ontifica

I get your point, but I mean I see a ton of fat and ugly people on tiktok anyway, they even get huge followings because theyre funny and cool (though sometimes it's just because people can't look away lol). So maybe you should reconsider how you view people, unless you only want content you can drool over.

I'm on the younger side, it's very addictive. People love to come up with wild theories for why the app blew up, but I think it's just pure algorithmically curated fun.

This doesn't make any sense, I use tiktok and there's plenty of content I wouldn't expect china or america to endorse. There are lots of videos dedicated to communism, capitalism, uyghur muslims, BLM, etc. It's actually fairly open and this type of content gets noticeably boosted by the algorithm if you express interest in it, and gets a ton of likes too. There is also plenty of happy cat videos as well if that's your thing.

Also, ugly people get a lot of attention. I would expect china's social credit system to discredit those who are less attractive, but on tiktok you see less than conventionally attractive creators get a big following. They don't even need to be freak shows, it's just an app that's full of regular people openly talking about regular things. Very much the opposite of what I have heard about the way media works in china.

If news media is for profit, news media will naturally use the most engaging headline to beat out competition. There is no solution to this problem unless news is regulated or not for profit. You won't 'shame' an entire industry into changing something they've been doing for centuries.