I’ve started thinking of a TikTok a lot like a street performance. Like, when I find a good singer performing on TikTok it feels less like going onto Spotify or YouTube, or playing a CD, or going to a little mini-concert, and it feels way more like stumbling onto the performance on my walk to work. I’ve actually saved certain performances, then looked for them on Spotify, and bounced off because it didn’t sound the same as when I wasn’t looking for it. The app lets people busk for music, but also recipes and comedy and DIY projects. Everything comes with an unexpected thrill of discovery.
But there are some other, important ways in which TikTok is like a concert. Or, TikTok fall on some spectrum between street performance and concert. I’ve been trying to find what are the relevant factors.
For example, a street performer is an unplanned encounter while a concert is a planned encounter. When you go onto the feed, you’re definitely aware you’re going to be served some kind of entertainment. But the nature of that entertainment is potential, not kinetic. The next TikTok could be anything. Since that lotto aspect is part of what makes the app so addictive, I’d say that’s a point to street performance.
There’s a humanness to TikToks. They feel like something unproduced — or at least, an overproduced TikTok sort of gets written off. Trying too hard is a cardinal internet crime. Only when the illusion breaks do you realize lots of creators are in fact adopting an affect. It’s like comedians or streamers, where the character wants you to believe that it’s the performer. When really, if you ran into the performer at Costco, they’d probably be very different from who they are on stage. Concerts, on the other hand, feature people who are very obviously performers. They’re idolized. Everyone is facing the performer’s direction. In the app I think someone can choose where they land, either obscuring the line between character and performer or making it obvious. I don’t know that it’s possible to not perform, though.
A concert has a venue, but a street performance appears somewhere you were already going. Phones present a kind of supernormal access to entertainment at all times. In that way, it’s always one step in front of you. But there’s one extremely important way the two are different: concerts silo attention. They take place in a venue built around the musician. You can meet people at a concert or whatever, but they’re not mingling events. The music would be quieter if they were. TikTok SUUUPER siloes attention. You are drip fed each video. Everything about TikTok is designed to keep you where you are.
On the other hand, I went for a walk and found a little performance I wasn’t expecting. There was a food truck, folks had their dogs. I sat down to take some notes and, lo and behold, some friends walking by noticed me. I spent the rest of my time with them. Not with the performance.