Medium and TikTok are not so different

Did you read them?

The Medium articles bashing TikTok.

“TikTok is worse than you thought”

“TikTok is making us sick”

“We need to stop TikTok”

And look. I’m not a fan of TikTok either.

But I’ve come to realize a lot of what is being said about TikTok can be said about Medium.

Medium writers and TikTokers are the same.

No, there are no people shaking their underage butt on popular music on Medium.

But Medium writers do ‘thirst-traps’ too. Ours might be based on witty words and a cool story, but it’s still a way to make us look smart.

Medium writers also keep using the same script. Or have you never had the impression of reading the same article twice?

Yes, let’s be honest here, we write for attention. If not, we’d be writing in our journals.

And don’t get me started on the time we dedicate to our craft. Dancing is a skill too. Humor is a skill too. Just like writing. It takes time and effort to become good at it.

We are not so different.

Medium and TikTok promote the same format

Sure, sure, sure, sure, you can write 20 minute-long articles on Medium. And TikTok has a hard limit of 10 minutes. (Although originally, it was 15 seconds)

But really, how much time do you spend reading your average article on Medium? Do you read it from the first word to the last?

Really? You don’t skip ahead and read what interest you, then move on?

I suspect most of us rarely spend more than 2 minutes reading a piece. And because we are reading doesn’t make this really different from watching a series of short videos.

Medium and TikTok have the same depth problem

Short content is a double-edged sword. It’s fantastic to share ideas. But it’s also very bad at it.

Because short content is an art that is difficult to master. It’s a hard balance between being too superficial and stuffing a piece. And this balance is equally hard to find in video and in text.

Should I speak faster to say more? Or do I just point to three-word sentences?

Do I stuff my article with big words? Or do I keep it so simple there is no real true depth in it?

What can we do then?

Fortunately, Medium and TikTok differ on design.

Medium doesn’t have the one feature that makes TikTok such a dangerous platform: continuous scrolling of playing media.

In other words, Medium still give us the choice of clicking on what interest us. It recommends, but we are still the curators of our reading.

TikTok doesn’t. The main page is already loaded with what TikTok wants you to look at, and not only that, you don’t get to choose.

It is already playing.

Training it to show you what YOU want to look at, is hard. But it’s a job you should always take seriously.

Would you be on TikTok or on Medium…