Tag: TikTok

Is The Chinese Government Fucking With American Pop Culture Via Tik-Tok?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I understand it, the connection between Tik-Tok and the Chinese government is rather…nebulous. As such, given the increasing geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, it’s easy to imagine the Chinese government dabbling in fucking with us via our pop culture that is growing ever-more influenced by Tik-Tok.

Bella Poarch

This sounds really paranoid, but it’s also how the Real World Works.

How else do you explain that Bella Poarch — who has no discernable talent other than she can bounce her head to music — is now a popular singer and what not. But, I’m being paranoid. Which is never good.

So, I guess just keep using Tik-Tok? I dunno. I’m just a rando in a flyover state.

Digital Telepathy: I May Have Caught Tik-Tok Red Handed Reading My Mind (Or Something)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me set the scene.

Today, I was walking around and the movie “But I’m A Cheerleader” briefly passed through my mind for some reason.

I resemble that remark.

I never mentioned this event to anyone. I did not write it down. Nothing. No outward indication that this occurred other than I softly chuckled to myself. Flash forward and I’m using Tik-Tok.

And what do I get pushed?

A video about that very movie.

That’s just spooky. If Tik-Tok is reading my mind, it’s not through any magical mystery alchemy — it’s being done using technology that, to date, is the stuff of science fiction. Or, at Arthur C. Clarke would posit, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

So. I’m very, very open to this belief being debunked. And I’m willing to believe there’s something I’m missing, some way that it was just a random co-incidence. Ok, that’s very possible.

But that specific, obscure movie being pushed to me within a few hours of me thinking about it…..is spooky.

Tik-Tok, Land Of The Bad Hot Take


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given the sheer volume of horrible (sometimes “woke”) hot takes to be found on Tik-Tok, the Chinese government may bring down the United States without firing a shot.

Or, to put it another way, the “algorithms” that are definitely not reading my mind, seem to push me bad hot take after bad hot take. Sometimes, the hot takes in the comments are so very very bad that you feel less intelligent for having read them. Like, I saw one that said, that novels “don’t have acts.” Uh, what?

Then there are numerous hot takes on the John Mulaney – Olivia Munn — Anna Marie Tendler imbroglio. Then there are the weird hot takes about the Met Gala that leave me saying OH, COME ON. For instance, someone said the fuss over the below look was unwarranted because, lulz, to her pegging was something only bottoms got worked up over and to her, it was just sex.

You better work.

I will note, in passing, that I worry that the Chinese government may be fucking with our pop culture by making people like Bella Poarch famous for….what? Bobbing her head and being hot? (I still don’t get that one, but, then, I’m an Old..)

Woke ‘Oulaney’ Discourse Is The Worst Discourse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When it comes to often absurd discourse on the John Mulaney and Olivia Munn relationship, I’m firmly on team Oulaney. The core of the very dumb hot takes on this particular messy situation is apparently twofold, if what I’m seeing on Tik-Tok is accurate.

Leave Oulaney Alone!

One is, a lot of women who bought into Mulvaney’s Tiger Beat persona feel betrayed and use the proxy of his wife to express their outrage. They were invested in Mulvaney as a “good boy” that they felt they could bring home to mom. He didn’t want kids, sure, but he and his wife had their dog Petunia and that was good enough for them.

Meanwhile, the other thing that makes the parasocial people on Tik-Tok angry is, well, Oliva Munn. They don’t like that she wrote a book that was, well, the type of book you could imagine Olivia Munn writing. I remember her from The Man Show and she wasn’t, exactly, uhhhh….woke? The thing that made her a star, in fact, you could say started her whole career, was the episode of The Man Show where she struggled to eat a hotdog tied to a string above her head. (I think that’s what was going on.)

She’s kind of the type of woman that is “just one of the guys” but also is probably banging the best looking Alpha Male in that group.

And here is the point where I kind of hit a brick wall in my response to all of this. Because of how touchy woke people on Tik-Tok are, it’s so problomatic to comment on the surreal discourse about Team Oulaney that I honestly don’t know what to say.

I definitely validate the woke discourse. But I also think if those two crazy kids are happy, who are we to judge? Munn’s thing is being hypersexual and outrageous in a heteronormative fashion. That’s her thing. And that “thing” apparently does a number on the minds of some Tik-Tok users who think Munn is some sort of evil homewrecker who “stole” their Tiger Beat idol from his wife.

I find that argument dubious. Yes, she was probably more aggressive towards Mulaney than maybe they would like, but he was going through some things with his wife and she really, really dug him. That, as far as I’m concerned, is enough.

But I definitely think we can learn a lot about the excess of “woke” culture by mulling the arguments of people angry at Oulaney on Tik-Tok. It’s all very interesting….and a tad surreal.

