I'm a 40 year old geriatric millennial who is the only one amongst my friend group that loves TikTok. None of them get it. They say "isn't it just a bunch of te

I'm a 40 year old geriatric millennial who is the only one amongst my friend group that loves TikTok. None of them get it. They say "isn't it just a bunch of teenagers dancing?" Meanwhile, I'm on here following dudes wintering at the south pole, a captain of a container ship in the middle of the indian ocean, an orthodox rabbi in brooklyn, a physicist, a philosopher, a civic designer, and 10,000 hilarious meme makers and comedians who are remixing and lipsyncing and making incredible content that I can't even conceive of doing through a mobile interface. Most of THAT group are not famous anywhere else - their bios don't link to instagram or a management group. Some of these videos get longer - but nothing more than 5 mins. Concentrated deep dives into a single topic. Heavy on personality but otherwise mostly Signal, not Noise. Which is why it's also so hilarious folks in this thread rolling their eyes saying that people say that every platform gets ruined, but it never is. No, the NUMBERS go up. But the platforms have been ruined over and over and over again. None of my generation is on Facebook anymore. They are still on Instagram but exclusively to follow celebrities. There is no place in the world to just hang out and catch up with friends anymore - not a ubiquitous one anyway that we had through the 2000's. Even Reddit has lost all culture and is a ghosttown compared to what it use dto be. I'm not saying Tiktok is that. But what Tiktok has been for the last 3 years is UNIQUE. Special. Distinctive. It's own style, it's own brand of interesting and engaging. And this: > Then there’s the videos themselves. In a bid to compete with YouTube, TikTok is reportedly preparing to allow users to post 30-minute videos and prompting creators to upload horizontal content instead of the app’s standard vertical format. TikTok is even encouraging people to upload photo slideshows instead of videos altogether. On top of that, TikTok just fumbled a relationship with Universal Music Group, which pulled its music catalog off the platform and silenced any video featuring Taylor Swift, the Weeknd, and every other Universal artist. Will absolutely ruin it, if they don't quickly pivot and turn away. I don't mean "ruin" by pure user/engagement numbers. But ruin what currently makes it special in terms of connecting humanity to one another. That will go away and not come back somewhere else.