Farewell Tiktok (after 7 years) [Solocast]

I've been an avid and active user of TikTok, since it was Musically. I found a home there as a creator, and it taught me how to make short form videos. I probably have over 7000 short videos under my belt at this point, and I can't believe the progress I have made since I joined.

From the beautiful couples I've seen get hitched on there, to the people growing their business, and the overall communal vibes the whole platform has. It is going to be a tough one to lose, its been real TikTok. <3

Transcript:
00:00
goodbye TikTok and this is not normally the type of content I create on this particular podcast but considering the fact that I've been on TikTok for around the same time span that this podcast has been around in general too, I figured it was worth mentioning because I started creating content to document my journey through the modular degree. That was my motivation. I saw Gary Vee talking about document over creating so I was documenting my journey with this do-it-yourself education and then

00:28
I also was still really into Gary Vee at the time and he kept spouting off over and over and over again, go join Musically. Musically is a great video platform, right now it's all lip-singing and dancing but it's gonna be more than that, he kept saying that and every time he said something I would pay attention and I would try to watch it myself, like he said something about other platforms and I would see the change happen myself and so I knew what he was saying was right. And so I joined Musically and at the time I posted some cringey stuff like you know lip-singing and whatever kind of funny stuff I could make.

00:58
there was this trend where people would go into the bathroom saying, this is my voice one week in Germany. This is my voice one, two, two weeks in Germany and just kind of continue on. And the punchline was like at the end of it, like some kind of funny like punchline at the end. And this happened for multiple different cultures around the world. And I made like a dozen or 14 of those videos. And I moved, I grew, I grew from like 200 followers to 900 followers in a week. And I tried copying that same strategy again, but like, I think, honestly, I didn't do it nearly as well as that first campaign.

01:27
I tried doing it since then, like the berries and cream trend and stuff like that. And right now I just wanted to talk about my experience on TikTok, particularly as someone who's been on there for seven years now. And the fact that a lot of these OG TikTokers quote unquote started in 2020. And I joined like two years prior to that. I'm not saying I'm better than like that. I'm just saying I've seen more of the platform and I've seen so many beautiful things happen. I've seen people.

01:56
get hitched off the platform. They meet each other and flirt and duet. And back in the day, like prior to 2020, there would be this big rise in duets when people liked each other. It's kind of like the old Facebook hooking. And some people would duet when they had a crush on somebody and then the person would duet back and then they would start dating. And then I saw them get married and it was so beautiful. I got to see Call Me Chris and Shonda's Magic and Emily King, all these great TikTokers, blow up over the course of the platform. I saw the beginnings.

02:23
like less than 10K or even less than 8K in some of these cases. And I saw them blow up after that. I mean, call me Chris has like 15 million followers or I guess now had at the time of this recording, it's the last day. And it's like, I saw the evolution of this platform, every iteration, every wave of it. And now I'm seeing the end of it. And even if it comes back, even if it comes back, it's not going to be the same. It's just, it's just not. And we're seeing this farewell happening across the board.

02:53
And I think it's freaking hilarious that people call it a Chinese app when in actuality, like yes, technically by dance is Chinese, but TikTok itself is not Chinese. And like, I'm not even going to get into data privacy knowledge, because Facebook is way worse when it comes to that. But when it comes to TikTok is a platform people have been able to make their living off of it and share their ideas and all of the meta trends that have happening have started on TikTok. Like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are months, if not multiple months late.

03:22
to the trends when it comes to the timeline of when things are popular. And so not having that meta trends mecha in a way is going to be something that's really interesting to see what happens as a content creator. And even just as a user of the platform, I mean, finding new music was kind of the biggest thing about that platform sometimes. And it sucks that we're not going to have that anymore. And I think it's hilarious how everyone moved over to red note, like literally even the UK after the US followed us.

03:52
new chance that Canada might also ban TikTok. So Canada might end up on Red Note. And it's funny how like, okay, well, if you're going to push 170 million users, which is over half of the US population off of this platform that we all love, then we're going to go somewhere else. It's even worse because we want to be somewhere. And just a little quick note on that, the fact that everybody on Red Note has been super sweet and welcoming, like welcoming in all these quote unquote TikTok refugees. And there's been this beautiful exchange of culture.

04:21
They're teaching us Mandarin. We're teaching them English. We're helping them out with their English homework. They're helping us out with our math homework. And I'm not making a like stereotype joke. That's literally like what people have been doing on there. And I went on there and found a whole bunch of techies and cool setups. And it's just one of those things where I was like, okay, well I'd rather, you know, stick it to the man, if you will, and go on there and see what happens. And I mean, even if, if they block it or red note separates the Chinese users from the international users, it's still funny to see.

04:50
this trend happening where everyone moved over there just to spite because there's no way in hell a lot of these TikTokers are going to go on to reels. It's just it's just not good. It's not a good interface, not a good platform. The algorithm is complete garbage compared to TikTok's pretty ingenious algorithm. And it's just one of those things where I saw a lot of beautiful things that happened over the years and people rising up over certain things and information being spread. Obviously on any platform, misinformation can be spread.

05:20
In comparison to like Facebook or Twitter, the misinformation on TikTok is so sparse and few and far between, versus like you can scroll one in three posts would be misinformation on Facebook. It's insane, the disparity there. And yet TikTok's the one that's getting yelled at and the folk eyes on. So it's just kind of interesting there. And the fact that TikTok popularized this vertical video ecosystem now, I don't think anything's going to replace it anytime soon. Lemonade is just not it. It's-

05:48
basically supposed to be like an Instagram alternative. And that's actually what Red Note is too. It's an Instagram Pinterest alternative, not a TikTok alternative, but you can do TikToks on there. And so it's just interesting. I had over 700 saved audios and I deleted some of my oldest ones because I think a year ago I was like, okay, I don't need any of these. I'm not gonna do them anytime soon. And so I think my oldest audio was saved from five years ago, not even seven, but I'm currently trying to go through them all. My phone was overheating how many videos I was making.

06:16
Because at this point, screw it, why not? And they're all saving to my phone so I can then ...