Comment by madeofpalk
Comment by madeofpalk 3 days ago
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect
They're very different, and I understand what you're getting at comparing it to the hyper-manufactured perfectly glossy Instagram culture, but I wouldn't call TikTok 'authentic'.
Of course, Tiktok is large and there's many different subcultures there, but overall I think TikTok is heavily drenched in Irony. It's a stark difference to the very fake Instagram, but that doesn't make it authentic.
Are tiktok dances 'authentic'? They might have started as just innocent kids doing a fun little dance, but the moment anything turns into a trend I think it loses authenticity. The whole NPC live streaming trend[1] from a few years ago was anything but authentic. TikTok 'suffers' from the exact same paid 'influencers' promoting whatever garbage of the day, and even has its own version of affiliate marking spam with 'TikTok shop' junk.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/people-are-pretending-to-be-npcs...
You said a lot of words that are a litmus test proving you almost never use TikTok nowadays. First of all this is not 2020 anymore, you're 5 years late if you think TikTok is still filled with "dances". "Paid influencers" mean nothing in TikTok since everyone has an equal voice and equal shot at virality, see you're still seeing it from the lens of Instagram here.
The NPC live streaming is weird yeah but you cherry picked a trend and then make it about all TikTok. Literally hundreds of trends spawn up in TikTok every month and some of them are damn more authentic than whatever happens in IG reels. Some of the successful original trends even pick up in Instagram or YouTube.