How platforms turn boring

Even a year ago, my For You page was mostly stuff you could only see on TikTok, whether it was Vine refugees making comedy shorts or song memes like Here Comes The Boy. That stuff is still on the platform, but it’s largely fallen off my For You page, replaced by Tim Robinson sketches and funny animal videos. One account reposts Derry Girls clips with captions about the royal family; another (aptly named ViralHog) licenses viral video clips from local news or Reddit threads and then blasts them out to different platforms. Everything has the same warmed-over feel. For many of these accounts, the goal is to churn through enough content to build a following so they can flip the account into advertising mode for a quick buck.

Of course, since it’s mostly content that has already blown up elsewhere, there’s usually something compelling about it. It’s not bad content really, but it’s an ominous sign for the platform. At first, TikTok was exciting because there was culture that could only happen there. Now that on-platform culture is being overwhelmed by viral arbitrage, and the actual content is getting closer to what you see on every other network. As the platform gets bigger, it gets more generic, and there’s less to distinguish it from every other mass-market social network.

This dynamic is larger than just TikTok. After following half a dozen platforms through this shift, I’ve come to see it as a test for platform health in general. I call it the Bootleg Ratio: the delicate balance between A) content created by users specifically for the platform and B) semi-anonymous clout-chasing accounts drafting off the audience. Any platform will have both, but as B starts to overtake A, users will have less and less reason to visit and creators will have less and less reason to post. In short, it’s a sign that the interesting stuff about the platform is starting to die out.

Leave a Comment