prophetgoddess

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this new errant signal video encouraged me to check out tik tok again and like, i finally get it? i had previously not given it enough time for the algorithm to figure out what i'm into, and i've been so disgusted by the shit they show people who've just signed up that i've uninstalled almost immediately. but after an evening of scrolling, tik tok finally cracked into my psyche and has given me a feed entirely consisting of:

  • egirl thirst traps
  • horny trans women
  • teenagers doing stupid shit

tiktok is the id of social media. on twitter, on cohost, even on youtube i mostly see a constructed version of what i enjoy. my twitter feed is mostly game developers. even though youtube's homepage is algorithmic, i still have a lot of control over it: i refuse to click on videos if the idea of clicking on a video with that title or thumbnail or subject matter makes me feel bad. this is my youtube homepage right now:

there's stuff in there i'm embarrassed about (ok there is exactly one thing i am embarrassed about in there and you know what it is) but overall it's stuff i would comfortably think of myself as enjoying watching. video essays about music and film, cooking videos, music, comedy, science explainers, a guy raising a grocery store lobster as a pet. normal stuff.

tiktok isn't like that. it just puts a video in front of you and the longer it takes you to think "i don't know if i want this," the more tiktok will think you definitely want it. on youtube, i click on videos not just because i want to watch them, but because i want to be the kind of person who watches those kinds of videos, or i see myself as that kind of person.

here's a representative cross section of my tik tok for your page:

if you'd asked me what i thought tiktok would show me, i'd guess maybe skateboarding videos, cooking videos, surreal comedy sketches, videos of teenagers doing dumb shit. instead it is wall to wall hot women with onlyfans pages, with some of that other stuff thrown in. tiktok knows me better than i know me.

is that good??? i don't know. i keep using the app, so i'm obviously getting something out of it. unlike other people i haven't seen an abundance of teenagers with awful opinions or Discourse or whatever.

in conclusion: if tik tok actually allowed adult content they would quintuple their revenue in a year.


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