How TikTok mended itself into our Lives?

Humans and apes are related in more ways than just one. Apart from the similar anatomy and physiology what puts us in a league of our own is the big shiny bundle of nerves carefully stashed in our heads. Every now and then the staggering difference in our mental capacities is diminished by a few phenomena that leave us reassured that yes, we did in fact share a common ancestor with our chimp cousins.

TikTok is a famous example of such a phenomenon and this app has played the cards just right and in a way exploited us to gain the social media behemoth status it holds now. Every few years, a new app redefines the way we use social media. 2020 was the year that TikTok took over. The kids love it. Everybody else says it’s a waste of time. But there’s no denying its popularity. Like it or not, there is a great migration that happens with social media as new platforms capture the zeitgeist of culture. They offer newer and more unique ways to interact.

Like TikTok, every other fellow app desperately tried to copy what TikTok did, but maybe they couldn't crack the code of topping the charts. You might have already taken the wind of what we are talking about and if not, maybe you are living a life not revolving around seeing short clips every waking hour of the day.

As much as some would like to deny it, TikTok has been a hub of pop-cultural revolutions. Back in its infancy, it popularized the skit based and dubbed video formats that have fringed into many memes, meta humour and some other things that even a trained academic psychologist would find hard to comprehend.

Pushing Variety Content

The biggest draw of TikTok is the ability to post about anything. Humour, hobbies, fitness, travel, music, photography, dance; every category is open and gaining huge attention. Each area is offering exposure for those that can adapt their content to the short-form video model. TikTok offers so many different types of videos all short and germane to their purpose that a person cannot help but keep wondering what the next swoop would put up in front of him.

At one instance you have a man pretending to eat jelly ice cream and the next you have a woman eating a clam with a questionable appearance. It so beautifully maintains the shock value with each flick of your hand that we have become mere bots staring at screens.

Point of TikTok?

When a new app emerges on the market and starts to grow in popularity, it can be hard to understand why it’s needed. So after many years of changing the internet landscape, TikTok has finally evolved into the perfect app. Perfect in ways of making money from the clueless individuals who create content for it and are in turn rewarded by views, followers and hopes for a career in guess what? Making more videos but with partnerships and all that nice stuff. Sounds a little like the movie industry but with shorter clips.

Now not to be shortsighted we’d be doing a big disservice to the creators making meaningful content but then again they are just a handful and we have reached the point where people ironically realise how insufficient these TikTok trends have become and this realization just pumps more views back into the app. An example of this would be the rising Italian TikToker Khaby lame.

Why do people spend so much time on this app?

Well, the answer to that is so simple that it’s just there in front of us and we just don’t acknowledge it. As said earlier about TikTok’s evolution, TikTok has mastered the two essential things the world is crazy about. The first being diversity and the other serves to our short attention spans. So is the culmination that TIKTOK is bad well, no not really. Choosing to spend time on it is entirely your choice and if it makes you happy, good for you. We apprehend that TikTok is a goldmine for its creators and users alike, it has changed everything and it’s just getting better and better at grabbing our attention.