this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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I must be an old fogey because I can't understand how TikTok would be usable as a primary search engine unless all you ever search for is TikTok videos.
If I'm part of the new generation of Internet users and I want to, say, see the menu of the restaurant where my date is taking me for dinner, or check my favorite band's discography, or see if the reviews for the latest Netflix show are good, how do I do any of that on TikTok?
Someone please explain how this works, assuming that statement in the article is true.
From what I've understood, TikTok searches are more along the lines of "how to" or "is this product/service good?" Sure, you wouldn't be able to pull up a whole menu of a place, but you certainly could get opinions of what is worth spending money on there and vice versa. Think YouTube, but with less skewed search results or a chance to fact-check as quickly. It's where your friends and generation are, so it has that aspect to it, too. Oh, and tags.
Your answer touches on something I can't really relate to, which may be the key to my lack of understanding: people's desire to get information in the form of videos rather than text. It just seems so much slower to me. I can skim 50 Google or Yelp reviews of a restaurant in the time it takes to watch a single short video review. I might watch one video along the way if I want a sense of the ambience of the place, or some other information that's hard to convey well in writing, but that's it.
It does seem like it may be a generational thing, though. I've seen the same trend in my work-related searches: sometimes I search for technical information and instead of a blog post that takes me 30 seconds to digest well enough to tell if it's even going to answer my question and that I can copy-paste example code from to play with, I get an hourlong YouTube video. This is a relatively new thing that has only become common in the last 5 years or so. I used to think it was purely about monetization (videos pay more than blog posts) but I see people, especially beginners, asking for technical information in video form. To me that's like saying, "Please answer my question in the least convenient form possible."
Apparently this is my "kids these days, who can understand them?" topic.
It's more than just you, I don't get it either. I hope it's just a fad of sorts, but I think it largely boils down to hero worship, where they only need one review if their hero of choice has made a relevant video.