on summing things up
Not to get into tik tok media theory… but if there's anything you can take away from 2020 - the year we lived entirely online - it's that people /want/ to create. And they'll do it if you make it easy enough for them to do so.
One of the things that's hard to independently arrive at is format. It's a fancy word for what and why together. And one of the things tik tok does so brilliantly is generate millions of formats. Anything that can be copied easily, with little effort, is a good mass media format. And while tik tok is the first horseman of a pre-formatted world, it's not the only one.
2020 saw the shift towards formatting having a massive impact on what we share. in the sense that people who want to share things have to think less than ever about it. two examples are spotify's wrapped (which is built by spotify and shows you your most listened to music in an easily shareable format) and the more grassroots /go-through-your-camera-roll-and-post-photos-from-this-year/ phenomenon that happened on new years' ever.
A lot of people hate both of those formats. They find low effort sharing annoying instead of beautiful. I exist in direct opposition to them. I want to see people share everything they can about themselves. I want to live in a world where everyone is earnestly transparent. I /do/ care what you listened to most this year. I care what everyone listened to most this year. I care what the photo recap of your year looks like. What did you do? What moments did you capture? What kind of photos do you take with your phone? And why?
The beauty of formats is that the constraint actually allows you to see the individuality in the thing being shared. We all know what it's supposed to look like, so individual nuances are even more apparent. Not that that's the point. The point is that you should make things. Something. Anything. And we, as a society, should just keep making that easier.