Tiktok sucks
Tiktok sucks
I installed it out of curiosity, and God damn, this is the worst form of social media yet. It seems like it's designed to accomplish two things: keep me scrolling, and eventually make me depressed. It's basically paralyzing to use.
I didn't make an account, so I guess its a bit like looking at the front page of YouTube, which is also terrible. But out of all the social media I've used in my life tiktok seems like the worst because of how much it sucks you in, and the type of content on it. Runner up is Instagram, but I deleted my account there years ago and never looked back.
Call me a boomer or w/e, but this shit melts your brain even more than everything else already does.
yeah the constant auto-play with 0 time to think or breathe is a cognitohazard
Death to America
I've never installed TikTok, but I had to disable my watch history on youtube to get rid of their shorts, which were also a terribly addictive hole to fall into.
Really don't think this algorithm hell that feeds on nothing but maximum engagement is good for anybody, really happy that I'm just a few years too old to have grown up with this shit.
I uninstalled it when I discovered autoplay could not be turned off
So within five minutes? Me too.
I was telling someone earlier that tumblr is the only social media I can use for mindless fun. Stuff on tumblr at least feels somewhat organic and weird. There will be a post like, "we need fuckable cities" and it'll have like 60k notes. Meanwhile the TikTok/insta/Facebook crap is like shitty square video aspect ratio with a vertically shot iPhone video in it stolen by the account and not credited and the caption is "she was NOT expecting what happened 😁🤣😂😂😂😱😱 watch till the end!!"
the only social media I can use for mindless fun.
Rude, hexbear is RIGHT here
You need to make an account or the algorithm will not learn you.
You're not wrong about it being designed to keep you scrolling but isn't that basically all social media?
I don't find other social media is as successful at keeping me drawn in like that. Maybe it's just idiosyncratic idk.
I didn't make an account, but it does start to funnel you towards what you've been watching pretty quickly
I am a huge tiktok fan. Once you get your algorithm figured out you've got the perfect lil echo chamber.
look, you're not old or lame for not liking [thing that's popular among young people]
Gen Z did not invent TikTok nor did they organically discover it, it was simply marketed to them by corporate tech advertising ghouls
besides, trendy popular things rarely stand the test of time. it's usually the niche countercultural stuff that gets recognized as "cool" later on. mainstream western culture has always been wack
in 10 or 20 years everyone will look back at TikTok and talk about how lame it was so if anything you're ahead of the curve
TikTok / Reels / YT Shorts is basically just the new form of lazing on the couch flicking through TV channels all day. I mean it's also pretty distinct in a number of ways that make it really worse, but I still take comfort in knowing that people have been sitting around passively flicking through mindless nonsense for decades.
My gf basically sonically tortured me by watching tiktok videos with the same stupid fucking audio on short loops for like, forever, for like 3 years
really ironic that now she literally can't handle even the slightest noise from a neighbor without wishing death on them
I'm sure your gf is amazing, but viewing TikTok without headphones is my absolute pet peeve.
My gf basically sonically tortured me
oh no, oh no, oh nononono
yeah it sucks from a usability standpoint but the lil zooms on there seem to have better politics than any other social media site
Depends, an endless amount of liberal centrism too
My wife is hooked on Tiktok and sometimes shows me a long series of what the algorithm recommended to her. Fortunately it's mostly dog and horse videos, but I can feel that aggressive obnoxious format giving me anxiety, especially when it's "reaction face reacting to a reaction face with a wall of text and a 5 second clip of a pop song that expects full understanding of the context."
"reaction face reacting to a reaction face with a wall of text and a 5 second clip of a pop song that expects full understanding of the context."
My wife shows me this stuff, too, and I'm just like
Why the fuck did you put your face over someone else's video!? You're not adding anything!
Meanwhile on Douyin:
First vid: I live in {东北|dōngběi}, here's me going to an all you can eat buffet for ¥12.50
Second vid: Some university kids pretending to be birds in their dorm room
Third vid: white guy speaks fluent Mandarin!
4th: American conservative that hates Iran cannot find it on a map, points at Azerbaijan, Egypt and Turkey
5th: a clip from The Good Doctor for some reason
It's the same brain melting, endless scroll, do not look away kind of app though.
The content of what I saw on tiktok was almost equally as boring and vanilla, but the form of it is insidious
I think people yearn for short form meaningless distractions. Why do you think Garfield is in circulation? For fun? I don't hear anyone laughing.
How depressing it is varies a lot from person to person. My feed is like half comedy and half depressing horrors, my partner’s is like 90% possums, raccoons, and other adorable creatures
I don't even know if it's the content that's depressing, most of it was just vanilla garbage, but it's how it sucks me and keeps me scrolling.
