Scarcity Status versus Abundance Status (Gift Culture Part 3)

Abundant environments may surprise you: even though they’re lacking in material scarcity or literal friction, there’s still plenty of work to do. It’s just a different kind of work: the work of dealing with complexity, clarity, curation, and especially synthesis. The effort and value being traded here lend themselves far more naturally to a gift cu... See more

TikTok is creative and sprawling and often strange and anarchic, which mirrors the internet more broadly. There are few rules; the platform takes all comers. Chaos is inevitable. You can find absolutely anything; it’s incredible to witness how many different ways there are to be, how creative (or uncreative) people are, how we crave attention, hopi... See more

It’s striking that TikTok, on the surface, prizes individuality but what truly sustains the platform is imitation and repetition and the all-too-human desire to be just like everyone else. Despite the many charming or strange or jaw-dropping videos on TikTok, far more of the videos are fairly mundane. They receive little attention, but the creators... See more