When you open up your TikTok app, what do you see first? How you answer that question may or may not say a lot about you and why you go on the app in the first place.
I just opened TikTok to answer this for myself (a dangerous action, I know, but I'm doing it for science), and the first video that came up on my For You page, after refreshing the app completely, was a recipe video from Live Eat Learn | Vegetarian -- braised lemon chickpeas, if you were curious. I don't technically follow this account, but I have liked and saved their videos a lot, and have liked and saved similar recipes in the past. (I'm closing the app, I swear. As soon as I save this recipe.)
Landing on this video first on my FYP has a lot to do with the algorithm -- this is a popular video with a lot of views, likes, and saves. It's from last week, so chronology doesn't matter. But this result also says a lot about me as a person. I'm a vegetarian. I watch a lot of food and recipe videos and tend to save videos like these, and from this account, for later reference.
We so often look at social media in terms of numbers and data, algorithms and analytics. TikTok, the app, shows me recipe videos because it recognizes that these are videos that I like and that will keep me scrolling on the app longer, which is the ultimate goal aside from getting me to purchase something from an ad, which (probably) I won't.
But we can also think of social media in a more human way. We almost have to, to escape the horrors of reality and capitalism. I go to TikTok and find recipes that I can then add to my meal plan for the following week and have something to look forward to -- something I can enjoy with my family. In that way, I'm not just an avatar being served a treat. I'm a human being having an experience.
At the end of the day, aren't we all?