Stereotyped?

We have a gal at work who talks about the funny stuff she watched on this TikTok App. Another friend will occasionally send me text messages with a link to some TikTok video. When this happens, I will watch it on the web and not in the app.

Well, recently, someone sent me a link to something and it said, “Would you like to open this in the App?” Well, usually this makes things easier. The app was already on my phone, I just never used it. So I created an account and it suggested friends from Instagram or my contacts who had accounts. Once I finished setting up the App and following a few friends, I watched the video that was sent to me and I closed the app and that was that.

The next time I opened up the app, I was bombarded with videos of big breasted women in revealing outfits, videos suggesting some sort of sexual act, or scantily dressed women lip synching to movie lines. It was ridiculous.

The next time I saw my co-worker I asked her, “Just what the heck kind of videos do you watch on that TikTok!?” She told me she gets animal videos, silly videos, and stuff like that. I told her, “I swear, all I get are boobs!” She laughed and thought I was joking. I opened up the app and literally kept swiping from video to video and she couldn’t believe it.

She asked if I had liked any videos yet. I told her I hadn’t, because all that had popped up were ones like the ones I showed her. Occasionally, a friend I follow would pop up with a video, but the majority of the stuff coming up was that trash. She told me that once she started liking videos the app’s algorithm started showing her more of the stuff she wanted to see. She said, “It probably sees that you are a 50+ year old male, so boob videos come up!”

So … I have been stereotyped? The algorithm is set specifically to show all 50+ year old males these types of videos? Yeah, no thanks. This app is one that will be deleted. I don’t need to see this stuff.

What bothers me the most is wondering what kind of things the algorithm is picking to show kids! I don’t even want to think about that …..