Here's the latest trend story from the New York Times. It's about—God help us—"TikTok economics":
"Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now..."
"Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression..."
"Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy." https://t.co/ZtC3UTxJNp
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 18, 2023
This is the most tiresome thing ever. When are newspapers going to learn the obvious: social media doesn't represent anything in the real world? I mean, how likely are you to post a TikTok about how your life is fine and everything is pretty good?
Not very. That's just the nature of H. sapiens, who love to performatively gripe and complain a lot more than we like to performatively say that things are OK. The way to account for this bias is to actually ask people how they feel. Then you'll get equal responses from everyone. Let's try it:
Compared to 2019, young people have jobs at the same rate; they're satisfied with their jobs at the same rate; they're earning a little bit more; they rate their financial situation about the same; and they're probably about as happy now that they're recovering from their pandemic blues.
The Times says: "Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike." But that's not true. What surveys actually show is that nothing much has changed. I understand that's not a very interesting story, but it has the crucial distinction of being true.
The dotted lines on the last chart are an episode in "how to lie with charts" - there's no data there, you're just making it up. Sure, maybe the measure will continue rebounding, or maybe 2022 was a dead cat bounce/noise compared to a new stable baseline.
More pointedly, unhappiness in that group has ***more than doubled*** since 2014, when happiness was at 90%. Put another way, people not-happy (which could be neither) was 10%. In 2021 it was 3x that, at 30%. In 2022 it was still more than 2x that 2014 baseline at more than 20%.
I do think Kevin is trying to push back against the narrative. I honestly believe the increase in unhappiness is, in large part, being fed by the narrative that there is an increase in unhappiness.
So many in power want TFG back so bad they'd say anything.
TFG?
One thing I learned when researching outcomes of operations for back pain.
People with a bad outcome post a lot and those with good outcomes don't.
Republicans' latest hysterics to ban TikTok last week were triggered by Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America' being posted and GOING VIRAL!!!. "Viewed" (i.e. the post was opened - no indication whether the user even looked at the attachment) - more than one and a half million times! For some reason this proves the Chinese-owned app can no longer he tolerated in a country like freedom-loving America.
I guess these are the same simpletons who claim with a straight face that Trump's recent Twitter interview with Tucker Carlson has been watched by more than two hundred million people.
TikTok is a terrible way of assessing the mood/angst in the room. All it does is send you stuff it thinks you want to see, in order to keep you engaged.
For similar reasons as those mentioned by Kevin, I find Yelp reviews largely useless.
Huh. My impression was that TikTok is mostly a bunch of influencers on a boat in FL waving wads of benjamins around talking about how they make $10k a week from crypto and "passive income" and you can, too!
If the measure of Gen Z is what they're doing in support of Palestine I would rather they all be Green Party members and leave the Dems alone.
“TikTok economics” is about as accurate as “NextDoor crime statistics.” I’ve never had a package stolen from my porch. I’ve never had a homeless guy invade my backyard. I’ve never seen a suspicious car parked in a suspicious place. 99.9% of people are like me but never post about those things that didn’t happen to them. If we all posted every time we didn’t get a package stolen, every night a homeless guy didn’t climb over our fence, and about every parked car that wasn’t suspicious, NextDoor would be much more accurate . . . but as boring as real life.
Word. OMG Nextdoor is chock full of crazy crime obsessives.