The Curious Case Of Tik-Tok Pushing Me Videos Of Emily Blunt On My FYP


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve finally come to believe that Tik-Tok can’t read my mind. I’ve finally come to believe that all that’s happening is their algorithms really are so good that what appears to be “spooky-they-can-read-my-mind” pushed videos is simply very good algorithm technology. (Which, I believe, in itself is dangerous and a national security risk, but, lulz.) I say this because I ran some casual experiments in my mind and, if Tik-Tok can read my mind, it chose to ignore the bait.

Also, I think a lot of what I’m noticing comes from Tik-Tok really REALLY rooting around in anything I do online, even if I’m not using my phone. Somehow, it’s also scanning what I’m writing right now and all that writing I’ve been doing for the four novels.

So, Tik-Tok is NOT reading my mind.

But, there is a specific aspect of Tik-Tok that at least causes me some puzzlement — the specific women’s videos it choses to push me.

This is where things get really, really, murky. How Tik-Tok would know I like a specific type of woman with a specific type of appearance is something I struggle with. That there are two or three women with the late Annie Shapiro’s phenotype that I get pushed is very curious indeed.

And then there’s Emily Blunt.

Even though she’s talented, witty and beautiful, I’ve never much thought of myself as a Emily Blunt fan. She’s just another hot brunette British actress who did a really great turn on SNL a while back, if I recall. But today, I was pondering all of this and something occurred to me — maybe it’s not Emily Blunt, but Alexa Chung that I’m being pushed via a proxy.

Now, at this point, I have to say that a long time ago I had something of a celebrity crush on Ms. Chung. An online troll played a prank on me, causing me to think something was real that was not real (sort of a catfish, if you will) and, as such, now I’m in terror that any mention of her on my part will cause the FBI or her “people” to swoop down on this blog, looking for proof that I’m a deranged fan.

This is not at all the case. I don’t even think about her at all anymore, feel extremely sheepish about the minor misunderstanding and just want to forget the whole thing. In fact, given that someone in Brooklyn is REALLY interested in me since I mentioned I want to cover NYFW at some point in the next two to three years, I suddenly am paranoid that her “people” are worried I’ll bump into her while taking street fashion pictures in 2022 or 2023.

Trust me, I will either actively work to avoid that from happening or if I did accidently run into her just because it was NYFW I would feel so bad that there was even a small chance that she would be alarmed at my presence that I would probably turn a heel and walk in the exact opposite direction to avoid that nightmarish situation.

In other words, leave me alone, FBI agent. Stop putting any post that mentions Ms. Chung in my file.

But anyway, back to the issue of Emily Blunt as an Alexa Chung proxy.

Why would I be pushed Emily Blunt if I’m not really a fan of hers? If you wanted to put on your tinfoil hat, you could say that since there aren’t that many videos on Tik-Tok about Ms. Chung, I get Emily Blunt videos instead.

Anyway. Lulz, nothing matters.

I have four novels to develop and write as quickly as possible.

Is Tik-Tok Fucking With Me?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, let me be clear — I do not believe either that Tik-Tok can read our minds nor that it is somehow doing a primitive form of “inception” on us. But I have an extremely — and I mean EXTREMELY — active imagination, so you got posts like this.

So, there I was, thinking I had Tik-Tok all figured out. If it was reading our minds, I had set-up just the type of situation whereby I could test this theory and see what happened.

And then nothing happened.

And THEN, I thought about something. In the days leading up to me having something of an ah-ha moment about photography, I was being pushed EXTREMELY specific videos on Tik-Tok about photography. Or, more specifically, how really great photos were actually produced.

So, when I had an ah-ha moment about buying a prosumer camera in the coming months with my camera in my lap, I thought I had a “gotcha moment” setup for Tik-Tok.

Now, however, I’m beginning to grow more concerned, in a way. What if very nature of how we imagine our minds, relative to how Tik-Tok sees it — is all wrong. Our conscious mind doesn’t float on our subconscious, it’s all one big thing that Tik-Tok can root around at well.

So, this theory goes, by the time I had my “ah-ha” moment about buying a prosumer camera, Tik-Tok had already moved on. I wasn’t influencing Tik-Tok, it was influencing me.

The only reason why any of this matters is I hate being manipulated in the extreme. So, even the bonkers, totally-not-real idea that Tik-Tok is rooting around in my mind — even though it’s not happening — is enough to make me angry that it’s POSSIBLE that it’s real.

If you look at things this new way, it’s just not something you can test. How do you test if someone is reading your mind if all they know you so well that all they have to do is subtly ping you photos and your mind takes care of the rest.

So, I dunno. Tik-Tok is probably going to continue to use its algorithms in a way that spooks me and I will have absolutely no way to prove anything one way or another.

Now what.

Tik-Tok Is A National Security Threat


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It happened again. Today I was looking at Tik-Tok and was pushed an extremely and I mean EXTREMELY specific video on my For You Page. Here’s what happened: I went to the doctor yesterday and he asked me around my alcohol consumption.

