Dance, Monkey

What to make of the TikTok-ification of social media?

Let’s begin with a musical introduction.

1.

Spend some time on YouTube and you may notice that thumbnails are a genre unto themselves. A number of YouTube creators, perhaps a plurality, have decided the best way to work the algorithm is to deploy thumbnails focused on their own exaggerated faces. These faces are something to behold, eyes wide, jaws agape, features distended and frozen into expressions that simultaneously run the gamut from unbridled excitement to stupor.

It is no surprise that someone who plays video games or tests recipes would choose to elicit attention through exaggerated portrayals of their own enjoyment. But what to make of the more sober channels? Why would someone who wants to give you tips on personal finance or teach you macroeconomics think to lure you in by turning themselves into a real-life anime character?

The simple answer is that these creators, no matter their subject matter, exist within a medium that incentivizes turning themselves into anime characters. This is the video equivalent of clickbait. You the viewer will definitely want to know what can get another human being so preternaturally excited and you will click on the video to find out, or so the theory goes. I reserve judgment on how well this works. But whether it works or not, it is here.

Yes, I did begin a post about TikTok by focusing on YouTube. But what I am choosing to call TikToki-ification is about more than TikTok. It is about the set of incentives that are likely to characterize the next phase of social media.

There are a few things that make TikTok special, so much to love/hate (or is it hate/love?). One is the heavy reliance on the algorithm to select what ends up on your feed. This is not proprietary to TikTok, but TikTok is the one major platform that is all algorithm. On Twitter and Instagram, you can still set your feeds to show a straight timeline of your connections, but the writing is on the wall. Such degrees of freedom are likely heading the way of the dodo.

TikTok-ification also refers to the overall trend of ‘pivot to video,’ which again is not special to TikTok and has been a long time in the making. In 2016, Facebook touted video as the next big thing that would revive the traditional media’s flagging engagement metrics. It didn’t quite work out that way. The legacy media has been pissed off ever since; though, we can argue over whether they should be mad at Facebook or their own credulousness.

When I refer to TikTok-ification, what I mean is social media based around more than just posting Facebook statuses or Instagram pictures, Tweets or what have you, but social media based explicitly around a certain kind of performance. This performance can be a dance routine or synced audio clip or a two-minute blurb that condenses an academic essay into a pithy soundbite. What all of these have in common is the necessity to present yourself to the camera in a particular way, a way that melds with the style of the platform. All the platforms have slightly different styles, but they all attempt to keep the user there, to maximize engagement. In exchange for melding with this style, in effect turning yourself into a piece of background or a part of the set, the algorithm will promote you far and wide. That’s the quid pro quo.

The question I want to ask is whether that exchange is worth it.

2.

In my essay on Miranda Priestly, I noted that Anna Wintour's ability to stay one step ahead of cancelation has, in part, been due to her turning the Met Gala into a more diverse and inclusive affair.

The Met Gala, or more formally the Costume Institute Gala, was first held in 1948. For many years it was part of New York’s Social Diary, the calendar of benefits and events held by and for the members of New York’s social registry (i.e. the old-school WASP Establishment).

Anna Wintour took over the Met Gala in 1996. The event began attracting wider media attention in the early 2000s and achieved legitimate virality in 2014 when Solange went after Jay Z in that elevator. From about the same time, the gala became a source of memes, largely focused on the outlandish and elaborate costumes worn to conform to the Gala’s changing themes.

In that Miranda Priestly post, I also referenced Tom Ford as someone of the fashion world, who has made a name based more on his sublime aesthetic sense than on the tropes of high fashion. So, who better than Ford to elaborate a critique of the Met Gala:

It’s turned into a costume party… That used to just be very chic people wearing very beautiful clothes going to an exhibition about the 18th century… You didn’t have to look like the 18th century, you didn’t have to dress like a hamburger, you didn’t have to arrive in a van where you were standing up because you couldn’t sit down because you wore a chandelier.

In articulating an alternative, Ford characterizes his own view, “I make pretty simple, classic, chic evening clothes, and hopefully, things go well when we dress people.”

Some side-by-side comparisons are in order:

… and hopefully, things go well…

Recently, I have become obsessed with the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant as a useful way of articulating the epistemological challenges of the current moment. With that in mind, I ask: how should we think about these changes? Should we say that Wintour helped to take a stodgy old-money, WASPy event and helped turn it into a celebration of diversity in which our contemporary Kings and Queens can slayyy! Or should we point out that when the Met Gal was a quiet establishment affair, the folks who attended it got to keep their dignity? It is a complicated question but falling back on the parable relieves us of having to pick one.

