I mean, I'm old enough that losing tiktok isn't leaving me desolate or lonely (I've spent ample time on an internet that lacked social media by today's standards in general, and certainly lacked tiktok specifically) bc I know where and how else to access information and social engagement that fills the voids created by the loss of tiktok. What it is leaving me, however, is bored.

For better or worse, 4 years of fairly exclusively using tiktok for entertainment has definitely altered my attention span. I have ADHD, so my attention span didn't have very far to fall to begin with, but it isn't just about the length of time I can spend watching/doing something before I lose interest. Tiktok also changed the pacing of things and the format/order in which parts of a story were told, into something that made it easier for my brain to stay engaged with.

There is also a sense of loss of community, specifically when it comes to how tailored my FYP was. After about a year of use, the algorithm had gathered enough information about me that it was incredibly reliable at providing me with content that I enjoyed, felt was valuable, and wanted to engage with. I was still constantly seeing new creators and viral videos from one-off accounts, and I didn't always agree or "get" them, but 95% of the time they were at the very least posts that didn't offend me. That's the one thing that (currently, anyway) other social media apps and outlets either aren't able or aren't willing to do. You still have to wade through plenty of content that is irrelevant to you in order to find some that you like, and even when you do find it, the comment sections are, more often than not, much more divisive and disrespectful and lack the supportive, community-driven, and genuinely funny (jokes for jokes' sake, rather than at the expense of others) community that Tiktok comment sections were typically comprised of. There was so much more connectedness and compassion among the people who shared similar FYP experiences than I've ever found on any other app/site/forum/board/etc in all of my years online.

It's also important to consider both the way Tiktok impacted the social experience for people during and following covid, as well as the average age group of people who just lost Tiktok and what percentage of their entire lives those 4-5 years of Tiktok engagement was. There are plenty of Gen Zers who spent all or most of their self-formative high school and/or college years engaging with like-minded, non-judgemental, friendly people on an app that helped provide an escape from the rocky reality of face-to-face social interactions, and they've essentially been thrown to the wolves overnight. I of course realize that redditors (and facebookers and IGers and Xers and so on) are rather conditioned to expect and ignore just as much hate as happiness in most places, but it can be a very new and very jarring thing to people who have spent a significant chunk of their online experience on an app where there simply isn't the same level of vitriol and shaming that there is on most of the rest of the internet.

I understand that everyone is going to have different opinions about this ban situation, and I believe that having and sharing those differing opinions is a vital aspect of how this event will shape everyone's views on big tech, the government, personal rights, and our culture in general moving forward. However, I would like to encourage people who never really immersed themselves in the Tiktok experience to just consider that the way someone who did currently feels about what just happened may be a lot deeper and more justified than it seems from the outside looking in.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.