more than 1k subscribers to unlock this function). But the more I am using Tiktok the more I am considering leaving this platform! Yes there are some really funny/creative videos that's about 4% or 5% of what I can see and that's pretty much the only reason why I keep browsing Tiktok. But the rest of the content is in my opinion really dumb. Maybe the algorithm got me wrong, but what I see is basically people trying to copy each other with more or less talent again and again, or some accounts posting stolen bits of videos or even movies. That's all. I should mention that most of the content I am watching on Tiktok is in French and I believe made in France maybe US content is more interesting I can't comment on that.

I have had some good laugh watching some tiktok but I haven't learnt anything interesting or meaningful and I don't understand how people claim they learn stuff on this platform since the maximum length of a video is 3 minutes. I personally need more time to warp my head around something. I am a slow learner. I also find there are too much restriction to really enjoy this platform. One example is the 150 characters limit in the comment section. This is really annoying both for people who post content and for people who only watch videos.

I understand Tiktok can be interesting and addictive for a moment , but after a while it become too much repetitive and annoying.

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

#237

Post by bananamerica »

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…

Is there a way to remove the overlays? By that I mean the crap above the videos? I really can't use it with those, I'm autistic and it's just too much.

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

#238

Post by wccrawford »

wara23arish wrote: post #120
badestrand wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just entertainment. You could say the same about books or TV. At least Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are social and interactive and encourage people to produce content instead of just consuming passively.

Someone’s who’s read a lot of books is called well read. Someone who’s watched a bunch of shows is called a binge watcher. No matter what they’re called, reading specifically requires more active thinking than watching stuff. I wouldn’t say theyre the same.

I wouldn't call someone "well read" just for reading lots of books. I'd call them a "book worm". "Book worm" still has more positive connotations than "binge watcher" or "couch potato", but "well read" indicates that they read the classics and can talk about them intelligently.

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

#239

Post by rndgermandude »

mlindner wrote: post #194
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…

In Germany Tiktok actively removes content mentioning LGBT issues. I very much worry about how Tiktok is Chinese controlled and they are already abusing it worldwide to remove things that they consider threatening. It's fine while it's still a relatively minor platform, but that will change as it gets market share.

Tiktok claims to have a billion monthly active users now. That puts them #4 in the social/public-user-generated-content category, behind Facebook (2.9B), Youtube (2.2B), Instagram (1.4B), and well ahead of the likes like twitter or reddit. I wouldn't call that a "relatively minor platform".

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

#240

Post by incompatible »

rococode wrote: post #127
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.

It really does seem like a lot of the magic here is simply the format. The video lengths are a perfect balance between short enough to be addictive, and long enough to enable content more varied and interesting than just short gags. Instagram and Facebook get bland real quick. Youtube/Netflix videos are often too long to be really addictive - "just one more" isn't as persuasive if "one more" takes 10 min+. With short…

I found the opposite. I took a look at TikTok, but the videos are too short to get into anything interesting. There's lot of interesting stuff on YouTube, however. Some of them could be shortened somewhat, but not down to a few minutes.
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