Is TikTok A Good Thing? | DEEP DIVE

00:00:00.000 | I want to get into this a good old fashioned deep dive, just a random idea on my mind that I want to try to dig into more.

00:00:12.400 | So let's do a deep dive to start today's episode.

00:00:14.840 | And the question I want to tackle is the following is TikTok a good thing?

00:00:22.120 | No, it seems like an unusual question for me to be asking.

00:00:26.880 | There's a lot about this service TikTok that does not exactly seem to be right up my Cal Newport style alley.

00:00:34.320 | Right.

00:00:35.120 | I mean, I am not a huge fan of the fact that they are trying to basically cut out the middleman and just make a direct path to your brainstem.

00:00:45.240 | It takes addictive entertainment and says, well, can't we just pump that up to 11 instead of making this accidentally addictive?

00:00:52.920 | Why don't we actually just get the absolute perfect format with the exact right music cues and just shoot these things that people want after another with an algorithm driving it?

00:01:00.320 | I don't love that.

00:01:01.000 | I don't love the fact that they manipulate the content creators emotional systems to get them to spend more time doing it.

00:01:07.840 | TikTok just says they admit it.

00:01:10.520 | We manipulate your views like a slot machine that gives you a few quarters every once in a while so that you'll keep pulling that proverbial handle.

00:01:17.920 | So if you're new to TikTok, they will early on show your video to a lot of people.

00:01:22.720 | So you feel like you're right on the cusp of breaking out that people really like what you have to do, that you have this audience out there and then they pull it back.

00:01:29.280 | They withhold.

00:01:30.000 | No views, no views.

00:01:31.800 | And they'll show it to a lot more people.

00:01:33.120 | Another video, you're like, oh, I'm almost there.

00:01:34.600 | I got to keep going.

00:01:35.480 | I almost had three cherries.

00:01:36.880 | And if I get three cherries, I'm going to be Kim Kardashian.

00:01:38.800 | I don't love all that.

00:01:39.800 | Wouldn't be my favorite thing to do.

00:01:43.600 | But I'm very interested and I have a very optimistic view on TikTok because I believe it represents an evolution in the social media industry that ultimately is a very positive evolution.

00:01:57.040 | We've talked about this before in various question answers scattered throughout recent episodes.

00:02:02.320 | I wanted to consolidate these thoughts right here into this deep dive.

00:02:07.040 | Starting around 2012, 2013, we entered this period of monopoly social media platforms that brought with them, and this was the key part, an expectation of universal usage.

00:02:20.080 | So there was this era of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and a few other claimants to the throne that came and went, where not only did everyone use them, but it was weird if you didn't.

00:02:34.080 | And again, I talk about this a lot on this show, but I know that from firsthand experience, because I was pilloried for not using these services.

00:02:41.360 | It was considered extreme.

00:02:43.240 | It was considered monastic and unusual.

00:02:47.520 | There is people that were driven to anger by the concept that I wasn't on these platforms that wanted to debate me publicly and couldn't imagine it.

00:02:56.320 | I was ambushed on national radio shows, the New York Times commissioned op-eds just about the weirdness of not taking social media serious and Cal not using it.

00:03:05.840 | I mean, it was a technology that was assumed you had to use.

00:03:10.360 | And this was the piece of the social media revolution that always made me really uncomfortable.

00:03:15.200 | I used to say this again and again.

00:03:18.000 | I think social media should be like Game of Thrones, something that a lot of people really like and enjoy, but there's also a ton of people that have nothing to do with it.

00:03:26.560 | And that's what it should be like.

00:03:28.120 | And it wasn't.

00:03:28.840 | It was like if you didn't know what the dragon riders' spells were in Game of Thrones, you were going to be yelled at.

00:03:36.280 | That's what it was like for a while.

00:03:37.560 | TikTok represents something different.

00:03:40.440 | TikTok is pure entertainment.

00:03:44.760 | And the way we got to TikTok, the way we got there is that the social media services that we've talked about before on the show, they used to be about connection.

00:03:52.040 | It used to be about everyone you know is on here.

00:03:54.360 | This is where everyone is.

00:03:55.880 | This will connect you to those people, people you know.

00:03:58.080 | You have to use our service because your cousin's not on this new service.

00:04:01.560 | Your cousin's on Facebook.

00:04:02.520 | If you want to know what your cousin's up to, you have to be on Facebook.

00:04:04.560 | And then they shifted and said, how do we get these people to click on our app more?

00:04:08.280 | And they said, let's be about entertainment.

00:04:09.800 | We're going to give you a newsfeed or infinite scroll timeline of interesting things to look at.

00:04:15.000 | So they shifted away from connecting you to people you know and towards let's give you a infinite scrolling torrent of algorithmically optimized content.

00:04:22.440 | And it was in that world that TikTok said, hold my beer.

00:04:25.080 | If that's what we're doing, why don't we just do that?

00:04:27.520 | Well, forget like posts from your cousin, forget, you know, Ben Shapiro articles being retweeted.

00:04:34.360 | Let's just go straight to the jugular here.

00:04:36.320 | Videos with music and they move really fast and they're short and it's one after another, one after another, one after another.

00:04:43.880 | And we aggressively use algorithms to find the video that you really want to watch.

