Also would comport with the explanation that the Internet just gets worse and worse.
Will be interesting to see if kids who grew up with TikTok et al. will, as adults, view it as affectionately as we view our childhood form of the Internet. I do think there's something to be said of an overall trend toward more consumption, less production.
> there's something to be said of an overall trend toward more consumption, less production
I think this couldn't be further from the truth. You could argue that the production has been heavily centralized, but I think today more than ever we see kids in their early teens making videos on YouTube/TikTok, etc. It's different from other people's childhoods where you'd make geocities website or customize your myspace page or write blogs but it's still production nonetheless.
> I think today more than ever we see kids in their early teens making videos on YouTube/TikTok, etc. It's different from other people's childhoods where you'd make geocities website or customize your myspace page or write blogs but it's still production nonetheless.
You are correct, but there is a disappointing shift in the nature of said content.
GeoCities sites and the like were at least labors of love. Your site looked like shit but that's ok, nobody's going to see it anyway.
Tumblr was performative garbage that bridged LiveJournal/Myspace and Instagram. Your site looked like shit but if you say something controversial enough, you'll get a lot of views.
The YouTube/Instagram/TikTok crowd only optimize for engagement, to get as many views as possible. Everything is so over-the-top. You're not making anything out of love, you're making what gets you attention. Your content is professionally-polished and staged to attract eyeballs even if you have nothing to say. (No wonder everybody has an identity crisis; everyone's a child star that's been living for the camera since they got their first iPhone.)
That's also what happens when you turn hobbies into jobs that then become necessities. If you want to pay the bills you have to do and say controversial nonsense or be incredibly exaggerated.
I think TikTok is a substantial aberration on this trigger trend. It’s been great (as a non-user) seeing legitimately funny and creative stuff coming from that platform. It’ll be interesting to see if it stays that way or it does go the way (at least IMO) of YouTube and Instagram: quite commercialized.
Note: All of this based on impressions/vibes, would be keen to hear any stats if people around have ‘em on hand!
TikTok is extremely commercialized; even a lot of the "good" content is extremely carefully crafted part of the acquisition funnel for commercial activities.
I'm not knocking people liking it -- its like people liking SuperBowl ads; just because something is the very much marketing content doesn't mean its not fun and entertaining. But, the idea that becoming "quite commercialized" is a potential way it might go downhill in the future seems to miss that it is very much already there.
I've never used TikTok but definitely not surprised to hear this. I've certainly seen some interesting things escape the app, but yeah quite a shame to hear it's already over that hump already (or started over it)!
Given the investment involved (installing and using an app), I'd recommend trying yourself and drawing your own conclusions, rather than treating one person's experience as gospel
No thanks :) I’m extremely defensive of my information diet + attention allocation, and I know upfront that I don’t need to add a service like TikTok to the mix.
I’m not treating anyone’s experience as gospel in any case. There are no important decisions I’ll be making off this information.
I think the post you are replying to was trying to say this, but less precisely. It used to be that a MySpace, account profile on DeviantArt, Flickr, an online forum, or even a personal website was another human trying to connect with (or troll) someone, and that everyone was putting out content because that’s how you needed to exist.
Nowadays, I’m sure that 95% of all content I see is made by a media company for hire, mega corporation, or, most recently, word soup from an LLM where, in a strange twist of fate, I’m just a lab mouse in a giant, AI created A/B test trying to determine which option gets 0.2% more clicks. The age of casual creator is mostly over. Everything you do must be to build or enhance “your brand” and its a full time job to keep up with huge teams that automate the churn of information regurgitation, otherwise you’ll never be able to get enough of a following to qualify for perks that actual content creators make - and we’ve not even gotten to compensation yet. The gold rush of making money selling your brand online is over and it has been enshitified much like everything else novel and interesting in the world and on the internet.
as much as this doomer drivel might be true, it might be blinding you to the good parts and good people. just not seeing what's "novel and interesting", nor seeking it out.
I'm not sure a market is free in the sense people mean by that term when the market is dominated by network effects. A free market in that sense requires competition and the ability to upset existing players. As an example, you can't upset Google search, and even having a 80B company with an LLM integrated into a 2.5T company is having a hard time displacing them. If that's still a free market then I'm pretty sure we could claim the USSR was a free market and just that Stalin's Communism LLC dominated.
Honestly, 1994-1996ish web was in some ways worse -- yes, there was horrible stuff on Usenet, but you could avoid the worst of the text stuff pretty easily, and to be assaulted by any media other than text you had to expend at least a little effort.
In the early web, you were just a poorly chosen search term and click away from some truly awful media.
That was a definite trial by fire period of accessing the internet. I imagine there exist similar areas today but I’m experienced enough to know I don’t need to go in search of them.
Will be interesting to see if kids who grew up with TikTok et al. will, as adults, view it as affectionately as we view our childhood form of the Internet. I do think there's something to be said of an overall trend toward more consumption, less production.