The Five Stages of TikTok

Denial

When I first heard about TikTok, it instantly reminded me of the time when Snapchat got popular: somebody found a new way of making communication fun, attract mainly teenagers on their smartphones, and get insane ratings from agencies while tech-savvy folks go crazy over the revelation of the next big thing. Average Joe is quickly buying in because his geeky friend tells him of the great potential and that it will *sigh* disrupt ... things (the mobile world, the way we communicate, social media advertising, basically everything you care about).

While the story of Snapchat isn't over yet, the buzz around its inevitability has largely been tuned down. After their disastrous IPO (disastrous for the buyer, I mean) they still struggle with profitability in this kind of hyper-growth business. And even if raising a unicorn is the new gold rush, people begin to realize that valuation on potential alone is the same gamble today as it has always been - we just use new labels for old assets. We also tend to believe that we are able to completely inform ourselves about the thing we're going to explore, often not realizing that a lot of "information" has been spread by affiliates of the respective object.

Same with TikTok. People who are enthusiastic about TikTok are of course part of the platform already. You might say: "they're just faster than you", but I think they just want to fortify their own stance in the social media ecosystem by telling others where the new gold veins are. I won't fall for that.

So I decided I don't need to take a closer look at this, it's just like Vine with lip-sync on mobile used by kids and surely has no impact on the conservative and dry environment in which I live my professional life. I'm crossing it off my important-tech-stuff-watchlist.

Anger

Then I started to see content about TikTok on LinkedIn. Social media experts - whose core competency essentially is to know about Gen Z or simply being Gen Z themselves - praised the potential of TikTok and its inevitability. To me, these guys are somehow the antagonist of the experienced IT professional, but still I listened. What I heard is yet another message of urgency: "Your company needs to participate! Every business has the need to be recognized by TikToks user base, whether you are promoting a consumer brand or you are searching for young talents. If you're not on this platform, you'll be invisible to them when they leave college!"

Oh no, it happens again, the circle of life of our beloved industry: a shiny idea appears and quickly gains some followers, and soon prophets proclaim the revelation of a new deity in the Olympus of modern markets. It is like a new messianic message that make people run towards salvation as if in a trance. If you don't follow, you'll be plunged into the hell of FOMO.

Ok, I need to download this bloody thing right now and have a look at it myself. Which I did. After five minutes I felt my blood pressure rising. Not because of joy and entertainment, oh no. I was close to smashing my phone against the wall and my head down on the desk. This should be it, this should be our new way to reach young people? This is just a neverending stream of brainless, gross, infantile, narcissistic and all in all irrelevant videos! What a disgrace. If this is what our future talents are watching, then all hope is lost. Please, climate change, burn this planet now.

Bargaining

Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe I'm not the young at heart Xennial that I thought I was. Maybe I just feel provoked by the fact that there are things happening out there that I'm not able to relate to anymore. When did I stop belonging to the cosmopolitan avantgarde?

Or maybe it's just the social media elite that is raising the alarm about a very mundane phenomenon. I mean, look at the value justification which is based on some undifferentiated numbers: TikTok has 800 million active users, 1 billion videos are being watched daily, and top content creators have 30+ million followers. Ok, but who are these users, where do they live, what purchasing power do they have, what about the geographic and demographic unbalance, and is the number of views of a 10-second-clip really a metric you should go for? What are the relevant metrics in this social network universe anyway?

And didn't all this happen before? Myspace, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and what have you - those networks started out with some diverse content for hobby and entertainment made by private individuals shared between closed and open groups. After time, and in need of smarter monetization, the platforms extended the options for companies and brands, which led them going beyond traditional advertising and creating like-for-like content, as a quasi-member of the community. Nothing new so far.

Is it the speed and the range of TikTok which amazes us, then? Yes, it's moving faster than every other platform before, but isn't that exactly how it's supposed to be? Will the next platform not simply outperform speed and reach of the existing social media leader? Isn't that just the manifestation of the next logical step in the natural evolution of media?

Depression

If so, why does it have to be so distasteful. Don't get me wrong, the internet has always been a place for all the good and bad that there is. It's just the feeling that this particular place accumulates all the ones who are willing to sacrifice dignity - theirs or others - for views and likes. The good old 15 minutes of fame you were ready to kill for have been transformed into 15 million likes for which you are willing to wet your pants.

I'm wondering if a certain type of media fosters certain parts in us, individually and as a society. Let's look at the grim side of two platforms: Twitter is known for its feuds, Instagram for its feigned authenticity. It is somewhat apparent that Twitter's short and sweet format tempts people to spew out bold statements, while Instagram's visual focus is attracting show-offs and imposters. The endless feed of brief videos on TikTok seems to satisfy our curiosity for the grotesque, which then will be served well by the content creators.

Of course you can filter your content. But the difference to YouTube and other video-heavy platforms is essential: in traditional platforms you specifically had to search for the desired content (and yes, you got some unwanted suggestions, too), but TikTok just throws everything at you without asking. It will require some effort to see the stuff that's relevant to you, but relevance doesn't seem to be part of TikTok's DNA. Its spirit is more like: "Glad you're here! Let me show you some wicked stuff - buckle up!"

No wonder that it has been subject to stricter regulations and temporary bans in some countries. But prohibiting media never worked that well, so what options do we have? Burning this pile of filth to the ground wouldn't work either, because then the next version will rise from the ashes, uglier than before. Come on, even Lisa and Lena outgrew TikTok, and now grown-ass companies have to show their funny side on this channel? I refuse to believe that this is happening.

Acceptance

If I learned one thing from the past, it is that the world doesn't care about what I believe or not. Things will happen either way. Be a part or be apart. And you can only shape things if you throw yourself in.

Will TikTok conquer the world of professional communications? I don't know. At least it doesn't look like a straw fire for it has been around for too long already. But maybe we should just stop projecting a ton of things into it and view it as the teeny funbase that it is. I know, everybody is eagerly waiting for the next big deal to happen, and everybody wants to be the first in the game. But maybe you should let this cobbler stick to his last.

I'm not removing the app from my phone. Maybe I'll even post something today. I always wanted to have a channel about wine where I drink in front of a camera while smartassing the whole time. Thanks to TikTok, people will be forced to watch my videos now. What an ironic revenge on society.

And maybe, someday, I'll see something on TikTok which I consider relevant. Something that really excites me. Something I want to show my colleagues. Something I'd be proud to be the first to discover. Something I wish I had done. This foreshadowed moment of envy makes me see the light at the end of the tunnel.