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I am having difficulty finding TikTok's addictiveness. My job depends on understanding consumer apps, so in the past 1.5 years, I've been trying TikTok anew eve

I am having difficulty finding TikTok's addictiveness. My job depends on understanding consumer apps, so in the past 1.5 years, I've been trying TikTok anew every 3 months, each day at least trying to spend 10 minutes on it no matter how uninteresting I find the content to be, but end up giving up after 3 to 7 days each time I try. I swipe quickly past uninteresting content, stay on mildly interesting ones, and make sure to click like or add comment on interesting ones, in order to send signals to AI. I'm not embodying any fake persona, just trying to find what I would find interesting. I just don't get addicting content. I even try searching so that TikTok would get explicit keywords from me. I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters and RSS feeds, check Reddit and Twitter daily, and check HackerNews morning and night, and I have no problem finding interesting content every time I open these things (Twitter being least interesting to me out of this list). I like software engineering, business, product management, marketing, and technology industry generally. I don't believe I am so far from regular consumers: I check out mainstream videos on YouTube like MKBHD and even subscribe to his podcast (This is to show I find content for "mainstream consumers" interesting, though I work in tech and know more about tech things than MKBHD's target audience). Can someone help? Why is the whole world praising TikTok while I am failing repeatedly?

kpennell 5y ago
I was living in Germany when I started using it and I told myself that it would help with learning the language, since I was being served german language content (oddly it seemed to think I was in Austria). It was a bit dull at first but I guess somehow, I kept using it enough. I'm not a dancer or super into dance but I did get hooked by some of the dancing stuff. Slowly but surely, I now get almost no dance content and it's all explainer/politics/philosophy/cycling/etc. I definitely used the 'not interested in this' feature a lot to train it.
- productceo 5y ago
  Interesting. So you weren't interested in dance, but you got interested through TikTok? Reminds me of how Pinterest's value prop includes exploration and inspiration (as opposed to searching for what you know you are looking for).
  - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
    No. Some of the dance content hooked them but they used not interested to get rid of it.
    - productceo 5y ago
      Ah, thanks for correcting my understanding.
Lamad123 5y ago
I'm addicted to youtube and check HN everyday!! Not much else! And even youtube I like tot have it in the background while reading something.
kaycebasques 5y ago
> I don't believe I am so far from regular consumers > I subscribe to a bunch of... RSS feeds Does not compute
- dehrmann 5y ago
  I'll add > I like software engineering, business, product management, marketing, and technology industry generally Liking the "technology industry generally" is closest to mainstream interests, but even then, people like that their new phone is thinner or their new Xbox has better graphics. Regular consumers aren't too worried about ARM vs Intel, MS dropping support for old PCs, or any use of blockchains beyond asset speculation.
lambdasquirrel 5y ago
When I was using TikTok, it was the first truly openminded social media platform I found. Stuff I was watching on it: - A girl coder who showed people how she operated her light airplane, flying between different little Midwest cities where she lived. - A free diver (living in Hawaii?) who could stay underwater for several minutes at a time (and film fun chill videos while at it). - Good relationship advice from progressive-thinking folks who weren't out to make a political point, or shame one party or another. - Nifty yoga tricks from someone in SoCal. - Longboarding cosplayers from Asia (yes, they would dress up... and longboard...). It was also the first social media platform where I saw plenty of positive representation of folks from different backgrounds – including the country my parents came from. Far, far cry from what I read in the US media, by contrast. Compared to the awful divisive stuff I saw on FB, I thought to myself, it's really odd that the US tried to shut this down. Call it addictive, but it didn't leave me feeling soul-damaged.
- abliefern 5y ago
  How do you find these? I've given up on the app multiple times. Never got beyond being shown teenagers doing teenage things.
  - captainmuon 5y ago
    Maybe it is a regional problem? Your name sounds German, I'm in Germany and also get a lot of teenagers, and a lot of dressed up people doing staged "funny" things. I've never seen any interesting tech content, or insightful political content (beyond hot takes on current news), or interesing hobbies and DIY projects (instead I get a lot of people from Asia doing bricklaying or welding). Maybe we are in the wrong bucket? (Or maybe it is a scam, and they hired a ton of people to manually pick addictive videos for selected "influcencers", and the silent masses get random videos to please the masses? :-D)
    - trh0awayman 5y ago
      TikTok is vastly different between regions, even when you set a preferred language. I'm American and live in Germany, and have tested it in both. In Germany, I get tons of those low-quality videos where they copy/paste something from Youtube and it looks "fried".
ALittleLight 5y ago
I think of Tik Tok as being like Pringles - as in, once you pop, you can't stop. Something about being able to easily flip to the next thing, combined with TikTok's excellent recommendation engine, makes for a very addictive experience - for me, at least. If you're not enjoying it, despite using the product as intended, then I'd just guess you and it aren't a good fit. That doesn't seem to be any huge mystery - all products and services have fans and people who aren't interested.
- prox 5y ago
  I think it’s the perfect pavlov machine. I honestly wonder how it affects behavior. https://dandradebehaviorism.weebly.com/bf-skinner.html https://dandradebehaviorism.weebly.com/bf-skinner.html
