Dirt: Bring on the heat

Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.

Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, helms our dispatch, a running recap of the latest digital culture news. This week: TikTok gets heat for its "heating" tool; "old man" TV; and a Dirt-y sourcing request on podcast listening habits.

Forbes’s Emily Baker-White investigates TikTok’s “heating” tool, an employee-controlled feature that directly affects which videos go viral. “Heating” is a manual function that boosts videos into users’ For You feed towards a certain number of views. “The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics,” according to one internal document.

TikTok claims to use the heating feature to “diversify the content experience” for users and introduce them to new creators on the app. The company, however, has not publicly disclosed this practice, nor are there clear labels to determine what is or is not a “heated” video.

All of the major tech platforms engage in some form of content curation, employing algorithms to metabolize data and deliver optimal content for the user. And most platforms have admitted to amplifying or suppressing certain kinds of posts on users’ feeds, such as misinformation, nudity, or political content. The lack of transparency around “heating” is not shocking. It’s in TikTok’s interest to obscure the inner workings of its algorithms, to deny that virality can be manufactured and influenced by corporate motivations.

Contrary to its name, the For You page is not subservient to our desires: “It is the prerogative of the business to fulfill their desires over yours.” We may fawn over how well the algorithm “knows” us and divulge our deepest secrets in every search or swipe, every like or lingering gaze. We have never been its master. Call it what you want—the For You page or the Algorithm (which is likely composed of many algorithms)—has always operated under TikTok’s agenda while seemingly prioritizing ours to keep us in its grip.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Netflix’s 2023 original film programming looks unexciting and “generic … like the Kirkland-label versions of movies,” writes Vulture’s Rebecca Alter in a preview of upcoming releases. There’s a Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher rom-com (to Dirt’s previously made point, culture is regressing)

• “The greatest story America’s story-telling industry ever produced is not The Godfather, Star Wars or even Minions: Rise of Gru,” is an actual line from a recent report on the state of streaming. (The Hollywood Reporter)

• For the Parks and Rec fans, April Ludgate and Leslie Knope make an SNL cameo, although “The Black Lotus” was the best Aubrey Plaza performance of the night.

• The rise of “old man TV”: The success of Yellowstone has lured aging movie stars to the silver screen, starring in shows like Tulsa King and 1923. (Vox)

• DIRT INVESTIGATES: Does anyone still listen to podcasts? This is an earnest question. Drop me a line at [email protected] if your post-pandemic listening habits have changed.

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• How AI art looks “like a 1970s prog rock album cover.” (Wired)

• Are bland residential buildings to blame for America’s aesthetic crisis? New housing developments across the country are starting to “look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling.” (NYT)

  • CityLab coined the term “fast casual architecture” in 2017 to describe these “flavorless” mixed-use structures.

• Haley Mlotek on billionaire divorces. (The Baffler)

• Women are leaving the US to get Profhilo injections, a yet-to-be-FDA-approved treatment that deposits hyaluronic acid under the skin. (The Cut)

  • “Profhilo is injected very superficially, two or three millimeters into the skin, but it’s not botulinum toxin like Botox or Dysport, which smooth wrinkles, or a filler like Juvederm or Restylane, which add volume to your face. It’s part of an emerging group of injectables referred to as “skin boosters,” which, after being injected, expand under the skin…”