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I tried on multiple occations to get hooked on tik-tok, but each time after spending an hour scrolling through the feed with absolutely nothing interesting appe

I tried on multiple occations to get hooked on tik-tok, but each time after spending an hour scrolling through the feed with absolutely nothing interesting appearing I gave up. Was I doing tik-tok wrong? I am a sociable 23 year old, so it's not like I'm way out of their target audience or anything. I am a bit confused as to why the algorithm seemed to be so poor at finding anything interesting for me, when have needed to disable youtube-recommendations because they take so much of my time.

vmception 4y ago
That’s a strange experience, I think you need to deliberately follow a few people and interact with a few things And then it will attempt to hook you more
- HumanReadable 4y ago
  like for example, after writing this comment I just tried creating a new account again (using my facebook to login). Half the videos are in dutch for some reason (I'm from Denmark, I don't speak dutch nor have I ever lived there). I tried searching on some topics that interested me, and found some of them pretty compelling. Then I went back to the feed, and it just kept showing more dutch content. Every time I've tried tiktok it's more or less been like this, except with less dutch.
  - jpindar 4y ago
    If you long press then press "not interested" on all the Dutch videos I think it would stop showing them.
captainmuon 4y ago
Same here, I find it bland and annoying. Even after seeding it with contacts and searching for a couple of things I find interesting. Instead, it mostly shows me "sexy" bait and switch videos, cooking videos where I can't tell if it is meant to be appetizing or disgusting, and weird home improvement tips. I assume the algorithm is more hype than anything else. Social media used to be addicting, before they were social media. When you obsessed about who looked at your profile, whom you are connected with via friends, when you spent hours tweaking your profile to elicit actions from others, and so on. Human social interaction, but without the scary closeness and immediateness, and at the same time amplified.

vmception 4y ago

That’s a strange experience, I think you need to deliberately follow a few people and interact with a few things And then it will attempt to hook you more

HumanReadable 4y ago
like for example, after writing this comment I just tried creating a new account again (using my facebook to login). Half the videos are in dutch for some reason (I'm from Denmark, I don't speak dutch nor have I ever lived there). I tried searching on some topics that interested me, and found some of them pretty compelling. Then I went back to the feed, and it just kept showing more dutch content. Every time I've tried tiktok it's more or less been like this, except with less dutch.
- jpindar 4y ago
  If you long press then press "not interested" on all the Dutch videos I think it would stop showing them.

captainmuon 4y ago

Same here, I find it bland and annoying. Even after seeding it with contacts and searching for a couple of things I find interesting. Instead, it mostly shows me "sexy" bait and switch videos, cooking videos where I can't tell if it is meant to be appetizing or disgusting, and weird home improvement tips. I assume the algorithm is more hype than anything else. Social media used to be addicting, before they were social media. When you obsessed about who looked at your profile, whom you are connected with via friends, when you spent hours tweaking your profile to elicit actions from others, and so on. Human social interaction, but without the scary closeness and immediateness, and at the same time amplified.