TikTok’s misuse of POV shows an identity crisis for Gen Z

TikTok’s misuse of POV shows an identity crisis for Gen Z

TikTok’s misuse of POV shows an identity crisis for Gen Z. Courtesy | Wikipedia

You might be on TikTok, but hopefully you’re not. However, even if you are part of the few fighting the herd, you likely still see Tiktok videos as they ooze out and infect other social media platforms. A recent development on the Chinese-owned media site struck me as odd: the misuse of the term POV. 

One of the most popular video styles on Tiktok has been the “POV” (point of view), but Tiktok by no means invented it. We’ve seen it in novels like Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” (1847), films such as “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), and—in the age of short form media—it has appeared again. In POV content, the stories are told in the first person: Jane Eyre narrates her own life; we view the horror of the film students through the lens of their own camera. It has always been understood that the “point of view” is that of the narrator or creator. 

But the world has changed a lot in the past few years. As social media consumes more and more of our time and the users become younger and younger, our interactions evolve. It’s survival of the fittest. We’ve been trained that in order to remain safe from the mob (and seduce the masses), we have to present ourselves in just the right way. To a young millennial marketing executive in the early 2010s this was simply a new tool; to the generation that grew up online, we picked up an MBA while huddled around an iPod touch at recess. 

The problem isn’t the skill per se, but rather the product we sold: ourselves. We have learned to market ourselves so well that now major businesses reach out to these precocious protogees for advice, asking for brand deals. Gen Z has mastered the internet and now reviews engagement reports with the discernment of a seasoned professional. Unfortunately, this hyperfixation on the outside perspective has erased Gen Z’s interior life; the business-like evaluation from the exterior dictates it all.

A certain level of awareness in the way one is perceived is important. Yet when you learn to shape your interests, beliefs, identity, and presentation all upon an outside perspective—you have lost yourself. The identity of Gen Z is wrapped up in its presentation; in its branding and marketing and damning lack of spine. We make sure to break up feed posts with pictures that aren’t of ourselves (we mustn’t let on that we’re narcissists) and we post infographics whenever there’s a tragedy (no way we miss the chance to boost brand ethos). Our feeds and now our very selves are defined by the perceptions of others. This is what the misuse of POV shows us.

People use POV to show themselves not from their own “point of view,” but rather from the point of view of the outsider. This seemingly small change in the way we use language reflects a sad fact: Gen Z considers themselves—not as they are—but rather as the sum of market trends that dictate who they must be. The exterior life has officially invaded and defined the interior life. What we do becomes who we are. Social media has turned the youth into marketing managers that cannot stop work for a second.  Now all is performance; now we’ve lost our sense of identity; now we are pretty shells, fossils of human beings.

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