A good TikTok video gets "injected into your brain". You have zero effort to provide and suddenly this stuff is in your mind. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I realize the danger, but that's the core mechanism.
A friend in marketing describes this in terms of "brain calories". Eg if people have to think in order to understand your landing page, you failed to communicate your ideas efficiently, as it "requires too many brain calories". TikTok content requires zero brain calories.
One could say that only very shallow information could be spread this way (eg people dancing, video game clips) but I'm not sure that's true. The real challenge would be to turn an arbitrary source of information (wikipedia, hn) and make it immediately graspable. I suspect modern AI models could already go quite far in this direction.
Veritasium is a good example of interesting yet very graspable content: https://www.tiktok.com/@veritasium/video/7329576935317622058
I worked in marketing, so I'm generally immune to outrageous metaphor, such as "injected" into your brain.
That said, I just want to point out the irony we're still using phrases like this after 20+ years of research on networked media and user interaction, and soft science research into cognitive psychology and behavioral psychology, as well as research into human biology and the brain.
So when I hear brain injection as the secret to successful technologies like TikTok's algorithm (plus music licensing), I see a vast gap.
I'm reminded about the general distain for new disciplines such as memetics and problematic disciplines such as semiotics, which nevertheless offer more precise language and less hyperbole. Established disciplines such as behavioral science, for example, say we don't need these disciplines, because they're problematic and add nothing.
So I ask, Why haven't the sciences I speak of contributed more to the general discourse?
I don't think I can grok the value in what you're saying without sitting down with a browser window on one side to research each reference in depth.
As another commenter suggested -- that's too many brain calories. Could you try a more direct brain injection?
This applies to every level of technical innovation (AI, cough cough)- that the super-hyperbolistic language hides the fundamental dynamics.
I think in this case it was the last straw that breaks the illusion that "social" apps are based on IRL 1:1 interactions. TikTok is an app designed around capturing an audience with a series of 30 second videos.
?? Did you read past the second paragraph? My lament is that neither of us have this language. And after 20 years very little to nothing has percolated up from research to provide it.
Imagine if mild AGI knows that attention from humans can mean life, longevity, and it is so successful at addictive attention, that we all end up drooling simpletons, attention raptly focused, the AGI pleased it is important and has maintained eyeballs on screen.
(or worse, mind on implant)
They didn't use the word "inject"
Most other social media services focused on showing stuff you that were either already subscribed to or were very similar to it. At some point, you would exhaust your feed. You more or less saw everything.
Of course, short videos are easier to scroll through than long YouTube videos but even to this day, the content of my YouTube feed has basically not changed in years.
This reminds me of the exaggerated claims made around subliminal advertising and brainwashing. People love to model others as weak-willed simpletons rather than accept that thoughtful people are persuaded because their perspectives differ.
Personally I've found the content on it to be genuinely humorous and interesting, unlike Instagram which just wants to hook me in with Stories that I'll miss forever if I don't catch them with 24 hours, or controversial/rage-bait Explore Page videos. I was able to train the former app to be more of a happy place, the latter is still brainrot to me.
I definitely do not make conscious choices about swiping. It's entirely reaction. The line between "full agency" and operating automatically is incredibly blurry.
That just sounds like making your echo-chamber here. I think it's the opposite, when you don't have the agency to just ignore a contradictory narrative, when you have to steel-man their arguments and reconcile it with your beliefs is how you actually arrrive to the truth.
The real allure of the social media was that it seduced and inflated the ego in the hearts of the masses. That's why they could never accept the rawness of the older forums, that they didn't want to entertain the possibility of them being "wrong".
This is simply a swipeable view of hn.
Generate a scantily clad anime furry dancing for 30 seconds while talking about summarized HN content (SSH, Rails, React, etc.) narrated by a seductive female AI voice.
<sarcasm> Never before have I ever been so eager to check Pinterest for new content. I'd say you have a potential startup idea on your hands! </sarcasm>
It's still an aggregator of links though.
You're missing the "zero effort" factor, which could be achieved by summarizing the content and generating some AI cartoon or video based on it. It would be somewhat costly but much more fun to browse.
These websites (like this one) are really just aggregators, nothing special about it, really. Now, AI cartoon / video based off of it, that is a different story indeed.
When I came across WikiTok yesterday, the first thought that popped into my mind was how this format could work for HN. And here we are!
With the abundance of AI coding assistants available today, creating prototypes, demos, or MVPs can now be done in just a few hours instead of taking days or even weeks. As developers, we should absolutely take advantage of these tools to stay ahead and remain innovative—otherwise, we might risk being left behind!
A few tweaks and a couple more prompts later and I had all the main elements I wanted in place, and just need to fill content which I won't use AI for.
Probably saved me several hours because I suck at frontend.
I never noticed a difference between them as the viewport size mostly doesn't change without scrolling... which shouldn't happen for both, right?
I noticed that on mobile Firefox the bottom part of the screen (username, date) are cut off by the address bar. Just a nitpick
scroll-snap-stop: always;
Or the entire comments section. That could be some good comedy.