What is the point of using short form content platforms as a consumer really?

Just put the political stuff aside, they are often too short for any details over any topics if not straightly brainrot, ending up making people get distracted and lost patience easily. I never a fan of YouTube shorts and instagram reels either because of the same reason.

Perhaps they are good for promotion, but as a user perspective, can anyone really point out one good reason to use these platforms?

I have several young cousins (gen z) who use TikTok as their Google. Recipes, travel ideas, news, fashion, shopping, how-to videos. While of course a lot of their usage is passive scrolling that trains their algorithm, they're very adept at using search to find the same things I find in my browser.

It's bonkers to me, but I guess my patterns of information lookup have just calcified with age.

I’m in my late 50s, and I’ve been using TikTok for over six years. Before that, the only social media I used was Facebook—not Instagram, not anything else—but TikTok pulled me in from the very beginning.

At first, it was all about the novelty: lip-syncing and dance videos. Over time, though, my interests evolved. I started following creators for travel vlogs, occasional financial advice, health tips, yoga and exercise—and last but not least, singing, which I only began at age 55.

I don’t have many viewers, and that’s perfectly fine. My account isn’t about chasing likes or comments. It’s simply a way for people to see who I am rather than engage with a random, unknown profile—if they’re curious enough to look. It also helps avoid mixed signals: when you know who I am (even though you never truly know someone), you can usually tell whether something is meant as a dad joke… or a Daddy joke

As a result, my consumption of TV, Netflix, and HBO has dropped significantly. I find it far more engaging to follow real people and see what they’re doing with their lives. And here’s the irony: aside from the first two or three seasons of Survivor, I’ve never been into reality TV—yet somehow, I’m completely hooked on this one.

[ Wordsmithed by AI ]

Ps: I think my joke has been taken badly by someone. The point is internet with few hundred million or just few million people is a minefield and like now somehow jokes don't click and knowing the person behind the joke, being able to if not ID them at least have them semi public is a credibility bridge that anonymity does not provide. By being public, you are more accountable than you normally would be

Your categorical error is that you think people are watching them to cover details in topics.

They are a replacement for TV. You know, the thing that people used to watch for hours upon hours a day?

What benefit do you get coming here and arguing with people?

Can you give a GOOD REASON?

I had this discussion once before, I don't remember where, with I taking your position. The other guy seemed to think that entertainment was fungible, and so the entertainment of short form video was objectively better than long form, since it could theoretically be turned off at any point unlike a movie, and since it had infinite variety. Which I guess makes sense if you believe the fungibility, but I can't imagine associating in real life with such a person.

The "I can turn it off unlike a movie" idea is wild. We've had the ability to pause and resume long-form TV/movies for decades.

Heck, how does that person think people read books? Six to ten hour sitting marathons?

i think you are missing the analogy of people not stopping movies half way

Shopping is a major one, I've found so many useful things from TikTok that no other platform has successfully been able to show me. It's also superior for viral growth and easily marketing new services in pretty much every way.

> The news breaks almost immediately on TikTok

Not arguing against the rest of your comment, but I find the concept of "breaking news" to be generally terrible for society. News outlets should wait until they have enough information to present an event as accurately as possible, but the rush to be the one that gets there first means this is often not the case.

And I expect this goes double for randos publishing on TikTok.

That’s true. I think the bigger problem is that many people seems to misuse the term, making any news a “breaking news” but oftentimes, it doesn’t.

The only valid use for “breaking news” imo, are disasters.

My girlfriend used to be hooked on TikTok for political stuff until I started pointing out how much of it is comprised of half-truths if not straight up lies.

For example, one day she came over and showed me a short where this lady was warning women the Rs were starting their discrimination campaigns up, because Kentucky was looking to pass an amendment making women get certified doctor letters on if/the status of their pregnancy.

I called out how ridiculous that was pretty quickly and she told me this is 100% real and the lady in the video wasn't lying. I looked it up, and it was a real proposal[1]... Made several years earlier by a Democrat as a satire bill that was never under true consideration.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/kentucky-democrat...

