TikTok Extends the Wasteland

https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/theological-variations/articles/tiktok-extends-the-wasteland

by pseudolus • 3 years ago

68 51 3 years ago

Pannoniae• 3 years ago

TikTok is like social media without the interactive part. You just watch and consume, that's it.

Karunamon• 3 years ago

Nonsense. It's like any other form of social media in that you can lurk if you want to but interaction is trivial. Comments, video replies, stitches, not to mention the possibility to interact with live streams.

explaininjs• 3 years ago

Where are you that you aren’t regularly encountering groups of young people filming themselves for TikTok?

redeye100• 3 years ago

I've seen a lot of people producing content for TikTok. Both low-effort (just having fun) and high-effort

anonu• 3 years ago

The world has always been creators versus consumers. The Internet.... And specifically TikTok, have shown that the creator can fragment into millions of sub genres, interests and tastes. It's a fantastic phenomenon that will continue to play out. Catering to creators opens up a whole set of startup opportunities. Generative AI tools that can help creators better express themselves will do well.

porridge_• 3 years ago

I've been getting this feeling about YouTube lately. Every channel seems to produce videos that offer nothing (save entertainment) in return for my watching. I don't want that! I want something better. So my question is how can I counteract the wasteland?

benjaminbachman• 3 years ago

Don't use it.

andsoitis• 3 years ago

entertainment I don't want that!

Do you know what you DO want? If you can express that, then it should be possible to find sources for that, such as education.

asddubs• 3 years ago

I use the blocktube addon to block almost any channel that isn't educational in nature.

mdorazio• 3 years ago

If you watch the videos that only provide entertainment, you're creating demand for more of that content. If you go out of your way to find and watch videos that provide more than entertainment, you'll get more of those instead. And yes, they do exist. For example, I've been working my way through the videos of Cutting Edge Engineering Australia, which is fantastic content if you're at all into machinery or fabrication.

On a side rant, this is the same question that comes up with respect to Hollywood and pisses me off. "Why are most films now derivate, SFX-heavy garbage?" Answer: because people keep rewarding those movies with their dollars.

im3w1l• 3 years ago

A demand change is part of it, but not necessarily sufficient as it's often hard as a student to tell entertainment from the real deal.

ChumpGPT3• 3 years ago

Find channels that will educate you. Hobbies, Documentary, etc. I have just changed out my entire HVAC System watching and learning HVAC on Youtube for the last 3-4 weeks. Saved myself about 5000k-10k. Now I am considering continuing my journey in HVAC Service (since I purchased the tools to do the job) as a side hustle (friends & family or word of mouth). It has been very rewarding.

rmilejczz2• 3 years ago

Hey sorry to derail I work on tech for a relatively large HVAC company and I’d love to hear from you about what resources you utilized for education.

Feel free to dm me!

ab_testing• 3 years ago

Can you please post what channels did you watch to learn this stuff.

deepserket• 3 years ago

The algorithm knows better: https://youtu.be/IMVSZ7ybK0s

Anyway these are some channels I'm following lately: https://youtube.com/@Nighthawkinlight https://youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium https://youtube.com/@ButWhySci

KaoruAoiShiho2• 3 years ago

This is a huge problem with mass media. Our brains know that certain content is useless for us yet we still find them appealing. That's why algorithmic content recommendations won't be able to solve the problem, only generative AI will. This will turn our logical brains from consumers to producers, and we'll be able to communicate to the AI the exact content that we want to see and not just be forced to accept the clickbait that's on the market.

venv• 3 years ago

If someone consumes what you call useless content, why would they use AI to produce anything else? It's not as if there isn't useful content around, already.

KaoruAoiShiho2• 3 years ago

Just referring to entertainment (ie not educational videos), the clickbait social media entertainment is easier to consume and is readily recommended, you know you have at least a little bit of interest in it. It just tends to be lower quality entertainment than what you know is possible. Long form entertainment is higher investment and higher risk in that if you don't like it, there's more energy/time expended.

So there's a choice between low risk entertainment that caps out at like 20% of the value of what your favorite thing is, and higher risk entertainment that very well could still be terrible but might have a chance of being good.

AI bridges that gap to de-risk the high investment entertainment so you no longer have to make that choice.

c22• 3 years ago

This prompt->generate->tweak prompt loop provided by 'ai' is far more addictive and malign than any existing clickbait. The companies deploying this technology will make fabulous gains at the expense of the consumers who will ultimately waste their entire lives iteratively 'producing' nothing of value.

amelius• 3 years ago

Our brains know that certain content is useless for us yet we still find them appealing.

And then after watching we think: what a waste of time!

So perhaps what we need is an algorithm (AI?) to compute for us if we will like any given piece of content. I.e., the recommendation algorithm should be under /our/ control, not theirs.

dimmke• 3 years ago

since the app offers no option to share selectively, posts are instantly available to everyone

This is not true, there are many ways to restrict who can see videos you post on TikTok. You can set it to "followers only" or "friends only" where only mutuals see. There's even an option to make a video completely private - only viewable by you. This is common knowledge for anybody who has used the platform in more than just the most cursory of ways, and I suspect that the author has not.

