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.

      • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        The CDC should be banning COVID, and if they go after TikTok instead then you know they’re acting as the state department.

        • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          In an ideal world, they’d ban both.

          Actually, in an ideal world, a socialist or communist economy would be better able to deal with a pandemic and not create software designed to melt the brains of children so that they can be more susceptible to buying plastic trinkets.

    • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      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.

  • chungusamonugs [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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!!”

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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?

    • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      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

  • AmericaDeserved711 [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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.” debord-tired

    • Thallo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      “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 jesse-wtf

      Why the fuck did you put your face over someone else’s video!? You’re not adding anything!

  • videogame [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    yeah it sucks from a usability standpoint but the lil zooms on there seem to have better politics than any other social media site

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    4 months ago

    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

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    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

    • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      4 months ago

      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

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        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.