[teekert]

All I see is girls putting their phone somewhere, dancing in front of it, then getting back into being absorbed by their phones. Can you describe more specifically what is so positive about it? My kids are about to enter the age at which they get a smartphone and these things make me a bit afraid (like, who's watching? Why do they stare at that app for so long? etc). I don't understand the alure, but I want to keep an open mind and not be that old parent that doesn't understand...

[bkruse]

Having used tiktok for a total of 10 hours now, I get programmer humor, car videos and funny animal videos - exactly what I want

That's the whole point - the ability to curate content that you will like is phenomenal, especially given the non-obvious inputs to their model. Like a video? Sure you'll see more of that kind of stuff. You may not think about scrolling up/down to restart the video, watching it multiple times, sharing it, opening/closing the comments (and I'm sure 10,000 other inputs) all feed into it's ability to curate

[kpennell]

Once I started marking 'not interested' on the super basic teenager dance videos, I eventually stopped seeing them. Same with a lot of the memey songs that get tiring to hear after a while. I'll try to make a list of people who keep popping up.

[bstar77]

You don't need to understand the allure. Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? What wrong with people smiling, laughing and dancing? I'm an old parent trying to be open minded as well.

[saityi]

>Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways?

Honestly, no, and I feel very disconnected from modern culture as a result. I use my phone like a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy: to have access to everything we know as humans at my fingertips, in my pockets, at all times.

Otherwise, I don't use it. That said, I have nothing against people using their phone for enjoyment, and there's nothing wrong with people smiling, laughing, and dancing. It's just not easy to relate to the obsession with applications like Instagram, Vine, TikTok, and so on.

[chucksmash]

I'm a fan of the "Digital Wellbeing" features that ship with newer phones.

I have a social media account which I check approximately biweekly and definitely considered myself someone who wasn't falling into the attention trap in my pocket. I only read HN, a few news sites, send texts, and play chess on my phone.

I was amazed to see just how much time I spent doing these things. Even if in some way how I'm using the phone is more virtuous or less problematic ("this hour-long article about the architecture of the classic XBox gratifies my curiosity, is informative and gives me more context with which to understand my field!"), that time and attention sink still comes at the cost of everything else in life.

[StevePerkins]

The parent commenter asked if anyone could describe what is positive about the app. Since they apparently have no first-hand experience with it, and do not understand the allure from what they've heard or seen so far.

You're responding to him or her with "You don't need to understand the allure". And somehow seem offended that he or she doesn't understand what people are laughing about.

Come on.

[newswasboring]

> What wrong with people smiling, laughing and dancing?

There is nothing wrong in it, but there isn't much alluring there too. Its available from so many other platforms.

[monadic2]

Really? Almost the entirety of where I see this is people recording and re-uploading content from tik tok onto Twitter. It’s certainly a distinct communication culture. I mean “Instagram dance” was never a thing the way “Tik tok dance” is a thing.

[newswasboring]

I guess what I'm saying is just because it's distinct doesn't mean it's alluring. It might be a different form of expression but what is being expressed is that entertaining or different from Instagram. It's just a bit less objectifying than Instagram but still feels lacking.

[newen]

I think the dances came from musical.ly, which part of Tiktok used to be. Then, it's just people doing what other people are doing, one upping each other, trying to get popular, etc. Same social media stuff and Tiktok's recommendation algorithm is really good, so people get into it really quickly.

[RspecMAuthortah]

Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways?

> I would argue it is one thing to be absorbed by reading in your phone HN or other productive sources. Laughing and dancing on the other hand, after a certain period of time not so much useful.

[bstar77]

This is one of the most depressing comments I've read in a long time.

[Waterfall]

This comment chain is one of the funniest I've seen in a while. Literally laughing so hard at your comment thank you.

[teekert]

Yeah, actually I wish HN would make me laugh and dance, this comment makes tiktok sound pretty good!

[chosenbreed37]

> Yeah, actually I wish HN would make me laugh and dance, this comment makes tiktok sound pretty good!

LOL. I find HN highly entertaining. Well...not to the point of breaking into a dance...but entertaining. Quite often I just jump straight to the comments.

[082349872349872]

https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/1281092706677243904

"${RELIGIOUS GROUP}: A man who has an uncomfortable feeling that somebody, somewhere is enjoying themselves."

for a different ${RELIGIOUS GROUP}'s opinions on dancing, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23591306

[nxc18]

I get mostly cooking, gardening, life hacks, and occasionally political humor. I'm also on gay TikTok so there's some 'fun' content there.

I've learned lots of cool stuff on TikTok - my favorite tip recently has been a trick for partially juicing lemons while leaving them intact; last week I broke my soda habit as a result of easily accessible homemade la croix.

[teekert]

OK sounds good, maybe I should just try it, always good to know what you are talking about, right?!

[azatris]

Since the content is curated strongly by your likes and dislikes, I am afraid your children might actually get some nasty stuff there. There's psychotic horror and soft porn. I don't think I'd trust my child with it unless they're older than 14 or so.

The dancing stuff is pretty mild and I'd say even constructive for children.

The allure, is hard to describe. The content I see is very human, people describing their experiences, doing harmless jokes on each other, or teaching something. How it differs from YouTube is that it is much more strongly tailored to your likes, and due to time constraints, skips the chuff and gets to the meat of things quicker.

[cwkoss]

It seems to create affinity scores based on which videos you complete watching, like or share. Then they also maintain similar affinity scores for every tag on those videos and the creators of those videos. So as you watch stuff, you feed becomes tuned to your preferences without needing an explicit 'follow' step.

Users have little control of what videos they see explicitly, but if you like 5 videos with the same tag, it will present more videos with that tag.