00:04:48.080 | They just cut out the middleman and purified this infinite stream entertainment model.

00:04:52.160 | And the reason why this is a good thing is that it does not bring with it an expectation of universal usage.

00:04:58.920 | Yes, TikTok is very popular right now.

00:05:01.640 | There's over a billion users worldwide.

00:05:03.920 | That's a very popular service, but no one thinks it's weird if you don't use it.

00:05:11.720 | If I say I don't use TikTok, people say, I don't care.

00:05:14.200 | It's like saying, I don't watch Game of Thrones.

00:05:16.120 | People say, well, I mean, I'm a little surprised you do seem like a nerd, but like, I'm not mad at you.

00:05:20.600 | I'm not threatening to debate you.

00:05:22.960 | I'm not ambushing you on radio shows.

00:05:24.560 | I'm not commissioning New York Times op-eds about why aren't you using it?

00:05:28.120 | Because it's just entertainment and it's good at it for now.

00:05:32.720 | And it has cultural relevance and then other things will come along.

00:05:35.320 | And I think this is a very positive movement because once we have shifted these platforms to pure diversion,

00:05:41.800 | we've gotten rid of the network effect advantage that everyone, you know, needs to be on these platforms.

00:05:46.880 | It opens the door for a lot of competition.

00:05:50.120 | It opens the door for a lot of varieties and it opens the door for a lot of different personal preferences about how they engage with these media.

00:05:56.320 | Seven years ago, it was incredibly difficult to be 21 and not using Facebook.

00:06:03.440 | Today, no one cares if you don't use TikTok.

00:06:06.160 | And TikTok will come and it will go.

00:06:07.760 | And there will be three other things that come in its wake.

00:06:10.040 | And then there'll be 12 other things that come in those wakes.

00:06:11.960 | And some people will use those services and some people will use long tail social media services where you pay a little bit of money and it's a niche crowd and it's very niche information.

00:06:19.640 | And some people will ignore social media altogether and use podcasts and streaming services.

00:06:24.080 | And there's going to be a whole variety of different fragmented, varied approaches to diversion and entertainment.

00:06:31.800 | And I think that's fine. And that's a perfectly fine use of the Internet.

00:06:34.280 | And once we're away from this expectation of universal usage, people now have breathing room.

00:06:38.800 | And they can start to say, what do I value?

00:06:41.360 | What do I want to spend my time on?

00:06:42.480 | And in digital minimalist fashion, construct lives that use technology in a useful way.

00:06:46.280 | That was impossible to do when you would be looked at like a leper if you weren't on Instagram.

00:06:54.680 | It's very easy to do in a world that we're heading towards in which there's 17 TikTok clones and 50 other types of things that people use and everyone uses their own combination of things for entertainment and diversion.

00:07:05.320 | In that world, you can create combinations that are good for you without raising an eyebrow.

00:07:09.560 | So, yes, I don't love TikTok as a service in the sense that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.

00:07:14.640 | I don't know that I would say that it is a good thing if you were spending hours of your day on it.

00:07:19.760 | But as a indicator about where the industry is going, I think it's positive that it exists and is so popular because it is a death knell for that age of monopoly universal usage.

00:07:32.720 | It is a death knell for that age where if you weren't on one of these three platforms, you were somehow outcast from society.

00:07:39.080 | That was, as I always said, a weird temporary period.

00:07:42.960 | And I am thankful that I think now we are moving out of it.

00:07:49.440 | What's my thoughts on TikTok? Have you used it, Jesse?

00:07:52.160 | I've never used TikTok.

00:07:53.800 | Yeah.

00:07:54.280 | I have some good buddies who use it in the lacrosse world.

00:07:57.960 | Yeah. But see, that's what's good about this.

00:08:00.040 | And it's not a surprising or weird thing that you haven't used TikTok.

00:08:03.960 | Whereas this was five years ago.

00:08:05.800 | If I was like, "Hey, have you ever used Facebook?" and you said no, that'd be a weird thing.

00:08:11.520 | That would be an unusual thing.

00:08:13.280 | Where here, it's like, "Yeah, I have some buddies who use it."

00:08:15.360 | And you probably have a bunch of buddies who don't.

00:08:16.840 | Exactly.

00:08:18.520 | Yeah. I think that's better.

00:08:19.560 | I think that's better.

00:08:20.280 | So I'm not anti-TikTok.

00:08:22.240 | Again, I'm not using it myself, but...

00:08:24.560 | Until you start doing your dancing video.

00:08:27.720 | Well, again, yeah, that's what we should do.

00:08:29.280 | We've talked about that before.

00:08:30.720 | That's really what's going to break open this channel is going to be, we lean in heavy on TikTok.

00:08:36.520 | And, wait, no, I thought the idea was that you would be dancing aggressively in the background while I was delivering the information.

00:08:43.960 | Yeah, that's right.

00:08:44.560 | Yeah.

00:08:44.880 | Yeah.

00:08:45.440 | Holding a lacrosse stick.

00:08:46.760 | That's going to do it.

00:08:47.760 | That will drive the very last, the very last listener off of our show.

00:08:52.320 | The very last listener off of our show.

00:08:54.320 | [Chuckles]

00:08:55.960 | [Outro music]

Is TikTok A Good Thing? | DEEP DIVE | Episode 176

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