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> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
by bearjaws 2y ago
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
- martythemaniak 2y agoYou're both right! There was a good article/discussion on on this yesterday, but tldr: They are authentically fake! As in, the creators are not putting up a show with a 'real' person behind the persona, the algorithms have remade whatever person there use to be such that their 'authentic' self has become the persona. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42696691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42696691
- thorum 2y agoYour perception of TikTok likely depends on your TikTok for you page. If you spend time cultivating it, the algorithm will learn you like authenticity and show you more of it. This seems to be less true on YouTube and Reels unfortunately.
- Salgat 2y agoThe algorithm will spoonfeed you content that you perceive a certain way, whether that's true or not is a different story. Unfortunately for most people, all those hilarious situations that are not-so-obviously staged just fly over their heads as genuine. My wife is smart and well educated, but I even had to keep correcting her when she showed me videos that she believed were genuine.
- boringg 2y agoI think a lot of people fall for the feels authentic and confuse it with authentic. Also a lot of people cant tell the difference.
- raydev 2y agoA lot of people are simply pessimists and will dismiss real authenticity because they don't have the tools to recognize it.
- pixl97 2y agoBecause the internet is filled by slop shit by people trying to make a buck from it. It's like saying I don't know how to recognize non-spam when I end up blocking 99.99% of all mail showing up at the server. I do recognize non-spam, it's just that I know most of it is crap.
- snoman 2y agoI don’t know that it’s people trying to make a buck - and that seems a bit silly of a thing to say to begin with. I presume you try to make your buck doing whatever it is you do. What I will say is that it’s definitely a different form of expression from what we’ve had beyond recent history and - at the same time - artists, photographers, painters, jesters, philosophers, and playwrights have been trying to live off their form of expression for a while now too.
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- mhh__ 2y agoThe algorithm is genuinely very good. That's why I deleted it. It's very addictive and not always just shoveling slop. I don't know if I can do it justice but there's something genuinely quite fresh about the AI stuff I see every now and again e.g. Anna from the red scare podcast shilling industrial glycine was a meme for a while. Very Land-ian. Neo-china...
- sitkack 2y agoSame reason I never touched prismatic after its first load. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prismatic_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prismatic_(app) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=prismatic&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- esafak 2y agoPrismatic served the news. You can only get so addicted to Reuters!?
- lostlogin 2y agoFox manages to do ok.
- HenryBemis 2y agoBack in the day when I was using Windows Mobile (2002-2008) there was an app (RSS basic) that was pulling the news from various websites (I had added BBC, CNN, some with IT news, etc.). Before I would leave home I'd sync it, and it would give me 'many' news articles, just the text ofc. At some point I got addicted into reading news, so out it went. So yes, anything that gives you dopamine hits (cat videos, semi-naked men/women, news of the world), must go!
- sitkack 2y agoPrismatic was even worse (better?), IIRC it scanned your twitter feed and then gave you a set research articles, academic websites, etc. To say I have a breadth of interests is an understatement. My twitter feed looks like arxiv and and a british tabloid had a baby. What prismatic gave me was pages and pages of Art, Design, Philosophy, Mathematics, Literature and all of it hours to days old. Every single article it back I wanted to read and there was pages of it, never ending. There was no way I could even filter out what read and even what to be aware of, there was simply too much. I closed it and never went back. I also realized that even knowing of knowing is itself a Faustian bargain, we are all on a temporary atoll in a giant sea.
- fullshark 2y agoIt's where the young kids who don't know any better overshare. Instagram is where the perfectly manicured young adults put out a phony facade to make their money.
- t-writescode 2y agoMy TikTok feed is full of very much adults and who own small businesses. I’ve seen some people in college, but there’s no kids in my feeds.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- snoman 2y agoHm. I’m a grown man and I post reels to all the platforms. I like the tech and enjoy trying to emulate a professional process with prosumer equipment and practices (filming, editing, color grading, sound design, etc.). After about 30 or so reels this year, I’ve got about 70 followers - half of which are definitely bots, a third are family/friends, and the rest seem to be real people. My feed has a lot of people like me, and people whose content I think is at the quality I’d like to be at (mostly photographers, videographers, small but full-time YouTubers). Maybe you’re just finding what you’re looking for.
