I agree with what everyone’s saying here. I don’t think I qualify as old. I was a teenager when it first blew up. It’s designed to be addictive, extremely short form content has produced an absolute gutter of content. The success of it’s brain-mining operation is now being mimicked by every other form of entertainment on the planet. Everything’s got 15 cuts per second, 50 things flying around on screen at once, and so on. It feels like tiktok woke companies up to the fact that you don’t need good content, you just need hyperstimulation.

As well as all of that, I think tiktok tracks with the rise of onlyfans. In itself, the whole debate of self-prostitution is difficult. I understand that onlyfans is a preferable alternative to every other form of pornography production. However, the way it’s advertised on tiktok to kids doesn’t sit right with me, especially when it’s wrapped up as part of the brain goo. As in, you get the visual hyperstimulation of colours and noises, but you also get stimulation that appeals to a sexual desire which is so innate to being human. It gives you those brain chemicals to keep you on the app. Then these onlyfans models get a huge following of teenagers, and as a result you see a worsening of the already bad porn addiction situation that came about with the ease of access the internet provides. I’m not blaming the onlyfans models for it - it’s a symptom of a much larger problem of capitalism induced isolation and commodification of our very minds.