The hilarious thing about people who defend TikTok with personal anecdotes is that for every person whose timeline is “educational and insightful short clips of

The hilarious thing about people who defend TikTok with personal anecdotes is that for every person whose timeline is “educational and insightful short clips of woodworking and the migration of sea cows in Norway” there are hundreds of thousands of other people who are sucked into…whatever it is that the author of this article is fascinated by and much more. These types of viewers are essentially no different from each other..it’s already been described better than I can put it; the passive consumption of information that is interesting to us (and algorithmically tailored) and mimics the feeling of joyfulness or whatever emotion used to justify the action. In truth, I bargain that no one on the internet is exempt from this, except for people who use computers like they are DARPA interns (which I think is the best way to go about it these days). TikTok is appealing to people because it appeals directly to their desire for mindless consumption (mindless as in engagement, not necessarily always in content, for the “I learned how to book bind on TikTok!” crowd), whether they are aware of it or not. People have been using social media for some decades now, you think the average person can tell that’s what they’re after these days? “I want to simulate the feeling of enlightenment but I don’t want to it in any effort”. The people who say, “But they said bad things about TV and radio and…” are missing the point. Because those suck too and were precursors to the shenanigans that resulted in TikTok…TikTok…TikTok…we’re wasting our time.