Veracity is cornerstone to a healthy internet, and it can be very impossible for someone to fact check things on tiktok if their one-stop shop for consuming things and finding information is also tiktok. Corroboration, validation etc. are something I can do (to best efforts) on my computer with applications and websites that help me do this.

Don't get me wrong, I like instagram for the political commentary; but the vibe is different, Instagram is a supplementary source and not a primary one. It's still not a perfect system either, for example Instagram doesn't allow clickable links which can really hamoer organization and spreading important information.

Thank you for your thoughtful story!

This is the reason why I have raised this question, as I don’t really understand why people are so into this platform since I don’t enjoy short form contents.

Perhaps just because it is short, with properly use, TikTok can discover many niche topics that we probably don’t know.

Does it change my decision of using this platform? Probably not because I prefer longer and slower paced contents, but I could at least know that TikTok is not just about brainrots or random people dancing like many people as claimed, at least now I know there are people finding their passion in this platform or discovering new place to explore.

So better, richer content twitter? I never used that site except for a brief period at the beginning of the current Ukrainian war, but it sounds like it appeals to the same type of person.

I have been trying so hard to get YouTube to stop recommending shorts to me. I am pretty sure that the "Show Fewer Shorts" thing you can choose in the app doesn't actually do anything.

My wife loves TikTok to a point that she will take it personally when I complain about it, but I absolutely hate the "vertical short form video" crap that's gotten popular. I'm probably just showing my age, even with my admittedly-quite-flakey attention span, I feel like TikTok and YouTube shorts are just kind of irritating. So much stuff on there is either low-effort crap with lip syncing to some clip from a movie, or shit yelling at me with burned in giant subtitles, both of which are almost certainly part of my own personal hell.

What is the point of medium / long form content when you can get 80% of the dopamine for 5% of the commitment. Most "content" is mediocre, condensed short term doesn't waste your time. Most "content" TLDR down to a couple minutes pretty well, variety doom scrolling is spice of life and all.

I used TikTok a few times and then uninstalled it because it’s very addictive. It’s a lot of nonsense like dances, and bits of cooking episodes, travel and destination clips, punchlines from TV shows and cartoons, memes etc. It’s a really sad thing to use honestly, makes you feel dirty for wasting all that time.

This is also my usual understanding to TikTok although I know some people found new hobbies with it like the other replies, but the contents don’t click me because they are way too flashy and stimulating, and these really make me visually and mind fatigue.

Your situation is similar to why I have quit Pinterest. Memes and jokes are fun, and some of the images are inspiring, but it simply wastes too much valuable time which I can learn something new or take a deep rest.

I am not sure if it is a good thing when you see a question as an essay. It could goes in both way, so you better explain it.

Smug -and- illiterate? You really are a catch.

You know perfectly well that a question-mark does not a question make.

And, apparently you also see the utility in posting very short, dumb sections of content.

So, by your own standards, you should be able to do the math and answer your own so-called question.

It has 200M users in the US (I'm not one of them), which is about half of all citizens. Do you really think it's possible they have no point?

For most people, it's a distracting little jolt of dopamine and a way to get quick news or commentary.

It's definitely not good for our brains for that to be the main kind of content we consume, but it's not useless.

It could be.

You don’t need something to have a point at all, just make something apparently cool or trendy, and there always a crowd rush into the trend. Could you find the point of Labubus or Stanley cups besides its popularity?

I am not going to against the news part, as you could see my other replies from someone who find niche hobbies with it.

> What is the point of junk food?

The answer to this is the same as the answer to your first question.

I don’t think this is an AI issue, but the amount of effort, the thought process and the story telling about the track they made.

Before generative AI, there were already a swarm of people who aimed at maximising the number of track they made within a short time, with abusing marketing. It is not wrong that they can pump up 100 tracks in a year, with a template and a specialised workflow and correct marketing techniques but… what is the story to these music? For many tracks, I only heard the story of:

> I am the most productive person and I can make most of the money because of that.

