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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
by 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 agoHow do you find these? I've given up on the app multiple times. Never got beyond being shown teenagers doing teenage things.
- captainmuon 5y agoMaybe 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 agoTikTok 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".