Lileks: Ticked off at TikTok's de-aging app

My attitude about TikTok can be summed up thus: "I really enjoyed that TikTok from that guy explaining how much he loathed TikTok."

I can't quite put my finger on what I hate, aside from its ubiquity; its brain-melting ability to make people impatient with anything that lasts more than 27 seconds; the devious algorithm that learns what you like and gives you more of it so your sense of curiosity shrinks to the size of a pinhead; the fact that I can't discuss it without using the word algorithm, which I never spell correctly; the fact that I'm certain the entire thing probably is connected to a vast Chinese data collection scheme involving thousands of people bent over monitors, using the mapping and accelerometer functions on your phone to determine that you have just seated yourself on the toilet and are vulnerable to an alert that announces 10 new TikToks from your favorite influencer who is taking the Drano Challenge, or the fact that 87% of TikToks seem to consist of someone's BIG HEAD disapproving of something with SASS or perhaps a WRY EYEBROW.

Other than that, it's fine.

I don't have the app on my phone because I don't trust it. But I was tempted to load it and try out a new feature that's making middle-aged people depressed: The Youth Filter.

There have been de-aging filters for a while, and they're amusing — the Snapchat version kept turning me into my cousin Bruce, and the Photoshop one gives me hair I never had.

But this one de-ages you in real time. It has a split-screen function so you can see your ravaged, desiccated mug on the bottom and your angelic young self above. It's making people gasp with disbelief as they confront the chasm between their modern-day selves and the person they once were.

If I want to know what I looked like in high school, there's a yearbook photo, which suggests the Corduroy Warehouse had a fire sale. If I want to know what I looked like 15 years ago, I'd just check the picture that runs with my column.

This isn't unusual. A recent piece in the Atlantic magazine says most of us think we're younger, mentally, than we really are. This could be a sign of an ossified brain that never advanced past the convictions and tastes it had when it was 25. Which is possible, if you listen to a classic rock station, hear "Stairway to Heaven" and think, "Awesome, it's been a few days." Or it could be a sign of a personality that kept the energy and enthusiasm of youth without regard to the inexorable pull of gravity and the clock.

Personally, I know that I've aged mentally in the past few years, and I have come to accept that humanity is not going to get this all settled and sorted before I finish my tenure above the dirt. I also feel about 35, physically. Go figure.

Point is, we're a mix of the real and the imagined, the vapors of youth and the lead bars of age, and people worry that the TikTok filter forces us to live up to reality.

Wait until these people hear about that thing called "a mirror."

Online-culture ethicists fret about the filter, wondering if it's really right to use it when you make a video. The people who extol every innovation in social media will say it's just like applying makeup.

I've been working with computers for 40 years and have been delighted by the tools these machines have provided to the world. I love telling the device on my wrist to turn on the lights. I love tapping a button and sending a message to my daughter on the other side of the globe. I love checking my phone to see if there's traffic ahead because some idiot crashed his car, probably because he was looking at his phone, checking to see if there's traffic ahead.

I was an online booster before the internet. The rise of artificial intelligence and addictive apps have led me to believe it all should be nuked from orbit. Then we rebuild it from scratch, knowing what we know now.

(No, this is not a ChatGPT AI-generated piece that came from the prompt "Write a peevish boomer rant about tech today." That would have been much more succinct.)