Quantity wise, for sure, they wins, but quality wise, I failed to imagine a more complex story than things above although they are good to hype the dance floor or a concert. These days, I mostly listen to music I have bought, or made by specific music communities because of their story behind their track despite not as perfect.

Same reasons why don’t I watch many movies since Ironman 3, most of the blockbusters follow the same winning formula rather than trying something new and in depth or unexpected, CGI and product placements all over the place instead of a good story.

AI just emphasised this problem even more since commercial “art” has been testing majorities’ newest lows.

There are differences between using a tool to create art or use it to spam.

Instead of LLM and just like Wikipedia, there should be users to submit the descriptions of the videos, and see people fighting for getting the most “correct” description.

It will be hilarious to see what people will come up with when they see brain rot content.

Agreed, and on top of that:

I think these kind of numbers are everywhere and not just specific to Python.

In zig, I sometimes take a brief look to the amount of cpu cycles of various operations to avoid the amount of cache misses. While I need to aware of the alignment and the size of the data type to debloat a data structure. If their logic applies, too bad, I should quit programming since all languages have their own latency on certain operations we should aware of.

There are reasons to not use Python, but that particular reason is not the one.

Just cancel it.

Soundcloud these days is nothing but a spambot filled website that have ripped countless users’ tracks and scam to earn fake followers, which the platform doesn’t block these bot but instead shallow banning proper users. The support is also nonexistent and my support ticket hasn’t being been responded for more than an year.

I ended up trashed my account because I got shadow banned for no reason while they keep on stripping off basic features. Some of the users in my community also faced the similar stories.

Unless there is an irreplaceable feature in SoundCloud you rely on, I see no reason to use it.

The responds and edits are simply unprofessional and immature. I don't hate AI and in fact I use it for many research based tasks, helping me narrowing a lot of tough topics, but it is the People with these kind of attitude turns me off.

AI use is fine, though pretending you haven't used it when you obviously did rubs me the wrong way.

I get why GitHub allows editing comments of other users though for public repos I guess it allows for this kind of abuse

Exactly, being dishonest is the real problem here.

Luckily, every edits are recorded in history, so they can't really hide their abusive behavior, for now. Even if they did, seem like there are often people faster in archiving their posts than they hiding their post.

I think the open abuse of people raising issues with the project is morally worse than the license issues or even lying about AI usage. Fraud is already bad, but someone can do that for reasons other than pure mean-spiritedness. To pull this nonsense, you have to actively take pleasure in making other people feel bad.

I don't mid the immature part, they are hate fueled. The ableism is disgusting.

Just knew what ableism is, but I don't think that is one but the more classic things bullies trying to downplay others by calling other idiots or autistic.

Either way, ableism or simply abusive behavior, both lacks respect, honestly and responsibility, which is a sign of immature behavior. Mature people can be playful, but they know when to act in the correct time, and definitely not in something that lead to a huge PR disaster.

Thus, being immature is the root cause of all these bad behaviors, including discrimination.

Or build yourself a set of vacuum tubes from sketch, don’t forget to make the glass from sand too.

That is really the cringe bit… If “web3” is “decentralised”, how could “web4” powered by AI which most of the LLM model currently are hosted in a centralised server? It seems contradictory by definition, and that “web4” are just basically Web 2.0 with AI features…

I basically just read that website the post referred to, sounds like AI slop to me: https://www.netguru.com/blog/web-4-0?ref=protein.xyz

Is dvui something you want to see? Although the use of backends are still c based, the core part of the gui seems written fully in zig rather than a binding from a c library.

https://github.com/david-vanderson/dvui

“Even if you are paying, you are the premium product.”

I think we need to stop saying that quote since the existence of subscription. Can you stop Google from tracking you or let you define your “algorithm” if you have purchased YouTube Premium and one of the Google Drive plans? I really doubt.

I think it is the value of the company matters. If their intentions is to keep investors happy, the users are always the product no matter paying or not. By contrast, there are quite a lot of free open source software doing the same for free, but the users still remain user.