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> I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok.

Well, you are. That's true for all of the "attention economy".



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> I found it annoying and taxing.

You've managed to find the word I've been looking for to describe why I don't like TikTok. It feels taxing. It makes my head spin and after a couple minutes I feel exhausted. Maybe my brain's just too slow and sensitive.


> The worst thing is that these apps addict one to unrealistic expectations and instant gratifications.

I mean, there's also racism, sexism, white nationalism, etc. that TikTok occasionally dumps into your feed to test your engagement with it in order to improve the psychographic profile it uses to decide what to throw at you next. (To be clear, this is not hypothetical, this is my personal experience with it.)


> I get very frustrated when I see posts on TikTok

Well, there’s your problem.


> You can typically tell within the first 5 seconds whether the video is for you

You most definitely can't. The vast majority of TikTok's are extremely clickbait-y and entice you to watch till the end without you knowing if there will be a payoff.

When I first started using TikTok I felt like I was constantly getting scammed of my time.

I think TikTok is the worst social media platform. It's extremely easy to waste a large amount of time on it and come away with nothing.


>Is it me

I think it's you, because I see criticism levied against TikTok here all the time.


> Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup

Honestly from the description you wrote it just does not seem like TikTok is the right platform for you.

What I like about it is the light-heartedness of it, I don't see political content at all and I wouldn't really be interested if I got any as it's a pretty terrible platform for news and hot takes. Instead, I get cooking/funny/cute/surreal meme videos that match the Gen Z humor. It distracts me from gloomy Twitter/Facebook feeds.

It's not an app for serious content, it's a dopamine treadmill.


> It feels like they are making a real attempt to take my agency away

Have kids. They will claim your agency for themselves, and you’ll have none left for TikTok.


> Have you used tiktok? There’s nothing about it that isn’t addictive.

I tried it for a week or so, found it not very interesting and gave up.


> It tells more about what kind of content you are liking and watching than anything else.

This sounds very much like victim-blaming, I don't think it's appropriate to side with TikTok on this.


> Someone at Tiktok decided that I had to receive this kind of content, no matter what, because of my age and location and sex probably. They were pushing an agenda.

love your conspiracy theory


> "At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data."

Smells like jealousy to me.


>I have given TikTok several tries, spent hours

Why would you do that lol? Do you really have FOMO for the next garbage social media dopamine machine that simply wants to hijack your attention to sell ads and get you addicted to zombie scrolling like every other instance before it? Why does it have to work for you? I think you have your answer at this point.

It's just another garbage lowest common denominator mass content farm and memes. It doesn't have to be nor isn't something more profound than that, and in fact with it's short content length and more sophisticated AI it's just like everything before but worse.

You can certainly just dismiss it and occupy your limited time doing something else more productive or fulfilling.


> People say things like this in an attempt at shaming the original poster but one thing not considered is the location of the person using TikTok.

That's a good point. I was wondering about the initial seed of the feed.

It wasn't my intention to shame though.

Until tiktok has something like channels or theme/tag subscription it will remain a problem.


> Tiktok is full of girls dancing with very little or very tight clothes on for likes and attention.

Even if that was true, so what? While the venue changes, that’s what bitter elders always complain about about youth culture, to the point where it being a recognized cliche is ancient.

> On top of that it is designed to be addicting for the sake of addiction.

All of social media (and most of the web, and much offline entertainment) is optimized around engagement, to the same extent. There’s nothing special about TikTok here.


>I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media.

>If you are susceptible to media addiction I suggest never downloading it.

These are the two big takeaways I've had from using the app for a day. Everything about it is designed to be a sinkhole, like a modern casino where they're gambling with your attention. I know a lot of people who use Facebook/Instagram/TikTok compulsively, and it ruins them to a degree. I think (or hope, at least) the future is headed towards more personal communique (a-la Discord, Slack, Matrix, etc.)


>TikTok is just a new pig at the trough.

This issue isn't a bee stuck in my presonal bonnet, but this is a fraudulent response that convinces nobody that didn't already agree with you. I'll explain why.

The people complaining about TikTok were probably complaining about the others for ages too.

Those complainers were shouted down with some version of "well, they're not THAT bad."

Now there is one actor that is seen (at least by some) as worse than the others. The difference in the actor is being raised as a reason to care about their actions (and maybe renew concern about the category of actions at large).

Your response that their actions are not novel is either ignorant or perpetuating a fraud.


>TikTok content comes across as completely vapid.

I think that's exactly the point.

Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and (to a lesser extent) YouTube are weapons of psychological warfare that have been optimised to spread political misinformation and outrage.

TikTok, on the other hand, is just hot chicks dancing, stupid memes and Shrugging Black Italian Man. It reminds me a lot of old YouTube in that regard.


> Anyway, TikTok is working great for me.

I mean there are productive members of our society that are heroine addicts, the vast majority of heroine addicts aren't though


> I have ADHD. TikTok is almost certainly designed in a way to directly exploit that fact.

Can you share any evidence that TikTok was designed to exploit people with ADHD? Where do you get such confidence for this claim?

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