yeah the constant auto-play with 0 time to think or breathe is a cognitohazard
Death to America
The CDC should be the ones banning it, not the State Department.
The CDC should be banning COVID, and if they go after TikTok instead then you know they’re acting as the state department.
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.
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
But in 10 or 20 years I imagine the new app will have an exponential increase in brain melting powers
yeah I shudder to think what the digital skinner boxes of the future will be like
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.
that tiktok is the new, improved channel surfing should be the opposite of comforting.
channels surfing was the boomer invented past time and look at their fully conditioned minds now.
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 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
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!
It feels a bit like artificial social pressure: "THIS is how you should FEEL about this! I am modeling YOUR expected reaction!" 
You're right. They a doing preemptive behavior mirroring like we're children 
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
Mine is like, just pure comunsit propaganda, a little arts n crafts, then some science stuff. I am quite happy with the experience
Nah TikToks the best screen time I've ever done in my entire life tbh
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.
If you aren’t on Cute Animal-tok then you’re doing it wrong
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
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
I’m in my 30s and not into pop music or in touch with current pop stars (my kids like to remind me of this), but Chappelle Roan is all over queer TikTok, so if you follow queer creators, you’ll end up hearing her stuff. Pretty much all of her songs are about her experiences as a lesbian. It’s neat.
It's also worth noting she hates the Dems for the genocide in Gaza, if the Dems are using her stuff at all it's probably unauthorized. But if sockpuppet accounts are posting pro-Kamala content using her music she probably can't do anything about it.
Oh I didn’t realize she’d spoken about that. Based.
I misread the title as Tito sucks and for a mo was like wtf was this a bait and switch
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