A few days ago, I stumbled upon a Substack on Reddit, as one does, and it left me with an idea I just couldn’t get out of my head, one so succinct, I’m mad at myself for not seeing it sooner. It’s been a real aha moment for me.
Let me set the scene.
There I am on the couch. It’s late but not too late. The TV is off, and I’m on Instagram Reels, swiping up. Why am I doing this? I don’t know. Am I enjoying all this optimized content from people I don’t know? No, I am not. How did 30 minutes go by? I do not know.
I’m not a big fan of TikTok, but all the good ones end up on Instagram in the same way most of Reddit is screenshots from Twitter, so even with my good digital boundaries and awareness of screen time, I still can’t escape the internet’s endless loop of vertical video.
You can run but you can’t hide from the content. Ooh, maybe that should be our new tagline?
The point is I don’t want to be mindlessly scrolling on my phone, but there isn’t anything else really happening at this hour and I don’t want to stream something, so here we are, swiping up on short video content set to pop music.
All that is to say when I found Justin Hanagan’s Substack earlier this week, it clicked. I’ll let his headline speak for itself:
“TikTok is just TV again.”
Of course it is.
It’s like someone threw a glass of water in my face.
Hanagan writes: “…no matter how emotionally, politically, or artistically ‘challenging’ a given episode was, TV watching in the past millennium was largely a passive activity. Plop down on the couch, turn on, stare. The only aspects under a viewer’s control was what time to watch … and what channel.”
Putting a nice bow on it, he concludes with, “On the consumer side, what TikTok users get is a screen that serves up nonstop, comfortable, low-stakes video, riddled with product placements, and interspersed with occasional ads. …Sound familiar?”
It’s a great comparison, and I’ll push it a smidge further. It’s not just TV, it’s HBO it’s channel surfing.
Let me set the scene; this time we go back in time.
There I am on the couch. It’s late but not too late. I don’t own a cell phone and the TV is on. I am using my thumb to push the “channel up” button on my remote. The gesture is oafish and uninspired, lacking the modern sophistication of a swipe, what we now know to be the one true universal signal for “more content, please.”
Conan O’Brien. Then an infomercial. “Bewitched” plays on Nick at Nite. Larry King. A black and white movie. Somewhere, an episode of “Seinfeld” cries out. It’s a good one. I’ll stay here for a while.
It’s all the same.
This go-around though does feel a bit more intense than how I remember it in the ’90s. These apps have first-party data and an algorithm that knows how to keep me engaged with maximum efficiency. The TV execs of yore have nothing on these guys.
I once clicked on a photo of Robert De Niro on Instagram, and for two weeks, I was shown non-stop Robert De Niro content. There were movie clips and old photos, and then they started in with the Joe Pesci content, which led to young Al Pacino content from some random fan account.
I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this.
Get out of my head, Robert De Niro.
I will say there’s an empowering side to this revelation, finally seeing Reels and TikTok as the new channel surfing. It’s reminded me I know how to break that mindless habit.
Sometimes, if you’ve been surfing too long, it’s best to just put down the remote and call it a night.
