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.
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.
>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.
> 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.
> 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.
This seems like a conspiracy theory being strung by linguistic aesthetics.
Capitalism is not a centralized ideology, it's perfectly fine to loathe liberalism and individual freedoms and still enjoy the economic prosperity that can come from a free market.
About the "third world exploitation that makes the system possible", could you please substantiate this claim? Working at factories in the third world is not demeaning as you imply, it's a good way to make enough money to build a life on and most of the third world (ironically not China) has unions to negotiate decent pay.
TikTok is also owned by the Chinese government which is not capitalist at all, we have extensive proof one of it's main objectives is destroying democracy and capitalism as a universal value. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine]
You seem to parrot things that seem aesthetically true (hard work is important) but aren't at all through inspection.
You are confusing capitalism and consumerism. My post refers to consumerism, which emerged in the 20th century; capitalism predates consumerism, while consumerism slightly predates neoliberal reforms. Indeed, Chinese culture is an example of non-democratic consumerism, proving the separation between concepts.
The history of consumerism and how Western countries have intertwined it with societal control can be traced back to Freud, Bernays, Lippmann and Dichter. Freud's premise was that there are primitive urges in the human mind which invariably threaten the stability of society. Bernays invented the techniques of public relations in order to manipulate those urges effectively, render people docile and manufacture their consent; they are today the bedrock of advertising. Lippmann argued that average citizens are inherently irrational in their democratic choices, which makes it necessary for an elite class to steer their opinion. Dichter tied it all together by promising that embracing sex and consumer hedonism will create a stable society and he furthered Bernays' work in psychoanalytic marketing.
These are all facts and an academically accepted narrative. Perhaps it sounds like a conspiracy theory because you haven't looked at it before. Consumerism was deliberately engineered in the 20th century in order to achieve socio-economic stability, without devolving into either nazism or communism.
> About the "third world exploitation that makes the system possible", could you please substantiate this claim?
Just some random examples: Nestle's reliance on child trafficking and slavery for the production of cocoa; epidemic of worker suicide at the factories where Apple's products are being manufactured; quinoa becoming unaffordable and threatening the food security of indigenous communities who traditionally relied on it.
> You are confusing capitalism and consumerism. My post refers to consumerism, which emerged in the 20th century; capitalism predates consumerism, while consumerism slightly predates neoliberal reforms. Indeed, Chinese culture is an example of non-democratic consumerism, proving the separation between concepts.
Bollocks. Capitalism can't exist with rampant consumption; the stock price must grow. Its like trying to differentiate the hair from the hair follicle -- yeah, they're different, but one only exists for the other.
Capitalism predates consumerism by 4 centuries. The interest capitalism eventually took in the development of consumerism was mainly due to industrial surplus after the world wars. At that point, politicians were already looking into consumerism, as a form of social control.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.'"
a needle in a haystack. the motivated and eloquent were going to make those points regardless of if its on the Tok, Youtube, or radio.
democratizing it means that for every erudite point there will be 100 others. half of them will be q-anon or shitposts about kanye west's wife's new outfit
I don't disagree, and yet I still think that might be better than what we could have -- or had -- without it. I get a clue from cable and over the air TV? A million cop shows, stupid reality tv, the occasional good public tv thing.
> 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..
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?
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.
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.
Some misc videos also regarding reviews on Gauges, torches, multi-meters, supplies, etc.
Purchased most equip and supplies from AMZN. You can buy Refrigerant online (R410a). Home owners are not required to be licensed if they are working on their own systems.
I purchased my entire system from this site. I found it to have the best price and the shipping was free and incredibly fast. They sent me a message that there was a delay in my order but it still arrived 3 days later.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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.