So I've now been playing the weird MMO known as TikTok for more than a month, and I thought I should reflect on my time there.
In contrast to my first week on TikTok where I posted every day, I've now been uploading videos every 2-4 days. Which is much better. I highly recommend not posting every day, everywhere.
I've been making more local Australia / New Zealand game industry event vlogs. Here's a vlog from when I attended Wireframe conference here in Auckland, and here's another vlog (and yet another vlog) from my time at the Freeplay Angles festival in Melbourne. I tried to keep these pretty light and casual since I imagine most people aren't really sure what a game conference is.
I've also been making some more outdoor waterway videos. Here's a progress update on the backyard stream, a comprehensive review of the water fountains at the Auckland Domain Winter Gardens, and a waterfall walking tour. While I realize this could've been a savvy content strategy to try to capitalize on my most popular video, it actually wasn't a conscious strategy, I just like recording water and talking about it.
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| (Context: this Australian restaurant didn't have coffee so I had a beer at 11 AM.) |
However, followers do feel a bit pointless on TikTok, like a forgotten 2010s feature that makes no sense in 2020s automated content aggregator apps.
Every TikTok user just stays on their endless algorithmic For You Page, which shows videos from their followed accounts only occasionally, if at all. Some people even avoid following their favorite accounts, to dodge the sense that TikTok paradoxically buries followed accounts in the feed. Either way, you still have to pay TikTok to reach people, even if they're already following you.
So TikTok followers have only one real function then: to count. At 1000 followers, supposedly I’ll be able to post a link to my website! (But who’s even going to see that link anyway?)... And at 10000, maybe random companies will start sending me "missions" to advertise their products. (Yep, this is definitely a video game.)
Let's contrast TikTok to its polar opposite -- the hopelessly unpopular, deeply uncool, painfully millennial, old fashioned text-based social app that foolishly lets anyone post links whenever they want: Bluesky.
On Bluesky, the act of following matters a lot. It matters so much that you have a weird responsibility to your followers: you’re supposed to spread out your posts and retweets. If you retweet 5 things in quick succession, your followers will encounter those 5 things filling up their entire screen, in that order. You’re basically spamming / monopolizing their feed. It’s a bit rude.
What a quaint website. How strange to punish over-engagement! How funny to preserve context! It’s like one of those weird old timey post offices delivering an entire letter (booo!), instead of shredding the letter and showing random parts to random people for several months (yay!)
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For now, I think I'm going to continue making random little videos. At this rate, maybe I'll have 1000 followers by the end of the year, even though I'm still not sure what the point of all this is?... Maybe in 5 more months in December, I'll finally learn the true meaning of Christmas / TikTok. I'll be sure to report back as the moral slowly dawns on me.
If you're allergic to my TikTok page for whatever reason, I cross-post videos on Bluesky (click the "Videos" tab) most consistently.
I also cross-post to my Instagram and my YouTube, but more randomly / less consistently.