Furthermore, the article makes the point that most people (2/3rds) consume TikTok instead of making content for it, then spends the rest of the article comparing it to reality television.

People post all kinds of content to TikTok. Short form sketches, their music, short dramatic films.

The term “attention economy” captures the extent of this domination: To be considered worthwhile, ideas must first entertain.

Here is a 3 minute video of a transgender person talking about the unique way they connected to the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion: https://www.tiktok.com/@justnausicaa/video/72534442906033882...

It made me think about the series in a way I never had before, and it's just a person talking to the camera. No jump cuts of "vlogger voice."

Then there's satire, where a point is made through comedy: https://www.tiktok.com/@bjcalvillo/video/7231313547857349930

Here's a short clip of a speech Ursula K Le Guin, famed 20th century science fiction author gave in 2014: https://www.tiktok.com/@leftoftheprojectorpod/video/72100686...

Here's something that is closer to what the article describes, but I think it's beautiful: https://www.tiktok.com/@dutchdeccc/video/7223142742933703978

All of these came across my "For You" page in the past couple months. As humans, might we be "wired" to view images of people communicating an idea as more exciting than text? Maybe. But I remain unconvinced that TikTok is somehow "worse" than anything else.

michaelteter• 3 years ago

“

They repeated every test

They checked out all the data on their lists

And then, the alien anthropologists

Admitted they were still perplexed

But on eliminating every other reason

For our sad demise

They logged the only explanation left

This species has amused itself to death

“ - Roger Waters, -Amused to Death_ 1992

brudgers• 3 years ago

Possibly related?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

gochi• 3 years ago

Loved this article. Many seem to be missing one of the points of the article, which is that there is little separation between "informative" and "entertainment" anymore. You are the performer-teacher. You are the performer-welder. You are the performer-chef.

I think about people after the Minow speech, the likes of Julia Child who were on a public station educating people but also the entertainer. You tuned in not just to understand how best to make your next meal, but because of Julia Child.

So I don't believe that it's worth trying to dissect the two apart in the modern age, but rather focusing on advertisement. We need far better regulations to address the modern usage of content, and a complete eradication of "native" ads that attempt to mimic the platform's programming. A silly sponsored label tag isn't good enough.

hirundo• 3 years ago

My best high school teacher was the best entertainer. He traveled the world in the summers and took pictures of the stuff we were studying, and showed them to us as part of long involved stories that had the whole history class silent. My friends from that class still remember things he told us forty years ago that we would have forgotten before we walked out the classroom door if transmitted in a dry lecture.

Michelangelo112• 3 years ago

I think this is totally different. From what you describe, I get the sense your teacher showed you things that made the stuff you were studying more real to you (and in the process taught you more about it, too), which is absolutely great.

That's way different from, say, some YouTuber or TikToker who always has to stay bouncy and high-energy, and has to keep telling barely-related jokes and stories, just to keep their audience from clicking through to the next thing -- all that waters down the informational content instead of adding to it.

tempodox• 3 years ago

Relevant passage from the article:

In his seminal 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman observed that television makes entertainment “the natural format for the representation of all experience.” Even though Postman was writing before reality TV and social networks, his breakdown of television’s rhetorical rules—that “simple messages are preferable to… complex ones,” that “drama is to be preferred over exposition”—are more relevant than ever.

Michelangelo112• 3 years ago

Many seem to be missing one of the points of the article, which is that there is little separation between "informative" and "entertainment" anymore. You are the performer-teacher. You are the performer-welder. You are the performer-chef.

Exactly right, and that necessarily means the informational content suffers, because the entertainment takes up so much bandwidth.

And if you want a big audience, you absolutely _have_ to be a performer too, because people will tune out and start watching / playing / consuming something else if you lose their attention. All of which means that mass "educational" media today, of any kind, is guaranteed to be to be one of the lowest-quality options for learning about any given subject.

xk_id3• 3 years ago

All of which means that mass "educational" media today, of any kind, is guaranteed to be to be one of the lowest-quality options for learning about any given subject.

That makes it sounds like a failure of the system, but in fact it works as intended. The point of consumer culture has never been whatever was being overtly advertised. It emerged as the attempt of atlanticist nations (lead by Amerika) to manage society’s violent, repressed urges (the only alternatives we knew of were nazism and communism). It is a mechanism to keep the primitive human mind distracted, with fast paced entertainment that destroys the attention span, rat race competitions, libidinal associations in product branding, and a fantasy world of happiness and comfort promoted through advertising campaigns – while the unavoidable grim reality (like third world exploitation which makes the whole system possible and the corruption in the incumbent systems of power) is being obscured from sight. Tiktok is just designed to reward the most effective agents of the system.

remarkEon• 3 years ago

We need far better regulations to address the modern usage of content, and a complete eradication of "native" ads that attempt to mimic the platform's programming. A silly sponsored label tag isn't good enough

"Better" regulation isn't going to change anything. We just need outright bans. We can perhaps debate what types of add content and usage should be banned, but ban them nonetheless.

