Picture this: you’re scrolling through your TikTok feed when you stumble across a video about a new game coming out. You watch the video all the way through and decide to leave a like. Fast forward a few videos, and you come across another TikTok discussing the same game. You don’t watch the whole thing but do leave another like and check out the creator’s profile. Next thing you know, every other video relates to the game in some way. Rinse and repeat.
Social Media: a Customized Experience
Social media app algorithms are designed to hone in on a user’s interests and to feed the user content based on these apparent interests. Ignoring the somewhat alarming implications this has on online data collection, it is quite convenient. Any user can spend their day scrolling through content which has quite literally been tailored to them. When I was a teaching intern in a class of first-year high schoolers, my supervisor commented that it must be easy for me to connect with the students as we were “around the same age”. While, in this context, seven years may not seem like a lot to someone who only uses Facebook and LinkedIn, her statement could not have been further from the truth. I still could not tell you what “skibidi toilet” means, and while I understand the concept of mewing, I can’t say I have seen many videos referencing it.
Apart from age, general interests also play a role in the version of the internet one is presented with. My brother is less than two years younger than me, yet he is constantly exasperated at my lack of knowledge when it comes to online figures he considers famous. At the same time, he had no clue what I was talking about when I told him Trisha Paytas uploaded her yearly recreation of her King Tut video. All of this to say, it is possible for a lecture hall full of people to all have a different experience in the digital world.
“What about me?”
Unfortunately, some people seem to misinterpret these algorithmic suggestions. They don’t think the version of the internet they see is catered to them, rather that it is made for them. An infamous example of this is the bean soup incident on TikTok. User @vibingranolamom posted a video sharing her recipe for high-iron bean soup, and another user commented to ask: “what if I don’t like beans?”. The general consensus was, of course, that they should simply not make the soup and get their supplementary iron elsewhere. The situation seems funny until you realize this is not an isolated incident. From small businesses sharing their plus-size clothing range (“What if I’m not plus-sized?”) to individuals complaining about able-bodied people using the disability restroom (“But what if I’m a wheelchair user?”), nobody seems to be safe. It seems that some social media users simply cannot handle the thought of a video on their feed not perfectly aligned with them.
Unfortunately, inane questions such as the above are not the only methods these self-appointed social media main characters use to steer the conversation towards themselves. Another frequent occurrence is users projecting their own problems in the comment section of a wholesome video. There are countless videos of happy couples with a comment section filled with people bemoaning their own relationship status and joking about ending it all as a response to seeing two adults go on a date, or cute parent-child videos where user273812 feels the need to share that both of their parents somehow died twice.
Conclusion
Reading both of these types of comments raises a couple of questions for me. First, do these people realize what they’re doing? Perhaps they see no harm in their behavior and really do think they are the star of the show. Second, is there anything that can be done against this? Similarly, should something be done about this? At the end of the day I’m talking about comments on social media posts; is it really that deep? Regardless of the answer to these questions, I never linger in any one comment section for too long. After all, I’m only a few scrolls away from being presented with yet another edit of my current favorite ship.
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