> isn't social, it's a performance for an invisible audience.
I know what you wrote is fairly obvious but the wording really resonated with how I feel about social media platforms but couldn't quite word it so well.
When I was young (a long long time ago), my family would go up to stay at a ranch in Sierra County California. They had almost no TV or radio reception there -- you still can't get a cell signal at my cousins house. They would have a Friday night square dance that was like a school dance that teens actually attended and danced together, without much irony. Coming from San Francisco it seemed a little weird, even then. It seems so old fashioned now but I really treasure that I got to participate in what people used to do on the western frontier of the US.
My wife was maid of honor (we weren't married yet) at her college roommate's wedding. I danced with several of their friends at the reception; one taught me to two-step (it was in San Antonio). I taught her basic swing. There was exactly zero romantic involvement; I was there with my girlfriend, for heaven's sake. But she was nice, she was fun, and we just chatted as we went through the dances. Got a couple of her funny college stories out of that. And that's what it's about: having an excuse to be physically close to someone else, doing an enjoyable activity that rewards skill, and to gossip a little. We, like all apes, are social animals. We're happier when we do that.
And in 20 or so years people will lament the loss of dancing to an invisible but captivated audience, I'm sure, just like they currently lament the loss of Vine and Myspace.
I agree but would like to point out that I have seen several groups of dancers practicing K-pop dance or something I don't know outside of Sydney convention center recently. So it seems there is still a social circle where people dance but not ballroom or salsa.
That's what the old men shouting at clouds always think.
"Social connection" and "micro-dopamine hits" are two different phrases for the same thing. Connections through social media apps can be every bit as deep and genuine as those made through standing in the same building.
It's not particularly deep and genuine to double-tap to add a heart emoji to a video of a skimpily dressed complete stranger you "met" 5 seconds ago and will never see again unless Tiktok's algorithms think that would result in greater ad revenue.
It's exactly as deep and genuine as saying hi to a stranger in a bar (and if you think the barman is any less profit-oriented than the Tiktok algorithm you're naive) or whatever the back-in-your-day paradigm was.
Liking a video (and if all your videos are booty shakes from first trap influencers that says more about you than about the platform) might end you up in an interesting conversation, getting laid, finding a life partner, all sorts of things.
Saying hi to a stranger in a bar is exceedingly unlikely to result in any of these.
I’ve talked to hundreds of people at bars around the world, and although I don’t remember their names, I can recall general conversations with each of them. I can’t recall anything that I’ve tapped-liked off the top of my head, because it’s very short and one-sided interaction.
Well, saying hi isn't deep at some meat market bar. But I remember in my younger days that my now-wife and I went to the same bar often enough that we knew most of the regulars, and she was talking to someone we knew well, so I was on my own.
I chatted up a woman who was probably 20 years my senior, and the two of us had grown up in the same neighborhood in that city separated only by time. We had a wonderful conversation for an hour or so. My now-wife came over at one point, I said we were having a conversation about my neighborhood, and she said, oh, you people always find each other (it was pretty distinctive in the city, and yes, we really did find each other). Now-wife walked away and went back to the others she had been hanging out with. I knew the exact house this woman had grown up in (it was one block away from where I was living at the time), having ridden my bicycle past it hundreds of times as a kid, and just listened to the stories of what it had been like then.
Except that TikTok dancing does not create those connections. It is just something that does not happen.
Standarding in the same building does not create then either. People talking in groups and one-to-one, people meeting the same people regularly does. That is what dancing was.
If you are talking about connections between people who both create content on the network, sure - however, the vast majority of users only consume content.
Can be. But it's like a long distance relationship. We already know from decades of offline phenomenon that constant physical connect is a must for a healthy, strong connection. Yes, some people have the discipline to make it work. Most don't.
And that's been my experience online. Lots of neat niche connections with people I'd never meet IRL. But you'd be surprised how quickly that connect can sever when that person leaves the community, even if you keep trying to reach out.
But i don't know, maybe this gen Z figured out something this boomer Millenial and other older generations couldn't. I'm open to being wrong.
Some teen dancing on a streaming service is very different from a venue charging admission and beverages for a couple hundred people spending an evening out.
it looks more like complex twitching or precise execution of an acrobatic program but lacking the soul which would qualify it as dancing. more like little robots trying to dance.