One of my favourite podcasts is hidden brain. In one of the episodes, they describe an implicit memory experiment where subjects were exposed to a list of names briefly. The next day they were shown half a list of new names and half a list of previously seen names.
When people encountered a name that had been flashed to them, they didn’t remember seeing them. But when asked is any of the people in the list were famous, they chose the previously flashed names.
This test showed that while they couldn’t recall what they had seen, they were able to remember the names somewhat.
My feeling is TikTok content is having that effect on us. We see a concept or viewpoint flash before us for a minute over several days, and our implicit memory makes us think we read it somewhere.
We think the hot take we saw from someone who’s qualifications we haven’t verified is actually fact checked and passed editorial somewhere. Since we tend to value information we have searched for ourselves, over information that we’ve been told, that makes it more influential over our beliefs and behaviour than we realise.
I keep hearing people say TikTok is making our attention shorter, but it’s this false sense of credibility it lends to user generated content I worry about more.
All of this to say, I bought a bristle boar brush based off of a TikTok because the creator wove a wonderful, breathy, romantic tale about natural haircare and now I find out that it’s actually the number one cause of cuticle damage in hair when I decided to google if trichologists stand by it being better for hair.
Yeah, you only get the shame story if you made it down here. **air kiss**
On the other hand, I’m five days without washing my hair and I have better volume and shine than ever before.
Howlite & Coffee 
Leave a comment