I promised one final piece on TikTok, focused primarily on the network effects of creativity. And this is that, in part. But it discusses a bunch of other topics, some only tangentially related to TikTok.
All the points I wanted to cover seem hyperlinked in a sprawling loose tangle. This could easily have been several standalone posts. I've been stuck on how to structure it.
Some people find my posts too long. I’m sympathetic to the modern plague of shortened attention spans, but I also don’t want lazy readers. At the same time, this piece felt like it was missing a through line that would help pull a reader through.
And then I had a minor epiphany, or perhaps it was a moment of delusion. Either way, it provided an organizing conceit: I decided to write this piece in the style of the TikTok FYP feed. That is, a series of short bits, laid out vertically in a long scrolling feed.
This piece is long, but if you get bored in any one section, you can just scroll on the next one; they're separated by horizontal rules for easy visual scanning. You can also read them out of order. There are lots of cross-references, though, so if you skip some of the segments, others may not make complete sense. However, it’s ultimately not a big deal.
If I had more time, I might have built this essay as a series of full-screen cards that you could swipe from one to the next. Or perhaps tap from one to the next, like Robin Sloan’s tap essay (I wish there a way to export this piece into a form like that, if someone built that already let me know). And if I were even more ambitious, I would've used some Anki-like spaced repetition algorithm to randomize the order in which the following text chunks are presented to you, shuffling it each time a reader jumped in.The most meta way for me to ship this essay would have been as a series of TikTok videos. It would have been the Snowfall of TikTok essays. That would have also taken a year of my life (which, being locked inside because of a pandemic might be the time to attempt something like that?). Also, I am camera shy.
But as it is, this is what you get.
By network effects of creativity, I mean that every additional user on TikTok makes every other user more creative.
This exists in a weak form on every social network and on the internet at large. The connected age means we are exposed to so much from so many more people than at any point in human history. That can't help but compound creativity.
Various memes and trends pass around on networks like Instagram and Twitter. But there, you still have to create your own version of a meme from scratch, even if, on Twitter, it's as simple as copying and pasting.
But TikTok has a strong form of this type of network effect. They explicitly lower the barrier to the literal remixing of everyone else's content. In their app, they have a wealth of features that make it dead simple to grab any element from another TikTok and incorporate it into a new TikTok.
The barrier to entry in editing video is really high as anyone who has used a non-linear editor like Premiere or compositing software like After Effects can attest. TikTok abstracted a lot of formerly complex video editing processes into effects and filters that even an amateur can use.
Instagram launched one-click photo filters (after Hipstamatic, of course, though Hipstamatic lacked the feed which is like the spine of modern social apps), and later Instagram added additional features for editing Stories, and even some separate apps like Boomerang that were later re-incorporated back into Instagram as features.
Snapchat has a gazillion video filters, too, though many are what I think of as simple facial cosmetic FX.
YouTube has launched almost no creator tools of note ever. WTF.
TikTok launches seemingly a new video effect or filter every week. I regularly log in and see creators using some filter I've never heard of, and some of them are just flat out bonkers. What creators can accomplish with some of these filters I can't even fathom how I'd replicate in something like the Adobe Creative Suite.
@kili.so.silly#stitch with @xxelacxx #TimeWarpScan #fyp #foryouoriginal soundoriginal soundoriginal sound