[fumar]

I empathize you. I am hitting the end of my 30's and for a while I felt lost in the sea of young-folks memes and platforms. I am not on Meta's platforms or TikTok, and I largely quiet reddit. I happen to find YouTube with premium a good content portal for my interests. I started gaming in the last two years after a good 15 years of zero gaming. The PC community is strong now that handhelds are accessible and most recent non-Apple computers can handle popular games.

I also agree with you on TikTok's value proposition – it is not unique – but like the previous networks before it, it has critical mass. That is it. It doesn't mean it will stay on top for a decade, but its heavy state influence (read funding) helped it stay afloat while it accrued users. And its existence and proliferation help enforce that - at least in the US - there is an open market for new platforms to gain mass popularity.

I would take AIM or Apple iChat or a static forum over discord, but the internet changed. I finally understand why folks 20-30 years older than me prefer less change. Adapting is hard.