Read on Twitter
So I’ve been doing some things for Tik Tok for work which means I’ve also had to spend some time over there to learn the platform.
One thing that strikes me is how little anxiety of influence there is. Maybe it’s just a Tik Tok thing or maybe it’s a Gen Z thing. I don’t know.
Growing up Gen X (and maybe this was just me) I had a constant need for alterity.
I mean that was always a little stupid. I always did things in opposition, my sense of alterity driven by not doing anything like anyone else. Of course, that oppositional move was conforming what I felt was abnormal. But anyway.
The logic of a lot of Tik Tok is achieving alterity through openly adapting and adoption conventions and and in the repetition, modifying them. And all gained by abandoning any trite notion of necessarily trying for difference.
I suppose that links up with other products of digital culture, right?
Take memes for example. You take the template and make it your own. You achieve difference through sameness.
I know it’s a fools game to extrapolate about different generations from a few limited examples, and yet I still feel there is a profound shift. (At least from my experiences growing up in the 80s and 90s)
And it probably says more about me growing up and about where I am now than actually dissing out some real generational difference.
But it makes so much sense to me when you put it in the context of digital culture.
Like there’s just SO. MUCH. DAMN. CONTENT. now.
How many times have you thought you came up with some unique and original joke on Twitter only to find that @balrog1666 beat you to it by like five years?
Makes sense people growing up with that their whole lives would be like “Ah fuck it,” I’ll just make what I find my own.
But to me, that aspect of digital culture (if I’m even right about it) goes against the conventional logic that sees the internet as this isolating and anti-social force.
You can bash the hive mind of various corners of the internet, but that interplay of accepted conventions and shared language is hyper social. And instead of being limited to your class or your high-school, it’s broadened out on a global scale.
Of course, that leads to problems—hateful people can find one another too. And instead of being shunned by a local group, can find other like-minded hateful people to commune with and amplify their hate.
So it’s definitely a double-edged sword.