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  I found it very stressful because I couldn't get rid of the annoying stuff. Swiping it away would just bring up something new that was also annoying.
pipeline_peak 5y ago
Just out of curiosity what are you using to read RSS feeds
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I use feedbro on firefox and it's okay
- lostmsu 5y ago
  I'd be more interested about what people subscribe to.
  - pipeline_peak 5y ago
    I’ve been interested as well for quite some time. I don’t know how to find websites. That old style of browsing was before my time. Not to mention, who still actually maintains RSS feeds? To be fair idk if it’s really necessary.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      I actually subscribe to YouTube feeds so that I don't have to ever log in. It's really nice. But on top of that, just small websites that provide RSS. I change it up here and there.
      - pipeline_peak 5y ago
        In your experience, is RSS reliable enough to replace Reddit and Facebook as a news feed?
        lostmsu 5y ago
        HN RSS does that for me very well. I still keep Facebook to check on what are my friends been up to recently. But lately it only has part of that content. Perhaps it is time for friend feed aggregator.
        5y ago
steve76 5y ago
fartcannon 5y ago
I can relate, but depending on your perspective, maybe even worse because I find the recommendations off-putting. I don't understand what's happening that people like. I can't think of another word: It's just off-putting. Discordant. Dissonant. It's like being a atheist, raised in an atheist house, in a country full of atheists and then going to church for the first time.
- Jensson 5y ago
  I think it is like licorice, some say they love it but I can't imagine why anyone would want to eat it as the taste is so overwhelming and horrible.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Yeah, some people are monsters. Like those that include black licorice in bags of jelly beans or jubejubes.
0x38B 5y ago
Is it because you’re outside of TikTok? You maintain a mental model of the app and its algorithm. The app is in your lab, not the other way around. A like or a share is a calculated action that occurs simultaneously in your mental model and in the app. Thinking like that kills immersion for me. For example, I was playing Mass Effect 2 on my Framework (with Wine) yesterday and caught myself thinking about whether any significant internal state would change from the conversation Shepard was having. I shut down that line of thought and dove back into the story.
- tenuousemphasis 5y ago
  I sometimes wonder if I'm not enjoying TV and movies to the fullest because I get distracted by thinking about where I've seen the actors before, the production process, or how they were able to achieve a particular effect.
oefrha 5y ago
I have no trouble finding thoughtful and educational content on TikTok. Digital design is an example of a tech industry-relevant category that is a good fit for TikTok, I regularly find high quality videos there. Since you mentioned MKBHD, there’s of course a world of PC building, laptop/phone/gadget review, etc. over there, which I don’t care much about. The nice thing about TikTok is that the videos are as long as they need to be and no longer, and brevity is rewarded, unlike on YouTube where every other two minute video is artificially stretched to ten minutes.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters and RSS feeds, check Reddit and Twitter daily, and check HackerNews morning and night, and I have no problem finding interesting content every time I open these things (Twitter being least interesting to me out of this list). I think we have the same "problem": "content" doesn't engage us, "discussion" does. It's not so much about the exact topic as much as the ability to see other perspectives. All these modern social media platforms are awful for discussion and actively downplay it, despite all the popular ones having some form of commenting features. The closest modern analog would be discord, but discussion is almost as ephemeral as Snapchat once you get even a tiny bit active. small group servers kind of capture the feel, but still isn't meant for longform replies like this one, Feel free to mention if I missed the mark by a country mile. But I've been thinking about this for a while on why I can browse reddit for hours but can't stand instagram for more than a few minutes (aside from my resistance to give Facebook another account to mine data from). reddit has more discussion than I could ever read (perhaps even too much). Youtube comments are pretty low quality (in both formatting and content) but does the bare minimum needed to post stuff longer than a tweet. (That said, I've been getting way more into silly cat videos than I ever wanted to, so who knows?)
- productceo 5y ago
  This is very insightful. I didn't think of it from this angle, but I think you hit it on the nail that I find discussions among people, not unidirectional presentations from a tiktoker, interesting. Thanks for helping me see this!
- zem 5y ago
  that would also explain why (as someone asked in a different subthread) twitter's recommended posts don't get the sort of engagement tiktok does. on twitter you're there to see discussions among people you follow, and pushing random recommendations into the stream just adds noise and clutter.
- exolymph 5y ago
  This is 100% me. If I can't mainline a bunch of people's perspectives within minutes, I'm not interested. Video is waaayyy too slow. Granted, I also have an exception: I watch YouTube regularly, but I have to be doing something with my hands at the same time. And it's not an attention span thing — I read books. It's about the density of information and the speed with which I can traverse it. I can read as fast as I think, but even 2x speed videos don't get there. So without an additional activity to fill my whole attention space (is there a term for this? ADHD people might have one?) I get bored.
alliao 5y ago
you're rich :)
xtat 5y ago
Same feeling - I consume a ton online and keep trying tiktok but I'm consistently bored - just feels like the pop music equivalent of everything else.