After some joking around, I admitted I drink a lot.

Ok, flash forward 24 hours and what am video am I pushed on my For You Page? A video a man having that specific conversation with his doctor. Like the literal same conversation.

Let’s go through how this is possible.

There’s the case that somehow, in aggregate, that Tik-Tok knows via my likes and time watched that people like me drink a lot and have that type of conversation with our doctors…so I got the video. That’s a fair enough explanation other than it happened 24 hours after I had that specific conversation with my own doctor.

The Future is Now.

Another argument could be made that through a combination of knowing about people like me aggregate and my phone’s location that they knew to push me that video because they knew that not only do I drink a lot, but within the last 24 hours I had been to a doctor. (This one actually seems to make sense.)

Then, there’s the more kooky explanations — at a minimum Tik-Tok is listening to me via my phone. I’m beginning to think a lot Big Tech companies do this already and Tik-Tok is just the most conspicuous.

Of course, I continue to have a lingering suspicion that Tik-Tok is much more direct than any of the above — it is somehow reading my mind.

But, lulz, that couldn’t possibly be happening, right? Right?

Idle Observations For The Makers Of Tik-Tok About The State Of Media Tech


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

With the return of yet another version of Gawker, I find myself wondering why media technology is so boring and uninnovative. At the moment, you have audio platforms like Spaces taking off (a little bit) and that’s about it. We’re no where near VR or AR taking off at the moment.

Blogs are dead in the water. Websites are dead in the water. Twitter is mature. Facebook is mature. And no sign of anything out there about to “disrupt” the way we consume media about to pop out any time soon.

Why this is the case could be a whole different blog post, but that’s not the point of this post.

If I had a spare $1 billion lying around, I would create a video platform that was loosely based on the old Usenet newsgroups service of 25 years ago. But it would have a paid editorial and post-production staff. So you would have professional video podcasting with a robust ability to comment and the ability to pump out spicy hot take clips from an hour-long video podcast.

The one company that’s in the best position to adopt these ideas is, of course, Tik-Tok. It would allow them to transition from a GenZ meme generator to something that could compete directly with Twitter (and to a certain extent, the podcasting aspect of Spotify.)

And, yet, lulz.

I think something pretty dramatic — like me winning the lottery — is the only way any of this will ever happen. The Internet space is not only mature, it’s dominated by a few very powerful companies who have a vested interest in keeping things exactly the way they are. Long gone are the “blue sky” days of the Web when you could think up a cool idea and change the world.

The investment dynamics, alone, probably prevent anyone from risking any size amount of money on doing something cool.

We’re stuck with the conditions of a mature Internet media market for the foreseeable future. Whenever VR and AR take off, then we’ll see a new, clean break from the past and cool stuff — mostly controlled by the usual suspects, natch — will happen.

Tik-Tok & The Tale Of The Female Phenotypes


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really don’t want to believe the technology exists to read our minds via our cellphones. That’s just a bridge too far for me at this point. I will admit that I vacillate conspicuously and wildly on this blog between suggesting that is possible and dismissing it.

But here’s the latest eerie example of SOMETHING going on.

I can think of two examples off the top of my head where Tik-Tok pushed me a video of a woman with a certain phenotype that is identical to the late Annie Shapiro. The women look so much like they could be her sisters.

This does not, in itself, prove anything. It could just be that relative to their “algorithms” people like me who watch the videos I watch like women who look exactly like a dead woman who changed my life while I was in Seoul. I mean, it’s not like they would have the means or interest to do that, right? That’s just crazy talk.

What The Fuck Is Tik-Tok Up To?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Tonight, I was repeatedly pushed eerie videos on Tik-Tok. Given that I had a long and interesting conversation about Tik-Tok’s ability to push “eerie” content to me with someone today, it’s almost like the service is taunting me at this point.

Here’s what happened.

I had a wide-ranging conversation with someone today over beer and pizza and at one point he mentioned how an online friend he met in person was “tiny” compared to what he expected. Well, lo and behold, what happens today, but I get pushed a video about that exact fucking thing — how tiny another woman was!

Then, I’ve been pushed what seems like six or so videos about elevators, of all things. And what did I think about intensely in the last 24 hours since I’m living in a hotel this weekend?

Elevators!

What the fuck is going on? How could the Tik-Tok “algorithm” figure out that I, specifically, was thinking about elevators a lot in the last few days. Or, more specifically, if you follow the logic that what I’m seeing in aggregated assumption about people like me, then why would there be a few thousand people like me who the “algorithms” thought would be interested in elevators of all things. I have no written about the situation with elevators. I have not spoken to anyone about it. The only metric by which elevators have come into my life at all has been in my thoughts.

I’m still not prepared to go full crank and actually believe Tik-Tok can read our minds, but…I dunno, man, something spooky is definitely going on.