TikTok
Article
TikTok is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 14, 2021 and May 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “It could be Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube”; “TikTok creates videos that periodically encourage users to stop scrolling”; “a popular British TikToker with over 15 million followers”. It most often appears alongside 1984, 1984 Calendar Meme, ACX.
Metadata
- Category: Organizations
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: May 14, 2021
- Last seen: May 23, 2024
Appears In
- Your Book Review: Addiction By Design
- Contra Resident Contrarian On Unfalsifiable Internal States
- A Theoretical “Case Against Education”
Related Pages
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- 1984 (1 shared issues)
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- 1984 Calendar Meme (1 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (1 shared issues)
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- Aella (1 shared issues)
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- Ahab (1 shared issues)
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- Airstrip One (1 shared issues)
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- Amazon (1 shared issues)
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- American Gaming Association (1 shared issues)
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- astral projection (1 shared issues)
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- Astralcodexten Com (1 shared issues)
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- Auschwitz (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
I was scrolling through TikTok videos a few weeks ago when I came across a TikTok-sponsored video telling me to stop scrolling and go outside. I was confused. Here I was, perfectly willing (nay, wanting) to spend hours watching dance routines and drawing tutorials I had no intention of copying, but TikTok wanted me to stop? Why? Shouldn’t they have been taking advantage of me to maximize “eyeballs,” “time per session,” and “user engagement”?
Inline links: a TikTok-sponsored video
One explanation is that TikTok is a good corporate citizen that helps its users maintain responsible screen time habits. Another explanation comes from Natasha Dow Schüll’s excellent book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (2012). Schüll talks about gambling machines, people who use them, and the addictions that develop between the two. I think the conclusions she draws are applicable not only to the gambling industry, but also to other peddlers of vice like TikTok.
Inline links: Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
I’ve felt the attraction of this dark flow when I’m searching for something to escape from real life for just an hour or two. For me, it takes the form of scrolling through a social media feed. It could be Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube. I don’t look for anything in particular. I just want the comfort of scrolling through endless meaningless content. Sometimes, I don’t even fully absorb the content. If you took my phone away from me and asked me to name five things I saw, I doubt I’d be able to answer. The content just flows through me while I escape into a zone where real life doesn’t matter.
There is a thriving community of people pretending to have a bunch of multiple personalities on TikTok. They are (they say) composed of many quirky little somebodies, complete with different fun backstories. They get millions of views talking about how great life is when lived as multiples, and yet almost everyone who encounters these videos in the wild goes “What the hell is this? Who pretends about this kind of stuff?”
Inline links: There is a thriving community of people pretending to have a bunch of multiple personalities on TikTok.
> In a TikTok video, a woman with over 30,000 followers offers advice on how to lie to your doctor. “If you have learned to eat salt and follow internet instructions and buy compression socks and squeeze your thighs before you stand up to not faint…and you would faint without those things, go into that appointment and tell them you faint.” Translation: You know your body best. And if twisting the facts (like saying you faint when you don’t) will get you what you want (a diagnosis, meds), then go for it. One commenter added, “I tell docs I'm adopted. They'll order every test under the sun”—because adoption means there may be no family history to help with diagnoses.
Inline links: TikTok video
> Over the pandemic, neurologists across the globe noticed a sharp uptick in teen girls with tics, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Many at one clinic in Chicago were exhibiting the same tic: uncontrollably blurting out the word “beans.” It turned out the teens were taking after a popular British TikToker with over 15 million followers. The neurologist who discovered the “beans” thread, Dr. Caroline Olvera at Rush University Medical Center, declined to speak with me—because of “the negativity that can come from the TikTok community,” according to a university spokesperson.
Inline links: Wall Street Journal, British TikToker
In this model, the reason smarter people remember more stuff than duller people is partly a differently-shaped forgetting curve. But mostly it’s that intellectuals put themselves in situations where they hear about things more often. If you remember that George Orwell wrote 1984, it’s probably because you read the newspaper or blogs or whatever and hear some government program described as “Orwellian”. But if you’re watching TikToks on your cell phone all day, maybe you don’t hear that, and then you join the 81% of college students who have forgotten that name.