kpennell 5y ago

I was living in Germany when I started using it and I told myself that it would help with learning the language, since I was being served german language content (oddly it seemed to think I was in Austria). It was a bit dull at first but I guess somehow, I kept using it enough. I'm not a dancer or super into dance but I did get hooked by some of the dancing stuff. Slowly but surely, I now get almost no dance content and it's all explainer/politics/philosophy/cycling/etc. I definitely used the 'not interested in this' feature a lot to train it.

productceo 5y ago
Interesting. So you weren't interested in dance, but you got interested through TikTok? Reminds me of how Pinterest's value prop includes exploration and inspiration (as opposed to searching for what you know you are looking for).
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  No. Some of the dance content hooked them but they used not interested to get rid of it.
  - productceo 5y ago
    Ah, thanks for correcting my understanding.

Lamad123 5y ago

I'm addicted to youtube and check HN everyday!! Not much else! And even youtube I like tot have it in the background while reading something.

kaycebasques 5y ago

> I don't believe I am so far from regular consumers > I subscribe to a bunch of... RSS feeds Does not compute

dehrmann 5y ago
I'll add > I like software engineering, business, product management, marketing, and technology industry generally Liking the "technology industry generally" is closest to mainstream interests, but even then, people like that their new phone is thinner or their new Xbox has better graphics. Regular consumers aren't too worried about ARM vs Intel, MS dropping support for old PCs, or any use of blockchains beyond asset speculation.

lambdasquirrel 5y ago

When I was using TikTok, it was the first truly openminded social media platform I found. Stuff I was watching on it: - A girl coder who showed people how she operated her light airplane, flying between different little Midwest cities where she lived. - A free diver (living in Hawaii?) who could stay underwater for several minutes at a time (and film fun chill videos while at it). - Good relationship advice from progressive-thinking folks who weren't out to make a political point, or shame one party or another. - Nifty yoga tricks from someone in SoCal. - Longboarding cosplayers from Asia (yes, they would dress up... and longboard...). It was also the first social media platform where I saw plenty of positive representation of folks from different backgrounds – including the country my parents came from. Far, far cry from what I read in the US media, by contrast. Compared to the awful divisive stuff I saw on FB, I thought to myself, it's really odd that the US tried to shut this down. Call it addictive, but it didn't leave me feeling soul-damaged.

abliefern 5y ago
How do you find these? I've given up on the app multiple times. Never got beyond being shown teenagers doing teenage things.
- captainmuon 5y ago
  Maybe it is a regional problem? Your name sounds German, I'm in Germany and also get a lot of teenagers, and a lot of dressed up people doing staged "funny" things. I've never seen any interesting tech content, or insightful political content (beyond hot takes on current news), or interesing hobbies and DIY projects (instead I get a lot of people from Asia doing bricklaying or welding). Maybe we are in the wrong bucket? (Or maybe it is a scam, and they hired a ton of people to manually pick addictive videos for selected "influcencers", and the silent masses get random videos to please the masses? :-D)
  - trh0awayman 5y ago
    TikTok is vastly different between regions, even when you set a preferred language. I'm American and live in Germany, and have tested it in both. In Germany, I get tons of those low-quality videos where they copy/paste something from Youtube and it looks "fried".

ALittleLight 5y ago

I think of Tik Tok as being like Pringles - as in, once you pop, you can't stop. Something about being able to easily flip to the next thing, combined with TikTok's excellent recommendation engine, makes for a very addictive experience - for me, at least. If you're not enjoying it, despite using the product as intended, then I'd just guess you and it aren't a good fit. That doesn't seem to be any huge mystery - all products and services have fans and people who aren't interested.

prox 5y ago
I think it’s the perfect pavlov machine. I honestly wonder how it affects behavior. https://dandradebehaviorism.weebly.com/bf-skinner.html https://dandradebehaviorism.weebly.com/bf-skinner.html
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
I found it very stressful because I couldn't get rid of the annoying stuff. Swiping it away would just bring up something new that was also annoying.

