Giving up TikTok for lent
We asked our community to describe internet culture right now. Here’s what they told us.
Gen Z moves at the speed of the internet. Obsessed with something one day, cringing over it the next. Look at any viral trend. It burns hot and then disappears. Which is why so many people, brands, and institutions fail when they try to keep up with the viral trend of the day.
The brands and creators that break through don’t follow trends, they define them. It’s rarely on purpose but instead because they have a point of view and trust their gut.
And that’s what’s been so frustrating in the political conversation about internet relevance. For years, the vast majority of people trying to crack the code on internet culture aren’t actually chronically online themselves.
There will never be a Joe Rogan of the left because Joe Rogan isn’t a format waiting to be recreated. He is a singular person with a distinct voice, point-of-view, audience, and instinct. Form-template reels will never break through to young voters (or consumers) for the same reason — internet resonance comes from authenticity, not an overtly scripted performance that seems reverse-engineered in a strategy meeting.
But lately, I’ve been getting the sense that internet culture, driven by algorithms and speed, isn’t just moving too fast. It is driving Gen Z a little insane.
In my conversations with young adults, many put it bluntly.
“I’ve given up TikTok for lent a few times. I’m not very religious but I’ll do it anyway. I always find that it’s a lot easier to give up than I think it’s going to be, but then I still just download it again at the end of the time anyway,” a 26-year-old from New York told me in a recent listening session.
She described certain aspects of social media as “like a cigarette.”
“I know it’s bad for me, I shouldn’t click on it, I shouldn’t watch it,” she said, lamenting rage-bait videos, for example. “And then I’ll end up clicking on it and I’m like, this is not making me feel good, and yet in some ways I can’t stop, sometimes.”
This explains why millennial culture is having its renaissance. Twenty-something-year-olds, teens, and tweens are looking for something that feels entirely antithetical to the curated made-for-social world in which they’ve been raised — and longer lasting than the fleeting speed of rage-bait.
To get a better sense of how digital natives are actually feeling about the speed of digital life, we asked them.
You can hear what they said, in their own words.