By: Shunsuke Higuchi | Staff Writer
I. Dominance of “Massive Consumption” type Social Media
Fast-paced, content-packed online posts like TikTok, Instagram Stories, and YouTube Shorts have become immensely popular over the past few years. Most videos have gone through sharp editing: adding subtitles, filters, sound effects, etc., and are most likely 10 seconds or less than one minute at most. The trend is created by a synergistic effect, where consumers want to get better and more helpful content quickly, and creators want to increase their followers by creating great content. As a result, there is stiff market competition among creators who want to capture the users’ attention and support.
To earn likes and ad fees or sometimes satiate their self-esteem, creators tend to boost their content by making it visually striking and packed with information. This style, where enormous amounts of information are compressed into less than one minute, like TikTok and Instagram Stories, coincides with the demand of younger people who prioritize time and cost performance more than anything. Those platforms have become an intense battlefield for creators, pushing them to produce time-efficient and entertaining content.
Users are agitated by numbers such as likes and followers and try to post more attention-grabbing content, leading to the maximization of online content. Those types of accounts cover virtually every genre of our lives, from everyday life hacks, sports news, art critics, cute animals, and workout menus.
This reality creates a striking gap between online information and the reality that people live. Understandably, people are inclined to post something special rather than their actual, down-to-earth, everyday lives in search of engagement.
Photos from WikiCommons
