What TikTok's success tells us about our times

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Users aren't just inventing choreographies, they're creating a mediated global social relationship. | Amanda Vick via Unsplash
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This network is a society in its own right, with its social classes and myths, its heroes who started from nothing and who "made themselves."
What does TikTok tell us about the times? How does the success of this app, which has seen an explosion in downloads during the Covid pandemic, deserve more than the more or less condescending attention reserved for its celebrity-hungry teenage choreographies?

In 2020, TikTok became the most anhui mobile number database app in the world, a pandemic within the pandemic, surpassing Silicon Valley giants (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger). The app now has more than a billion users worldwide, and nearly 20 million in France according to Médiamétrie , mainly among young people. What does this success mean?

“The magic of TikTok”
During the lockdown, TikTok offered a form of illusionary escape, a digital niche where boredom could be overcome by sharing videos of teens dancing, singing, and imitating other teens who were just like them. TikTok is a kind of web reality TV whose sole ambition is to occupy time devoid of any real experience by participating in trends and challenges.

“In this vibrant digital moment,” writes Océane Herrero in Le Système TikTok , an investigation just published by Editions du Rocher, “confined users are sharing their failed haircuts, since they did them themselves over their sink. Everyone is drinking “whipped coffee” made from instant granules, the recipe of which has become trendy. We are exploring the aesthetic of “cottagecore,” with videos that feature small country houses and pleated tablecloths, an old-fashioned everyday life, but which gives the image of an innocent, free and distant time.”

TikTok stands out from other social networks by the diffusion of short videos that have supplanted written messages and still images. We can also read in this book that "TikTok knows what you like, what you share, details a former employee, and builds from this data a digital persona" which will be attached to a pool of audiences. The algorithm is based less on the digital identity of users than on the videographic characteristics of their practices on TikTok: caption, hashtags, music, spoken language, viewing time, etc. It is no longer a social network, nor is it an "on-demand" video platform since the algorithm does without demand, it is an application that fulfills the desires of users by anticipating their choice. This is "the magic of TikTok" , as the company describes it.

"We can only measure today," writes Océane Herrero, "the way in which the platform influences our way of building community and our culture. Now, we come across books in bookstores promoted as the "TikTok phenomenon" not to be missed. The same is true in cosmetics stores and on Amazon. TikTok has become the place of virality, the place where trends are produced. Memes come from TikTok. The latest songs come from TikTok. Web culture has become hyper-concentrated on this platform."