[larkinnaire]

This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot of commentators had written off television as useless garbage -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates that by pointing out that television is great for emotional storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows that model social values for people. Television turns everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evolved to be so sensationalistic -- TV is not good at news. Printed media is good at news. So, each media has uses that play to its strengths and weaknesses. When a medium is used in weak ways, that is bad for society.

(I don't know what the redeeming argument for TikTok would be...)

[Spivak]

TikTok is good at personal content— short form videos that capture a slice of life for other real people. TikTok is a salon.

Little bits of entertainment — music, poetry, jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics, musings about life and interpersonal relationships, practitioners demonstrating their craft.

It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard to get anywhere else. It's not great or even good at the normal news format but you can read about a riot and that the mayor called in the national guard in the paper, but the video of someone on their porch getting screamed at and having warning shots fired at them for not going indoors has an impact.

[larkinnaire]

That makes sense. It sounds like the good parts of TikTok are getting little slices of life from interesting people, and of course, jokes and entertaining stuff, and the misaligned parts are accounts that purport to be "informational" about news or politics. TikTok is probably just as bad a source for that as TV is.

[dbtc]

"Entrainment" is an apt slip.

[watwut]

Printed media were emotional and sensationalistic too when there was not TV yet. Journals like that still exist and they used to be common and large. Sensationalism changed form, that is it.