It is your phone that is TikTok’s greatest asset

Using TikTok to Share Your Desires: Exploring the Architecture of Google, a 20th Century Approach to the Art and Science of Social Media

With TikTok, however, transcendence is exchanged for immanence within the app. Wheregoogle wants to give you access to the world, TikTok will reveal your deepest desires. In comparison to TikTok, Youtube andInstagram have control panels that allow you to traverse the seas of content, and with screens within screen links that explode outwards.

The mid-20th century enabled moving images to enter our homes as a result of the transition from cinema to TV. The content became a part of our everyday life, as we watched it as we prepared for breakfast, ate dinner, hosted guests, and spent time with family. Theorists like Marshall McLuhan noticed that as moving pictures were taken out of the dark, anonymous communes of the theater and placed within our domestic spaces, the foundational mechanics of how we received, processed, and related to them changed. The new features of our dwellings took on a familiar casualness, which Heidegger recognizes as deeply intertwined with our sense of being in the world. Viewers increasingly developed “parasocial” relationships with the people they saw through these screens, as Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl note in the foundational paper in which they coin the term. Home audiences grew to see these mass media personas as confidants and friends, giving broadcasters the means to manipulate audiences at a more personal level.

Once upon a time, platforms wanted to be universal in their aim to be accessible to anyone who might want it. As Kyle Chayka notes, this allowed companies to promise users that they could use any device to transcend particularities like nationality, identity, or class and “follow anything or anyone” they wanted when on the site. This logic is used to describe the mission of Google, who is focused on making the world’s information universally accessible. Discussions have rarely focused on the specifics of our encounter with these platforms—the instruments used, context, or materiality.

Julia Fox’s TikTok tour of her New York City apartment went viral a week ago. She says at the start of the video that she does believe in transparency but never thought she would do this. “And I know I’m going to get roasted, and whatever, but hopefully maybe someone can watch this and be like, ‘OK, well, maybe I’m not doing so bad.’”

Fox’s video put me in mind of the TikTok creator Emily Feret, who is normalizing normal by talking about her hodgepodge diet, the travails of her daily getting-ready routine and showing off her home’s nonaesthetic playroom. I’ve written before about Feret, who serves as a corrective to how the perfection (or performance thereof) of certain momfluencers can worm into your brain, even if you strongly suspect that their online lives are something of a put-on.

While those glossy moms of social media — with their spotless backsplashes and blown-out hair — are still very influential and attractive to advertisers, I do feel that we’re seeing, for lack of a better term, a vibe shift among moms online, moving away from the unattainable ideal and gravitating toward content that actually resembles real life.

When Marguerite Richards bragged about her dad’s previous novel, she was looking to get people interested. Maybe more than a few dozen new readers. As the first few positive comments started rolling in, she was pleased to have done something nice for a dad who definitely deserved it.

Her video was seen by millions of people within a few days, and her father’s book rocketed to the top of Amazon’s best seller list.

Tootsie Roll Celebrates Lloyd Devereux Richards: A Storyteller Who Wins the Lottery for Her Dad, His Daughter, and His Daughter

Lloyd Devereux Richards first published “Stone Maidens” in 2012. It is a movie about a FBI agent following a murderer in Indiana, and is described by his daughter as quite good. However, the publishing industry is a fickle mistress, and the original release failed to drum up excitement.

My dad put in a lot of time and effort to write his book. I know what a lovely storyteller he is,” she told CNN. He never stopped writing, and he always stayed positive.

This episode is a part of a social media genre known as: “Young people giving their elders love and recognition on a platform the latter doesn’t understand.” It is fruitful and full of parents like Lloyd Devereux Richards who wake up one morning to discover that their talents, hobbies, or peculiar habits have been broadcast to the world and won them legions of admirers.

“My dad wasn’t really sure what TikTok is, but he has been so pleased and grateful,” Richards says. “I love how people are appreciating him. Even some brands have commented. A few weeks ago, these people didn’t know who he was. The account of Tootsie Roll is cheering him on.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/23/us/stone-maidens-lloyd-devereux-richards-tiktok-cec/index.html

The End of Time: Introducing Lloyd Devereux Richards to the Tik Tok Facebook Group and Stories about his Childhood and His Family

There is a lot of people who are struggling with a project who think they are off track and this gives them the inspiration to regroup. “Everyone can relate to the feeling of being a late bloomer.”

We can see who is following and who is watching us. Richards says that they read as many comments as they can. “There are young people who have said they’ve never bought a book for pleasure, or they don’t read a lot. They are loving it as they sit down and read.

Now, Lloyd Devereux Richards has more than 360,000 TikTok followers and a brand new story to tell. He has plans for the future, too, though it would be very un-authorly of him to give them all away at once.