5 ms·
This form of content is bad regardless of platform.
by weezing 8mo ago
This form of content is bad regardless of platform.
- CharlesW 8mo agoThe problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer). There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
- Avicebron 8mo agoI'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey.. edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
- amelius 8mo agoIs that also short form?
- Avicebron 8mo agoHow would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex
- CharlesW 8mo ago> I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women… Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
- ajam1507 8mo agoShort form video is the brainrot.
- wolvoleo 8mo agoThe problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else. As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business". It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
- kelipso 8mo agoYeah that’s what memeing is. What is this, 2000s internet and we start discovering what memes are or something.
- jatari 8mo agoYou can use youtube and never come across a "meme" like that.
- kelipso 8mo agoIt’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.
- oefrha 8mo agoI used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested. And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
- 8mo ago
- Zak 8mo agoHere's a study showing an immediate negative impact on prospective memory from switching context repeatedly on short-form video platforms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.2521076 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107... Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.
- sieste 8mo agoScrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video?
- diabllicseagull 8mo agoyou would hope that comments in a thread would stay in context, ideally.
- card_zero 8mo agoOr browsing shelves in a bookshop. I've noticed I forget what I was doing ("prospective memory impairment") while looking for a good book. Also sometimes I annoy myself because I want to quit but I can't because I haven't found anything good yet. Whoops, where did the time go? So, ban bookshops.
- pizza 8mo agoWhy?
- sodapopcan 8mo agoI feel justified turning this around on you and asking what is good about it? It's disposable media. In and out of brain in seconds. There are any number of better ways to waste time let alone ones that don't show you ads.
- SpecialistK 8mo agoBetter ways to waste time. If I'm on the toilet not having a fun time, pardon me for wanting to see some cat videos instead of solving a Rubik's Cube, I guess?
- sodapopcan 8mo agoYou're pardoned, but I have much more fond memories of magazine baskets in bathrooms. Today you should at least have a Switch in there ;) But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom.
- SpecialistK 8mo agoThe Economist app and Inoreader are higher on my front page than Instagram is, so I am being slightly tongue in cheek. But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice. But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back.
- sodapopcan 8mo agoOh ya, I did not mean to rag on mindless time killing! I just mean, I used to doodle or play guitar or drums far more often than I do now when I was looking for mindless distractions (which is not to say that any of those things can't also be mindful, which is maybe my point? I dunno). And of course I watched a lot of TV which, back then, was more limited so at least had the benefit of being able to use it as common ground when meeting new people. Nowadays it's a viral video that a million people have seen has not been seem by billions. Any even so, we could have a much more in depth conversation about Star Trek than an 8 second video we both happened to see. Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me.
- WD-42 8mo agoThis. If people are looking for freedom, the thing to do is to stop using TikTok or anything like it, not to make a federated version of it.
- amelius 8mo agoA federated version could provide a path away from addictive and polarizing content, and endless viewing.
- CharlesW 8mo agoExactly, BlueSky demonstrates that it's not the form, but the engagement-at-any-cost feed algorithms without user-controllable knobs.
- WD-42 8mo agoBluesky proved no such thing. Merge bluesky with truth social and you’d be back to the same thing again. Both platforms are just full of people retreating into smaller bubbles, the underlying issues are still there just less common.
- hnthrowaway0315 8mo agoThis. It is just mental drug.
- cagenut 8mo agoso is love this level of reductive thought termination goes nowhere
- runako 8mo agoI'll come at it from another angle. Some of the most popular podcasts (and YouTubers) produce hours of long-form video (an acceptable format) daily. Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes. The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters. (And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.) Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions?
- qotgalaxy 8mo ago[dead]
- hombre_fatal 8mo ago> Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes. Even if you have a 3-minute video that yammers off back-to-back facts to maximize info density, it's still low value because you've only spent 3 minutes with those facts. There's nothing a 3-minute video can do to compete with a good video 2-3 hour video due to the limitations of the medium. I would wager a 2-3 hour video of something you find worthless, like celebrity gossip, is preferable to the same thing in TikTok form because at least the longer video challenged you with following a narrative of some length. When you fill your time with TikTok videos, you're basically regressing to the mental activation normally relegated to babies and toddlers. I think it's fair to demand a little more aspiration of ourselves.
- micromacrofoot 8mo agoSure but there are like 5 layers of bad with tiktok, this undoes at least 2-3 of them
- ahartmetz 8mo agoThis seems like (probably) harm reduction, the approach to dealing with drug addiction. It's not great, but better than at least some alternatives.
- notepad0x90 8mo agoAlcohol is bad, regardless of the spirit you consume. Look at how prohibition worked out. It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles. There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system.
- hackable_sand 8mo agoEveryone keeps saying this But no one will say why