The narcissistic site that hits home with Gen-Zers

If you go to North Dakota State and you haven’t come across the app Tik Tok, then you must be Patrick Star, because you’re living under a rock. The Tik Tok app is a sensation among young people, particularly college students, but for many of us, it has left us feeling confused.

Not to sound like your grandmother, but the appeal of Tik Tok isn’t obvious to me. The app, which burgeoned out of the lip-syncing app, Musical.ly, has been the most downloaded app in the App Store for the past year. 

Users feeds are filled with videos that are algorithmically chosen for an individual. Watch a lot of puppy videos? Your feed is filled with puppies. Watch challenge videos? You now get the latest challenge videos. You’re a forty-year-old man who likes watching young teenage girls dance? Well, with Tik Tok, you can.

The app is not only puzzling but problematic. Unlike Vine, Tik Tok’s older and more dated cousin, Tik Tok’s ‘best’ videos are often deemed so because they humiliate the user who made them. Videos of overweight people singing duets with other users (a feature of the app) often go viral because it is so unimaginable that the two people could ever interact with one another.

When videos aren’t being shared to demean someone, they are many times promoting narcissistic and idealized-beauty standards. Videos often feature teenagers looking ‘ugly’ in the first few seconds of the video and then looking stunning in the next. In actuality, these videos usually feature beautiful people wearing sweatpants and glasses, and then, like a bad romantic comedy, they are suddenly gorgeous when they slap on some make-up and a crop top.

For most people, the highlight of the app has to do with the aspect of challenges. There has been the Lizzo inspired DNA Test challenge, where users took a lyric from the user’s “Truth Hurts” song. Then there was the “Old Town Road” challenge which had users displaying their best Western get-ups. Then, of course, the ever so intriguing Adele gummy bear challenge.

What is so fascinating about watching hundreds of iterations of the same video until you’ve beat an original idea into the ground? I’m not sure, I’m still trying to get it.

Maybe I’m just a die-hard Vine girl, maybe I don’t like the idea of a site using artificial intelligence to feed me specified content, but something just doesn’t seem right here. Most videos aren’t funny, they just seem sad or self-indulgent.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the site has to do with the previously mentioned issue of pedophiles having easy access to young children. A BBC study found that the site was either unable or unwilling to remove the profiles of users sending sexually explicit comments to children as young as nine.

Even the most innocent user indulging in the most innocent of posts is a bystander to this deviant behavior. Not to mention how little each user’s own content is protected. Using the A.I. algorithm, the content one individual shares can very easily reach the eyes of many strangers.

Maybe the video you upload is all about carefree fun, but as college students, it’s likely many of us desire a career someday. It may be harder to find a career if there is a video out there of you licking a container of ice cream.

Tik Tok is an app to humor the narcissistic, catty part of each person. It allows a laugh at the expense of others. In the best case, the videos are meant to look candid but often feel so forced, and in these cases, I can’t laugh, I can only cringe. Tik Toks are bad, try to change my mind.