I don’t know why but the TikTok algorithm never really “got me”. I watch a video of say “slimes” then it gives me like 8 more videos about slimes, which I then swipe away becasue I don’t really care about them that much. Then I repeat that with other topics and TikTok sort of got confused.

Fast forward some time…

Now my TikTok feed is 100% Spanish and I’m only A2-B1 in fluency.

I mean, if you actually get as far as making content, then cool.

But mostly people get stuck at panel three.

Slime is just liquid plastic, covered with shiny microplastics.

Corporations somehow manage to repackage their manufacturing waste into a novelty product and people eat that shit up. Sometimes literally.

Also ffs please let some hobbies just be hobbies and not another capitalist venture in monetizing your enjoyment out of an activity.

The slime is alt right content and you basically described my parents

The imitation game. Kids should be warned, they must choose their interests and look for what they really like, not the other way around

I wish that these platforms had better options for having multiple DIFFERENT algorithms that would be easy to switch between. I think this is specifically referencing Tik Tok, which I’ve never used myself, but it applies to things like YouTube too.

Sometimes I want to go down a rabbit hole of music, gerting fed content about musical equipment or videos from new bands that might interest me, or talking about music theory. Sometimes it’s crafting- woodworking, metal working, 3D printing. Sometimes it’s information about TV or movies or videogames or books. Sometimes I want to dive into history or engineering.

All of these very different watching “moods” are using the same account with the same algorithm. And maybe you could argue for making multiple accounts and switching, but that seems like a pain. And while I don’t pay them, if I did then the multiple different accounts would be an issue.

I’ve really appreciated Lemmy features, although some might just be specific to the Connect app. Its very easy and simple to have different accounts, usually on different instances, that I switch for different things. It’s easy to set up a “multi” to group similar communities together into one feed. I wish all the apps for media consumption were like that.

Somehow the Algorithm has decided to give me clips of those rotating shredding machines, the ones that look like giant paper shredders.

Reminds me of StumbleUpon. I miss it dearly, but it had this major flaw. You’d hit stumble and it would dump you to some random part or the internet based on your interests (assuming you selected any). Sometimes an article, sometimes a pic, video, joke, you name it. Based on what you like or dislike, it was supposed to yield better stumbles over time. Except it didn’t.

What would happen is that you would eventually make the fatal mistake of liking a single image of a horse or something, and every other goddamn result from that point forward was tailored to horse culture. The only solution was to go back in your count and remove everything you ever liked, then never, ever, ever like another goddamn horse again.

But using StumbleUpon with interests selected and absolutely no feedback was a truly wonderful thing. During my younger days abusing Adderall, I used to go so fucking deep down the archeology and Celtic mythology rabbit hole, to the point where I felt like I was the intrepid explorer who was unearthing these ancient secrets.

It do be like that.

I let my toddler on youtube shorts because its the only thing that gets her to sit still. Lucky for me i avoid all short form content as a matter of self-defence because my entire algorithm is tung tung tung tung tung tung tung sahur and sprunky.