American Idle — Remains of the Day

In the rush to copy TikTok, many Western social networks have misread how easy it is to apply lessons of a very particular short video experience to social feeds built around other formats. If you’re Instagram Reels and your format and interface are a near carbon copy, then sure, applying the lessons of my three TikTok essays is straightforward. Bu... See more

Innovating within an existing platform is always a challenge, because as media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued decades ago, ‘the medium is the message’. TikTok and Twitter/X have short-form content built into the design of the platform, which prevents depth. As I explore in The Bigger Picture, this also leads to what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen call... See more