- robrtsql 2y agoI don't know if I would characterize TikTok as 'authentic' first and foremost, but it's a platform where real people go to perform. When I scrolled TikTok, I would often get poorly-shot videos from average folks trying to put their spin on the day's joke format, or reacting to that day's outrage. It was junk food, but at least somewhat 'real'. My Reels feed, on the other hand, is 100% bot drivel. It's all stolen viral videos by artificially-boosted accounts, and the comments appear to be fake comments that were 'paid for'. I assume there must be some sort of financial incentive to gaming the system this way. The end result is that TikTok feels like scrolling through (attention-grabbing, reactionary) stuff by real people, and Reels feels like scrolling through some sort of bot wasteland. I guess I should add that, due to its size, TikTok almost certainly also has a bot problem, but if it does it's not as clearly evident in a way that is detrimental to the platform.
- alex1138 2y agoI genuinely have no idea what Zuckerberg is responsible for at Facebook other than hijacking credentials (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433) and stealing/copying ideas Anyone with half a brain ought to have come up with a better system than Reels is
- kyle_grove 2y agoI would use the word 'fresh' for TikTok; like old school YouTube, there's quirkiness and variety.
- xnx 2y agoExactly. In other threads on hacker news people have bemoaned the loss of the old weird web. I don't think anyone believed me that the same spirit exists in some sides of TikTok.
- krapp 2y agoI remember seeing threads here about how TikTok reminded people of the old web. It's wild seeing attitudes shift so completely.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoYou have to break it in, strangely enough. When I first used it it was like being logged out and watching Reels. But overtime it really understood what might interest me, even topics I didn't think I'd be interested in but was
- xnx 2y agoExactly. Despite using TikTok since mid 2019, I recognized very few of the top 20 accounts.
- Waterluvian 2y agoYeah… TikTok is absolutely chock full of garbage for me, whether or not I’m logged out. YouTube Shorts are not bad now for this kind of thing. I’m guessing it’s based on my subscriptions so it’s already off to a good start for me.
- adamrezich 2y agoMy wife hates it when I don't enjoy the TikTok videos she sends me, because it's very easy for me to tell how staged and fake they are. She, on the other hand, neither notices nor cares. This would be concerning, if I didn't know that this way of thinking was incredibly common these days—instead, it's mildly terrifying.
- johnisgood 2y agoI enjoy movies, even though they are staged.
- frogcoder 2y agoEverybody knows movies are staged, even the ones that are "based on a true story". From what I can tell, people seem to think those short videos are genuine.
- shiroiushi 2y agoEveryone knows movies are staged, and they expect this. No one in their right mind wants to go to a theater and pay $20 for some crap that someone shot on their phone with no script. With the short videos, people expect them to be genuine, and not highly staged productions meant to entertain.
- bobbobington 2y agoI think better comparison would be documentaries and reality tv.
- johnisgood 2y agoNo, I watch these kind of videos expecting them to be fake. Why would I expect otherwise when I have every reason to expect them to be non-genuine? If people's expectations are not right, that is on them.
- kortilla 2y agoDo you friends think they are real and get mad when you point out that they aren’t?
- carabiner 2y agoThe lady with the rug story, the tik tok recipes... All felt very real, down to earth to me. Versus IG's obsession with glamor, travel stories, other hucksters.
- op00to 2y agoStrange. Until about a month ago, my IG feed was almost all independent and amateur musicians, interesting tech makers (NOT reviewers or “influencers”, and some alt comedy. Suddenly, in the past 4 weeks, my feed is all political propaganda from the far right, ads, and more ads. I deleted Instagram because of the change. I’m done. Never used TikTok, it seemed totally fake to me.
