| ▲ | weezing 9 hours ago |
| This form of content is bad regardless of platform. |
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| ▲ | CharlesW 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer). There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more. |
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| ▲ | Zak 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Here's a study showing an immediate negative impact on prospective memory from switching context repeatedly on short-form video platforms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107... Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects. | | |
| ▲ | sieste 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Scrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video? | | |
| ▲ | card_zero 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or browsing shelves in a bookshop. I've noticed I forget what I was doing ("prospective memory impairment") while looking for a good book. Also sometimes I annoy myself because I want to quit but I can't because I haven't found anything good yet. Whoops, where did the time go? So, ban bookshops. | |
| ▲ | diabllicseagull 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | you would hope that comments in a thread would stay in context, ideally. |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else. As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business". It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it. | | |
| ▲ | kelipso 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah that’s what memeing is. What is this, 2000s internet and we start discovering what memes are or something. | | |
| ▲ | saghm 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste... | | |
| ▲ | supern0va 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names. The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them? | |
| ▲ | inigyou 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | jatari 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can use youtube and never come across a "meme" like that. | | |
| ▲ | oefrha 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested. And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed. | | |
| ▲ | nobody9999 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | >And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed. And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century. This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_sitting [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_marathon |
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| ▲ | kelipso 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something. |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Memes were usually funny though. And just pictures so easily ignored if they weren't. I feel like this is just attention seeking. | | |
| ▲ | panick21 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos. | |
| ▲ | amarant 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Weren't memes always just that? I think we're just old | |
| ▲ | girvo 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part. |
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| ▲ | jeron 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else. congratulations on discovering mimesis | |
| ▲ | bmlzootown 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They've made it into an actual skit now? I remember when it was just a regular old meme. |
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| ▲ | Avicebron 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey.. edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem. | | |
| ▲ | CharlesW 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women… Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that). | |
| ▲ | amelius 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is that also short form? | | |
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| ▲ | ajam1507 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Short form video is the brainrot. |
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| ▲ | WD-42 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This. If people are looking for freedom, the thing to do is to stop using TikTok or anything like it, not to make a federated version of it. |
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| ▲ | amelius 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | A federated version could provide a path away from addictive and polarizing content, and endless viewing. | | |
| ▲ | CharlesW 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Exactly, BlueSky demonstrates that it's not the form, but the engagement-at-any-cost feed algorithms without user-controllable knobs. | | |
| ▲ | WD-42 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bluesky proved no such thing. Merge bluesky with truth social and you’d be back to the same thing again. Both platforms are just full of people retreating into smaller bubbles, the underlying issues are still there just less common. |
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| ▲ | runako 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'll come at it from another angle. Some of the most popular podcasts (and YouTubers) produce hours of long-form video (an acceptable format) daily. Without naming names, some of those convey less information in 2-3 hours of video than some short form creators do in 2-3 minutes. The medium influences the message, but the channel still matters. (And some messengers, especially public intellectuals, are not doing the long form video/audio at all. One prominent TikTok poster has a $$$$$ job as a public intellectual and outside of short form, the other options to consume his content involve $$$ subscriptions or $$$$ in-person events. I'll take his 5-minute videos over those alternatives.) Separately, I am chuckling at people saying TikTok is "all X" or "nothing but Y" or "overrun with Z." Do people still not know that statements like these are confessions? |
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| ▲ | hackable_sand 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Everyone keeps saying this But no one will say why |
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| ▲ | ahartmetz 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This seems like (probably) harm reduction, the approach to dealing with drug addiction. It's not great, but better than at least some alternatives. |
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| ▲ | hnthrowaway0315 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This. It is just mental drug. |
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| ▲ | cagenut 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | so is love this level of reductive thought termination goes nowhere |
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| ▲ | notepad0x90 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Alcohol is bad, regardless of the spirit you consume. Look at how prohibition worked out. It also shouldn't matter that it's bad, the only restriction should be for minors. Adults should be able to willfully enter addictive cycles. There are people that spend all their day gaming, watching twitch, scrolling on facebook, instagram. it isn't anyone's place to pick and choose which ones are acceptable and which ones aren't. society is already a sickening dystopian nanny system. |
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| ▲ | micromacrofoot 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sure but there are like 5 layers of bad with tiktok, this undoes at least 2-3 of them |
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| ▲ | pizza 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Why? |
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| ▲ | flawn 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | https://jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-of-the-post-litera... This is a great writeup on why short-form content is overall a net negative for us with a human brain. | |
| ▲ | sodapopcan 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I feel justified turning this around on you and asking what is good about it? It's disposable media. In and out of brain in seconds. There are any number of better ways to waste time let alone ones that don't show you ads. | | |
| ▲ | SpecialistK 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Better ways to waste time. If I'm on the toilet not having a fun time, pardon me for wanting to see some cat videos instead of solving a Rubik's Cube, I guess? | | |
| ▲ | sodapopcan 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're pardoned, but I have much more fond memories of magazine baskets in bathrooms. Today you should at least have a Switch in there ;) But also, of course people aren't just using these apps in the bathroom, they are using them everywhere. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't miss scrolling the bathroom. | | |
| ▲ | SpecialistK 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Economist app and Inoreader are higher on my front page than Instagram is, so I am being slightly tongue in cheek. But I do maintain that there is a place for mindless time killing. Life is stressful, I'm constantly switching between different projects and responsibilities, and a few minutes of mindless scrolling is nice. But it is very addicting and can very easily vacuum up many hours of time I can't get back. | | |
| ▲ | sodapopcan 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Oh ya, I did not mean to rag on mindless time killing! I just mean, I used to doodle or play guitar or drums far more often than I do now when I was looking for mindless distractions (which is not to say that any of those things can't also be mindful, which is maybe my point? I dunno). And of course I watched a lot of TV which, back then, was more limited so at least had the benefit of being able to use it as common ground when meeting new people. Nowadays it's a viral video that a million people have seen has not been seem by billions. Any even so, we could have a much more in depth conversation about Star Trek than an 8 second video we both happened to see. Anyway, I'm a bit crusty about the world right now so sorta going off. Don't mind me. |
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| ▲ | cwillu 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Magazines are exactly the same type swipe-every-few-seconds crap. | | |
| ▲ | sodapopcan 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | They are absolutely not the same! I mean, they come in all forms so yes, they are overlaps, but many magazines have long form articles that you can take in over several, uh, sessions. You can re-read them catching new things each time. As a guest, bathroom magazines had that funny specialness to them in that they were curated by the host. You get "recommendations" far outside of what The Algorithm would ever give you (this is actually how I learned about Scott Pilgrim comics 25 years ago). You're basically "forced" to read/look at something the host actually cares about which, if you were interested in the material after having some private time to digest it on your own, made for more meaningful conversations, way better than, "Hey! Check out this video I like! I'm going to watch with you and eagerly await your reaction!" |
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