The article is well written, yes, but there's a tone in it that allows the reader to come away thinking that some of these quirks with TikTok are endearing or maybe funny (the millennial "pause"). The kinds of intentional dopamine hijacking that is how the company makes money (ice cream so good gang gang) is a little more nefarious than that.

jrm44• 3 years ago

Funny enough, I just watched a Tiktok video that made think the literal opposite of this.

For reference, it's this jwilliamsj guy, a young black man absolutely eviscerating another guy's explanation of "Why we shouldn't use the n-word."

It was amazing. A methodical, with references, academic breakdown of another persons (arguably terrible) idea. In 5 minutes and entertaining.

I don't know y'all. Tiktok is made of people. And while I'm often astounded at the sheer inanity of most of it, I also can't help but see that the lack of a "corporate filter" is definitely bringing some quality -- or at least experimentation -- the likes of which we haven't seen and may really be a counter to e.g. this whole SAG strike thing (which is to say, oh no you mean now Gladiator 2 and Deadpool 3 will come out slightly later? so sad)

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 3 years ago

How easy it is for people to believe the absence of what they cannot see

gruez• 3 years ago

Right, but article isn't arguing every video on tiktok is "a vast wasteland" (ie. "from vapid and violent programing to the clamor of endless commercial breaks"), just that it's the predominant content format. The fact that there's one well researched video doesn't really contradict that.

jrm44• 3 years ago

But it seems to aggressively miss the possibility of: "The kids now use and understand the language of 'television', whereas before only 'television' did. The power of attention is on balanced more democratized, and even though it seems weird and crass, it may usher in a new way to 'talk about the world.'"

PurpleRamen• 3 years ago

A methodical, with references, academic breakdown of another persons (arguably terrible) idea. In 5 minutes and entertaining.

Did you check the references? And how long did you thought about the arguments? How much did you invest into finding flaws in them? Because this is a big problem with entertaining content and especially TikToks hyperfast attention-mill. While something can appear good in the moment of consumption, it doesn't mean this actually is true. And TikTok doesn't give you much time until the next topic high jacks your mind and pushes your attention somewhere else. This can be very dangerous..

jrm44• 3 years ago

It's a topic I'm already intimately familiar with, enough that I'm quite comfortable being the evaluator here.

And he did a very good job.

aCoreyJ• 3 years ago

In the end I kind of feel like TikTok does allow more positive interactions than Facebook and Twitter promote, so maybe it won't be as disastrous for society and mental health as those platforms have been for millennials

mattgreenrocks• 3 years ago

Somewhere along the way, for many, the Internet become the focal point, rather than a means of obtaining information that enriches your life.

This is the defining characteristic of the overly online crowd: their relationship to the Internet is substantively different to those who aren’t. And it colors how they behave online, and how they socialize.

thenerdhead• 3 years ago

Great article. Postman was ahead of his time. Also Jerry Mander(yes, that is his name) regarding advertisement when it comes to entertainment on television.

Sadly the conclusion each activist makes is that there’s no way to reform it. We have to live with it.

I think the realization of the wasteland helps you in your life if you allow it:

https://jondouglas.dev/entertained-from-disappointment/

moribvndvs• 3 years ago

Terrifyingly eye-opening. I’m a Xennial without children. Recently, I spent a week with a sibling and their teen kids to spend a little quality time together. I was mortified to find my nieces and nephews stumbling around like zombies, irritable if not entirely unresponsive and incapable of having any semblance of a conversation, seemingly unable to take interest or pleasure in anything until they were curled around their device and scrolling TikTok. It was infuriating and alarming.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this. Perhaps I’ve just gotten old enough to take up the mantle of my parents, this is just the same thing I did to them and I should check myself before I make a hypocrite and a fool of myself. Except I don’t feel like this quite neatly explained the rift.

Understanding TikTok through the lens of ubiquitous reality TV allows us to see that oddly named phenomena like “Main Character Syndrome”—in which the overly online dramatize their lives—aren’t aberrations. If TikTokkers act like the stars of their own entertainment channels, that isn’t a psychological issue—it’s an accurate assessment of the media landscape that reality TV established. On TikTok, we really are encouraged to treat our online presence as the proscenium arch, a curated pass to our “real” lives, even when we’re producing content explicitly for entertainment.

There we go. See, in _my day_ I was just a passive observer to other worlds. There were countless channels, films, games, etc. that created a reality that was often more vivid and compelling than meatspace. But for the most part, I was just the audience. I unplugged regularly to assert myself to the rest of the world, because that’s what I had learned I needed to do. Now, this alternate reality is bidirectional and real time. They aren’t merely observing, but interacting with the world through the lens of social media. And they’ve been doing it that way for the bulk of their lives, so it feels normal. Everything else doesn’t.

This helps me empathize with them more, but not the other way around. It doesn’t really help me rejigger my interactions with them to make them more meaningful. And I can’t help but feel this way of interfacing with the world is disastrous.

TikTok Extends the Wasteland

Related Stories