No one has ever become interesting on TikTok

In my own hot-and-cold relationship with social media, the precipitating event for reducing or stopping my scrolling is often “when was the last time I learned something on this platform that made my life better?”.

You might be thinking of some hack for folding a fitted sheet, finding discounts, or (heaven forbid) prompting ChatGPT. But how long ago was that, really? And how many hours of your screentime are you happy to exchange for it?

There is a recurring type of video you will have seen if your algorithm looks anything like mine. A young woman stands alone in a room and announces, “just post the content!”. A towering stack of boxes slides into the frame each sporting the name of a brand or a designer purse is pulled from the oversized branded (always branded) bag it came in. Most of the time, she will include a line about “having nothing to lose”. The strong (and incorrect) implication here is that posting content is completely free and when done enough will reward you with consumer goods that your 9-5 would never allow you to purchase. What no one sees is the number of hours exchanged when scripting, filming, editing, scheduling, monitoring, and posting content to build profiles of the size that deems you eligible for gifting from a major brand.

The chances that any individual posting to social media will ever reach the level of success that allows them to make a lucrative income from it are microscopic. ‘Content creation’ (posting to social media for pay or hopes of it) has come to feel like a multi-level marketing scheme that every internet user is constantly being pitched as both the solution to their economic anxieties and their boredom.

There are many exceptional people in the world and a decent percentage of them now create content about it online. However, the people that tend to succeed at it have something in common. They were interesting before the platform they built from being so. They were well read, or natural savants, or had exceptional taste. Some were simply interesting looking, either naturally or by cultivation. They attracted followings (and brand deals, and monetised content) because of those things. If social media platforms were to disappear tomorrow, they would still have those attributes and ways to market them, albeit to likely more humble results. But with their success visible to anyone with an account millions of people are inspired to follow in their footsteps.