It is both.

The promise of the internet and the promise of social media has always been a promise of greater democratization, of more access for us and more accountability for them. This sounds great. I am on board. But I can’t help but wonder what the price will be. As the algorithms get better at quantifying and selling attention, what will this attention economy demand of us in return? Will we be forever forced to dance for our dinners, sing for our suppers?

To put this another way: to what extent will the future be performative?

This word performative is so hot right now. Though, it usually comes up in the context of activism and discussions of what does or does not constitute virtue signaling. I will resist the temptation to turn towards those discussions and will hue to the literal meaning of performative.

To rephrase the question asked above: to what extent will the future demand that we become performers?

3.

My day job is as a research analyst. Mostly, I write reports. My job sometimes has me giving presentations at conferences and from time to time doing media interviews. I like giving presentations, but truth be told, it is the most nerve-wracking part of the job. I am always nervous before presenting, always worried that I am going to forget something or be unable to answer a question. I am even more nervous before doing a TV segment. And I’ve discovered over the last couple of years that doing presentations remotely by video is a bit closer to doing a TV segment than it is to presenting live.

The camera brings new challenges. In person, you have all sorts of opportunities to buy time. You can move, gesture, pose rhetorical questions to the audience, things that you cannot do when presenting to your webcam. You have to stay decidedly fixed on the camera. Even glancing away to check notes comes across as awkward on camera.

You have probably heard that the camera adds ten pounds. This is perhaps why so many actors and actresses are emaciated. I am no expert, but I suppose it is because the camera takes a three-dimensional body and compresses it down to a two-dimensional image, smoothing out angles and making the human body look softer, more rounded. The camera plays other tricks, as well. It sucks a great deal of the expressionality from your face. A countenance that would be fine for face-to-face conversation can look dull and lifeless on camera. Speaking to camera requires that you learn to animate your face, often well past the point where you feel either natural or comfortable.

The sum of all of this is that performing on camera takes a good deal of effort, which can take a lot out of you. If that’s what you’re singing up for, cool. But how many of us want to sign up for this? How many of us want to make this kind of performance a central aspect of our livelihoods? This question is important because we may not have a choice.

I remember a time, a few years ago, prior to the pandemic, when a colleague of mine was pushing back against the move towards more remote working. This may sound strange. Indeed, it is strange to write. But when I first started my current job, I was not even given a laptop. There was a point of view then, that so long as the bulk of your work could only be done at your desk, it would impede the creep of having to be constantly on call. I have some sympathy for this view but even then, I saw the inevitability of the present moment. The ability to not only work remotely, but to broadcast yourself with a modicum of audio/visual acuity was already becoming a thing and I believed that it would become so even more, though I did not foresee an event like Covid that would accelerate the timeline.

4.

There are many reasons why I am not a Marxist. I mention this because there is a temptation to try to explain TikTok-ification through the lens of commodification and labor exploitation. That is to say, capitalism has taken your social connections and thrust them into the market and now you are forced to perform some version of yourself to get what you should be getting in meaningful human interactions.

That is one view. And you could indeed look at the performative aspects of social media through this Marxist lens. But your view would be materially cropped. This is as much about inducements to consume as it is about compelling people into the labor market. This is as much about memetic desires as it is about the forced transmission of bourgeois values. And perhaps most importantly, this is about the anxiety and FOMO that brings us to these social media platforms in the first place, the fear that a bunch of people are somewhere out there, joined in some great fun from which we have been excluded.

All social interactions are to some extent performative and to some extent include the accompanying anxiety. There are days that I want to pick my kid up and pitch him across the room, because he is flopping around like a deranged Muppet and I am not in the mood to deal with it. (Other days those muppet performances are so cute that I can barely contain a cry, but I digress.) To simply be a decent father or husband or friend or human being sometimes requires you to perform your role. It requires you to suck it up and deal with things whether or not you are in the mood. But there is a difference between performing for you loved ones and performing for the timeline.

And really, there is not even anything wrong with performing for the timeline. Some people came into this world to perform. My favorite current Instagram account is this guy, who sings to gospel and R&B music over other people’s cooking videos. I love it. Performance is a gift that makes our lives better. We should cherish it and those who do it. But we are not all performers. And we do not have to be performers just to live in this world.

The question is, of course, “how much longer this will be the case?”

Thanks for reading. And since I teased it…