General Discussion

Bit of a long post here.

I am an 29 year old Autistic guy from the northwest USA who started developing a serious addiction to Instagram and TikTok during the COVID pandemic. It got worse around 2022 when I lost my job. TikTok, like Reddit, does have lots of very informational and interesting content on there and I enjoyed watching lots of travel videos as well as many math and science related videos. What made TikTok a very attractive platform for younger Americans was how it tapped into a niche market very well. TikTok was mainly good for short form video content and especially videos that were under a minute. There were lots of interesting information on TikTok and interesting features that made it much more interesting to use compared to Reddit. Since TikTok is a very international platform, we could see lots of news and travel content from all over the world. I loved watching travel and international videos on TikTok However even those “educational” travel videos can become toxic as it’s mainly travel influencers who travel all over the world to visit nice places and make give us FOMO. In reality, they most likely come from wealthy families, have an abnormally high carbon footprint flying to all sorts of different places, and likely staying in Airbnbs instead of hotels to save up on any accommodation costs.

Unfortunately like Twitter and even Reddit, TikTok does have some major problems when it comes to toxicity and trolling. Especially if users are relatively anonymous by having some obscure username and profile picture. Most of these problems started when I got into some problems with some younger women on TikTok I didn’t know but made me very angry for some reasons. I made some nasty messages about them until one of them called me out. Thinking about it now, I very much regret it now and I wished I could apologize. After this, I’ve been contemplating about deleting TikTok. I already uninstalled Instagram but I still don’t want to delete it completely as I have lots of great material on there from the past.

TikTok, and social media in general, has became a massive scourge for younger people. It has made marginalized men significantly more misogynistic and chauvinistic. It has made marginalized CIS heterosexual people significantly more homophobic and extremely transphobic. It has made people in general much more racist towards people of other ethnic and racial backgrounds, and much more bigoted towards people of other religions.

Nowadays, TikTok has suddenly became an extremely vile place for anyone who is Indian. Many of these incredibly racist and hateful comments are being made by non-White people of color and sometimes Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who share the same racial background as us. TikTok a Chinese social media giant that was banned in India for some bizarre reasons, but this means that India has become the punching bag for jokes. I don’t mean playful jokes. I mean genuinely disgusting and racist comments. I am of Indian-origin (born to Indian immigrant parents) and right now there is a conflict going on with India and Pakistan. On one video, there is a comment made by an anonymous user that has over 3,000 likes that said “I hope Pakistan nukes the sh** out of India and cleans the entire world of this plague!” On another video, another comment with almost 50,000 likes said “The smelliest war in the world!” India has a myriad of problems, especially when it comes to public safety and corruption. However after reading some of these comments, I am ready to pull the plug on my TikTok account and say “Bye Bye” to TikTok forever. I hate how Google also uses TikTok for many videos as well.