Okay, so a few things just happened and I think they should be documented.
I signed my dog up for a TikTok account. Yea. I’m not proud of it. But TikTok is fun, and I’m that bored. So my dog… first video goes up, and he gets over 500 views in a day. I mean only two people actually liked it, but 500+ actually watched it. Or maybe one person may have just left it on their screen for 500 repeats?
Let’s go with 500 unique views, that makes me feel good. Until of course I see my niece’s page where each video has over a thousand views. Or my cousin’s page, who literally dropped out of college to be a YouTube star, playing video games for a living. He succeeded despite my warning that it would be a mistake of a lifetime to not finish his education. His bank account disagrees with me.
Where was I going with this…? Right, the dog.
The point is. Why? Why can my dog, doing quite literally nothing, get more views on TikTok then I can get reads on Medium? Different platform. I totally understand how this works. But what does it say about our society? If something isn’t delivered immediately, or if it takes too much effort, it’s off the table. Do people want to read anymore? And I don’t mean read the 280 characters that can fit in the box, Twitter. I mean actually read, and then think about what you’ve read. Then maybe, just maybe, you could have a novel idea that comes up for you that you want to dig in to, volley back!?
Does anyone want to do things that take more than 15 seconds at a clip? Or is that too much time? They’ll shove 19,000 15 second videos clips in. Oh yes, there is enough time for that. But they won’t read a 5 minute Medium article. The views on Instagram and TikTok can easily soar to millions, whereas Medium pulls in more regularly a few tens of thousands for some of their best articles.
I sound salty.
Part of me gets it. I can get lost for hours on TikTok watching videos that are less than a minute long. While I come onto medium and maybe read one or two stories. I’m that guy too. I don’t want to be, but I’m confessing it here and now. I am.
On with this story of mine.
So, after I made this account for my dog. I noticed one of the videos had 0 views, but the others had more, so I had to investigate (science and all). I had sent the video to people, and they had confirmed they saw it. So what gives TikTok? Give me my measly 5 views.
I sign into my old TikTok account to see if the views change when I pull up the videos. This account is attached to my Facebook account. The next thing I know I am conned into reactivating FB just to pull up the TOK!? WTF.
Now I must log on to FB to deactivate. Of course, it’s like walking into target. You can’t just walk in and out. You need to browse all sections, just in case there is something you might like or find useful. But unlike Target, there is NOTHING interesting or useful, and I definitely still hate Facebook.
Next comes the daunting task of trying to find the settings to deactivate the damn account, which takes me another irritating ten minutes. (Did they switch the buttons around? I feel like a senior citizen. It’s like a damn scavenger hunt.) When I finally get to the right menu, they sneak in a bullet under the check box that tells me they’ll do me a favor and automatically REACTIVATE my account in 7 days. GTFOH. The font was so small that I didn’t even notice until after I had already clicked. (Maybe this Lasik didn’t work as well as I thought…)
Seriously. I then must reactivate my account in order to deactivate my account more permanently. All while they try to convince me with little pop-ups that whatever reason I choose from the drop down isn’t enough to pull the plug. What a mess I have gotten into?? All to figure out why my dog video didn’t get more than 0 views. This is a tragedy on so many levels.
Tonight, I wanted to write a really thoughtful, science backed piece on music and memories. And now I can’t, because it’s 11:30pm and I’m shot. And I wasted too many minutes running around the social media merry-go-round.
I guess I’ll wrap it up with this:
I just wish we could have conversations again. Conversations with strangers or maybe, even better, friends you haven’t seen in a while. The ones you keep up with by observing their favorite meal photos, or their travel locations plastered on the socials.
Would they be up for a real chat?
I wish we could write and read, and use our brains, and think, and discuss, and think and discuss some more. And figure out how the world works, and how we work, and why things are the way they are.
Motivate. Inspire. Challenge.
We have so much to offer this world. What are we doing? I can’t help but feel we are wasting opportunities. But thank you for reading my loyal followers, who may now choose to unfollow me after this cracker-jack post. (If you’d rather see my dog’s TikTok, I can point you in the right direction.)
God, I miss having real conversations. Is there a platform for that? Can we make one?