Kills time at work like no other, though
It sure does melt time
Nah TikToks the best screen time I've ever done in my entire life tbh
Mine is like, just pure comunsit propaganda, a little arts n crafts, then some science stuff. I am quite happy with the experience
Critical support to tiktok bans
Gotta curate your feed bc like YouRube, the algorithm will shit out the most inane things for you unless otherwise.
Having to press back several times to stop watching is also insidious.
I felt the same way when I used it at first.
Nowadays my whole feed is working dog videos. It's pretty great.
I dont fully agree because I think TikTok can be enriching in a way no other social media is if you get on the right side of it. I hear actually new view points, people who live in Gaza for example, and a lot of open communists. That doesn’t really happen even on similar platforms like YouTube Shorts. TikTok is much less filtered experience and therefore more authentic, if you are consistent about liking/saving content.
It absolutely can be brainrot though, but it’s a blissful brainrot
Exhibit A, surprise Žižek https://www.tiktok.com/@jrdnstn/video/7361878519653109035
If you aren’t on Cute Animal-tok then you’re doing it wrong
I’m scared of being sucked in. That’s why I haven’t tried it.
The platform is actively, aggressively repugnant and repelling. The auto play with audio enabled all the time in particular.
I misread the title as Tito sucks and for a mo was like wtf was this a bait and switch
The kind Tito would have declared social media reactionary and banned it so people would go outside
You didn’t even stay long enough to see the Kamala HQ Chappelle Roan edits
Chappelle Roan
I'm now at the age where I have no idea who new pop stars are. I've never seen this person before lmao
Never used anything but a browser for Tiktok, just like every other social media platform.
No I am not going to download a stupid app that duplicates what a web page can do.
I thought that too at first but now I’m deep into horrortok and loving it
You have to manually search for things. Like Twitter, people give it too much credit for letting their tiny milieu live on scraps inside their platform.
I used to like and use TikTok quite a bit but recently I've been turned off from the app. It just feels like every third post I see is an unofficial ad with somebody trying to sell me something through their TikTok Shop page. And then I get a bunch of posts that are engagement bait like "click on the template to eggplant emoji." And I'd swear I never interact with those posts but they keep coming up.
All social media is brain poison actively trying to destroy me.
I have also been using it a lot less recently due to a specific and awful change they made.
They are trying to get people to use TikTok as a search engine, because they can sell more Shop shit and get more engagement if it becomes a go-to. A lot of kids already use TikTok instead of Google for many things. So in order to increase this, they are algorithmically advantaging videos that cause people to immediately use the search feature.
Well people aren't looking up "restaurants in [my town]" - the only thing they're looking up now is "[video I just watched] part 2" because literally 25% of the videos in my feed are fucking cutting off the video immediately before the point of the video or before an interesting thing. And tons of them are the dual-screen side by side bullshit subway surfer etc. videos that are just stolen from 2 creators each, and the account name is like "ereipwposavkksdf"
Just constantly being hit by these types of videos and constantly getting bamboozled by people cutting off the good part of EVERYTHING
it doesnt even matter if the users can even find part 2! The fact that they had to look is simply rewarded! Fuck!
A lot of kids already use TikTok instead of Google for many things
I've heard this before and it's crazy to me because TikTok has the worst search functionality of any service I've ever used. Reddit's was better. Also the content just isn't designed to answer queries? How can you use TikTok to look up literally anything? I don't think there's anything I would ever type into a search engine that could be better served to me by TikTok, unless it's a video trend that is only on TikTok, like grimace shakes or whatever's popular now.
On an unrelated note I always found the comments section to be totally useless, at least on any post with more than 10k likes. The top level comments might be alright, but if for some reason you want to open up the replies to a comment they load newest first. Numerous times there'll be a comment either elaborating on the original post or explaining why it's wrong or something but because TikTok has like a 20 character limit they'll have to reply to their own comment to continue their thought. But if a comment has even only a couple dozen replies it means that the reply you want to see is pushed to the bottom, and it only loads like four replies at a time so it just takes forever to get to the comment you want to read.
It's strange, I have a bigger problem with YT Shorts than TikTok. Maybe it's because I never got sucked into early on?
I use a pirate YouTube app when I want to watch something there, so I'm never exposed it those
beats the shit out of twitter
Both are shit tbh
It's so bad, they speak really fast, and do super sharp cuts for as little speaking pause as possible, it's to get the videos moving faster to keep people watching more and more. Youtube shorts is the same. Here's one example of a Texas Roadhouse (steakhouse) review:
https://youtube.com/shorts/j7L1W9ZJJio?si=f_PjX4HB0WCTisle
Edit: Here's another video in that style of no pauses, and quick fast cuts
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Boomers be like "you zoomers are melting your brains mindlessly scrolling on TIKTOK" mindlessly sits in front of the tv, mouth agape, for hours on end
Not saying you're a boomer or even watch tv, but effortless content slop is nothing new. At least on tiktok the content is not filtered by a tv network's content guidelines. Just don't say "kill"