- boringg 2y agoI think Im in your universe…how do we get out?
- JimmaDaRustla 2y agoIf you spent 10 minutes on each platform, you'd immediately realize how tone-deaf and naive your comment is.
- winternett 2y agoAs someone who's been on TikTok for years now, it's extremely fake, the algorithm is a total ruse, as most of what trends is based on seeing news stories repeated hundreds of times, and most other content has the same repetitive music behind it... Far too much repetition and subtle seminaries in trending content, down to the way videos are color graded to be honestly real & organic... I've had a few videos go viral, but most things that do go viral are memes, the minute you want to push out anything remotely serious or related to business, they want money to let it pass the visibility gate. I won't miss it if it does get banned. It's stressed so many people out for no good reason, and sucked up millions of hours of free labor from unrecognized & unpaid creators that deserve better. That doesn't mean that any Meta product is good for content creators mind you.
- __alias 2y agowhat types of videos have made that have gone viral?
- whateveracct 2y agoTikTok has a lot of true believers.
- theshrike79 2y agoJust did a test, opened up TikTok 1) a guy telling me in my native language (not english) how to spot phishing scams 2) another guy doing a short video about how much you need to invest to retire in my native language 3) Donald's AG not answering simple questions directly 4) video about 2CV ice racing where people leisurely drive old Citroens 5) A skit by an Australian dude who has a wall full of Milwaukee tools Instagram Reels 1) A couple doing a very much scripted skit 2) A stolen clip from an old 90s sitcom 3) one-liner joke 4) A dude farting 5) A homophobic "joke" video Youtube Shorts 1) pro skier made up to look old doing tricks on the slope 2) A couple I don't know showing what they looked like in 1988 3) A skit by a couple 4) One of those weird youtube-only dating channels reposting a clip of their stuff 5) Americans not knowing how to drive on icy roads in 2022 The quality difference is so clear that it's not even funny. In my experience all of the good content in Reels is just reposted/stolen TikTok content. Shorts has the same or snippets of bigger YT videos. FB Reels is so bad I don't even want to give them the engagement metrics.
- stouset 2y agoHave you considered that Reels is so bad precisely because you don’t use it? Mine: A bit from the SF Chronicle on the LA fires. A comedy/info bit by Alex Falcone. An Ad. A wrestling technique (I’m into judo and BJJ). A card trick. Cooking techniques. An ad. It’s ad-heavy and frankly I don’t try to spend a lot of time on it. But as somebody who uses it at least some, I get absolutely zero of the kind of garbage you suggest.
- wholinator2 2y agoTiktok is serving you better things because 1) more people post there 2) you've used it much more and given them huge amounts of data on who you are and what your like to watch, when. I can assure you those tiktok things are not the top of everyone's feed, sounds personalized. But your list for reels, and the other one sounds like the basic things they show to new people to try to figure out what they like, possibly somewhat curated by some past swipes. Each of these are just algorithms. They get better the more you use them because your use = your data and personality and you've just used tiktok enough that they know _exactly_ what you like and who you are. Give it time, the others will come along if people use them
- chvid 2y agoFake compared to what? Alt-right Zuck with a fresh perm? Seriously. US social media is taking a massive turn to the right while its owners are swearing allegiance to Trump. To most of the world that is a much more real danger than the Chinese communists.
- nottorp 2y agoAll the major social networking things are fake, no matter how they feel to one particular user. However, the US seems to ban only the options where it's not US companies making money off their users...
- curt15 2y agoIt's commensurate with how China treats foreign companies. Nobody can do serious business in China without the CCP's blessing, often involving a "partnership" with a local company.
- nottorp 2y agoMaybe, but the point is the US government is not concerned with privacy or addictive effects of 'engagement'.
- luckman212 2y agoGot any room over in your universe? I'm feeling pretty tired of this one.