pipeline_peak 5y ago

Just out of curiosity what are you using to read RSS feeds

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I use feedbro on firefox and it's okay
lostmsu 5y ago
I'd be more interested about what people subscribe to.
- pipeline_peak 5y ago
  I’ve been interested as well for quite some time. I don’t know how to find websites. That old style of browsing was before my time. Not to mention, who still actually maintains RSS feeds? To be fair idk if it’s really necessary.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    I actually subscribe to YouTube feeds so that I don't have to ever log in. It's really nice. But on top of that, just small websites that provide RSS. I change it up here and there.
    - pipeline_peak 5y ago
      In your experience, is RSS reliable enough to replace Reddit and Facebook as a news feed?
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        HN RSS does that for me very well. I still keep Facebook to check on what are my friends been up to recently. But lately it only has part of that content. Perhaps it is time for friend feed aggregator.
      - 5y ago

steve76 5y ago

fartcannon 5y ago

I can relate, but depending on your perspective, maybe even worse because I find the recommendations off-putting. I don't understand what's happening that people like. I can't think of another word: It's just off-putting. Discordant. Dissonant. It's like being a atheist, raised in an atheist house, in a country full of atheists and then going to church for the first time.

Jensson 5y ago
I think it is like licorice, some say they love it but I can't imagine why anyone would want to eat it as the taste is so overwhelming and horrible.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Yeah, some people are monsters. Like those that include black licorice in bags of jelly beans or jubejubes.

0x38B 5y ago

Is it because you’re outside of TikTok? You maintain a mental model of the app and its algorithm. The app is in your lab, not the other way around. A like or a share is a calculated action that occurs simultaneously in your mental model and in the app. Thinking like that kills immersion for me. For example, I was playing Mass Effect 2 on my Framework (with Wine) yesterday and caught myself thinking about whether any significant internal state would change from the conversation Shepard was having. I shut down that line of thought and dove back into the story.

tenuousemphasis 5y ago
I sometimes wonder if I'm not enjoying TV and movies to the fullest because I get distracted by thinking about where I've seen the actors before, the production process, or how they were able to achieve a particular effect.

oefrha 5y ago

I have no trouble finding thoughtful and educational content on TikTok. Digital design is an example of a tech industry-relevant category that is a good fit for TikTok, I regularly find high quality videos there. Since you mentioned MKBHD, there’s of course a world of PC building, laptop/phone/gadget review, etc. over there, which I don’t care much about. The nice thing about TikTok is that the videos are as long as they need to be and no longer, and brevity is rewarded, unlike on YouTube where every other two minute video is artificially stretched to ten minutes.

johnnyanmac 5y ago

>I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters and RSS feeds, check Reddit and Twitter daily, and check HackerNews morning and night, and I have no problem finding interesting content every time I open these things (Twitter being least interesting to me out of this list). I think we have the same "problem": "content" doesn't engage us, "discussion" does. It's not so much about the exact topic as much as the ability to see other perspectives. All these modern social media platforms are awful for discussion and actively downplay it, despite all the popular ones having some form of commenting features. The closest modern analog would be discord, but discussion is almost as ephemeral as Snapchat once you get even a tiny bit active. small group servers kind of capture the feel, but still isn't meant for longform replies like this one, Feel free to mention if I missed the mark by a country mile. But I've been thinking about this for a while on why I can browse reddit for hours but can't stand instagram for more than a few minutes (aside from my resistance to give Facebook another account to mine data from). reddit has more discussion than I could ever read (perhaps even too much). Youtube comments are pretty low quality (in both formatting and content) but does the bare minimum needed to post stuff longer than a tweet. (That said, I've been getting way more into silly cat videos than I ever wanted to, so who knows?)

productceo 5y ago
This is very insightful. I didn't think of it from this angle, but I think you hit it on the nail that I find discussions among people, not unidirectional presentations from a tiktoker, interesting. Thanks for helping me see this!
zem 5y ago
that would also explain why (as someone asked in a different subthread) twitter's recommended posts don't get the sort of engagement tiktok does. on twitter you're there to see discussions among people you follow, and pushing random recommendations into the stream just adds noise and clutter.
exolymph 5y ago
This is 100% me. If I can't mainline a bunch of people's perspectives within minutes, I'm not interested. Video is waaayyy too slow. Granted, I also have an exception: I watch YouTube regularly, but I have to be doing something with my hands at the same time. And it's not an attention span thing — I read books. It's about the density of information and the speed with which I can traverse it. I can read as fast as I think, but even 2x speed videos don't get there. So without an additional activity to fill my whole attention space (is there a term for this? ADHD people might have one?) I get bored.

alliao 5y ago

you're rich :)

xtat 5y ago

Same feeling - I consume a ton online and keep trying tiktok but I'm consistently bored - just feels like the pop music equivalent of everything else.