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Have we reached the end of TikTok?

2024-02-04 19:34:42Fokus SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Have we reached the end of TikTok?
Have we reached the end of TikTok?

Jon Caramanica - New York Times

How much time do I spend on TikTok? I can tell you which chiropractor is showing off his practices without ever looking at his face. I can tell you which influencer has the latest fashion collections and who vacations together.

Countless hours surfing the web, over the years, I have accumulated endless information about my interests, consciously and unconsciously. This has shaped me as a consumer much more than the news media and the VIPs themselves.

That's what TikTok is all about, it teases your brain with the hope that you'll never stop surfing. Of all other social media, TikTok promises the most. The only network that grows simultaneously with individual tastes and has played a role in the formation of monoculture.

But in recent months, the TikTok screen has gone blank. This seems like a systemic disease that has affected both Twitter and Instagram before. Perhaps the era of prosperity is ending.

This is an unfortunate ending influenced by several important factors. First is the provision of a shopping platform on TikTok which has turned it into a marketplace without rules and everyone has become a 'moderator'. Also, it is no longer serving as a musical habitat, weakening the connection with the entertainment industry, which was the main focus.

TikTok produced famous singers and created world hits, until 2020. For example, the song "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X or the rise of teenager Charli D'Amelio from a simple girl to a global celebrity overnight.

Another factor is the customization of TikTok's algorithm to immerse you more and more in your tastes until it runs out. There you wonder how a format designed for endless navigation can end.

Users are seeing TikTok as a place to make money, after all all that time online is some work. Everyone is being 'raped' by advertisements for products that you don't need or that you've seen hundreds of times.

But nothing has been more important to TikTok than music. The application is a derivative of Musical.ly in 2018, with the purpose of publishing videos singing or imitating singers. This made TikTok a global purveyor of music. The platform offered endless chances to be amazed by a completely unpredictable trend.

Before the pandemic TikTok was more of a tool for music, but Covid spurred a spiral of creating different content. Marketers and publicists realized that TikTok was their hope.

Now, in a video, the music is the most unimportant part. No more songs going viral. Even music companies are pulling back. Universal Music recently pulled all songs from the artists it manages.

All of this underscores a fundamental issue of TikTok that remains unresolved: there has yet to be an evolution in the optimal form of content. The narrative styles that will work best in this format have not yet been honed, at least not by professionals. For an app that requires a lot of attention, it doesn't require a lot of brain power. This leaves TikTok vulnerable to moments when viewers, to put it simply, leave it.

My breaking point has been approaching for months and TikTok seems to sense my impending reluctance. Trying to lure me in with multi-part videos about abandoned pets (dark); shots of synchronized skating teams (cool); sustainable videos on hoof cleaning and art conservation (fascinating, of course); and, of course, that absurd Turkish barber/facialist/masseur.

Every now and then, he finds something that I find exciting, or surprising, or both, like the young music producer who excels in low-speed recreations of hip-hop beats made with FL Studio - under 14 seconds for "Crank That" by Soulja Boy.

But even these joys are fleeting, which made me think that maybe I was the problem, my viewing habits and tastes so ingrained that the refined TikTok algorithm avoided bothering me with anything beyond my particular taste. .

It's almost impossible to get out of that jam without starting over, so I did. I signed out of my account and created a new one. Would TikTok be more ambitious, more enjoyable, more distracting, if it didn't have to worry about providing what it felt I needed?

It was cold for a few minutes. I saw videos of teenagers dancing to Russian music and ice fishing in China. There was a monkey watching French fries being cooked in an air and snow fryer in Dubai (which turned out not to be Dubai). This was the section on America's Funniest Videos and Ridiculousness - my own algorithm had denied me these pleasures. Then came the cooking videos, but only the most banal ones. Dance clips, but almost nothing with personality. Content so lifeless and charmless it might as well have been generated by AI

Maybe all this time, TikTok has been... protecting me?

I tried to linger on videos I might otherwise skip over, liking unexpected clips in hopes of driving a diverse set of recommendations. And with each attempt to counterprogram against my instincts, I became more frustrated and unhappy. There was no way out - I missed my characters. I didn't make it a full day before I was back in my account again. Was it boring? It was. But it was a low-pitched kind of boredom, not offensive enough to eliminate, and still sprinkled with a little hope for a thrill, just a swipe away.

Before long, I returned to my favorite account on the app, a low-profile site I've followed for years that collects footage, apparently filmed in China, of factory workers playing with various items — bicycles, oil drums, truck beds, carts - through an industrial shredder.

Watching these videos is my surest path to peace. Items thrown on top of the machine look so strong, but within seconds they are reduced to pieces, no match for the relentless spinning of steel teeth. It's the ultimate TikTok content - for me, and maybe for TikTok. Each video is a complete story of innocence giving way to resistance and ending in defeat. I know what happens at the end, but I watch it all the way through. Why resist? Leave me.


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