TikTok Is Ruining EVERY Social Media App! | Biz To Biz Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Nikolai Jokic of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing how every social media platform is turning into TikTok. It's insane. Anyway, man, how you doing?

Doing good. Is it going, going good? You know, I saw the IRS cash my, uh, tax check today. They got their money. Yeah, they were pretty slow.

They, they accepted my return, the, the payment, but then they denied my return. So they took my money.

Oh, they love to take your money.

But they denied my income tax return.

Uh-oh.

Whatever. I don't know, man. I don't know what to say about it.

Yeah.

Other than that, thanks IRS for doing your job, I guess.

I can never make— I had like a few problems with the taxes. My son, Somehow somebody signed him up for insurance that he didn't want. So we ended up not paying attention to that. Then they kicked his return back. We had to go refile it, put that in there. And the money from the insurance of the whatever Obamacare that he had for 5 days ended up negating whatever refund he was going to get. And then another friend of mine got a letter from the IRS saying they sold the house and they didn't pay taxes because they're a non-US citizen. So they had to go get like copies of their birth certificate and all kinds of stuff sent to the IRS about the sale of their house.

That's terrible.

That's crazy. How do they— you're paying taxes for whatever, 40 years, and all of a sudden they're going to say you're a non-citizen.

I don't know, man, but this tangerine tea that I get— yeah, it's very good.

Oh, we might have to try some of that.

There's one left in there. You should grab it before it's gone because I'm gonna drink it in the morning for sure.

Well, there's another—

it's good, right?

Yeah, this TikTok thing is crazy for all you people listening.

That was me taking the last sip.

Yeah, the TikTok thing is crazy. Like, everybody's got, everybody's got these vertical TikTok videos going on there. Portrait, portrait style on the, on their platforms.

Every one of them.

LinkedIn just put it in as a test, which I was like, why, LinkedIn?

What is the point, man? You just want us to watch ads on your channel now too, bro? I'm like, come on, man. LinkedIn was like the last, it's like the last of the Mohicans. It's like, it's always been that way. This is what it is. This is what you go to LinkedIn for. I was, you know, like, I never, I'm very, I have a lot of connections on LinkedIn, you know, but It's not like the— I don't know, it's just, it's not all personal and shit. Like, you know, it's just business. You just go there, you check out what, you know, oh, this company I'm following, or you know somebody who works at that company and you're just, you just chop it up with the, you know, that's all it was. So now it's like TikTok videos dancing?

No, there's nobody dancing on there.

But there's a— but what's the point?

I guess they want to put more eyeballs on the videos and they want people to post more video content. It's only available in the app, so if you go on your computer, you're not going to see those videos on your computer, right? At least they haven't added it there yet.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I'm not a fan of the, of the every social media platform turning into TikTok. I think it's ridiculous, especially for the fact that, you know, each one of them was different in its own right. Like, you know, Facebook was what it was. Microblogging, right? Twitter's like real-time news feed, you know what I'm saying?

Twitter started putting more video on too.

Twitter kind of has always had video, so I don't want to say that like it hasn't, but like Twitter, I love Twitter. X, I love X. That's one of my, you know, go-to social media platforms when I want to do some scrolling. Um, Facebook, Facebook sucks because it's like all the same. It's over and over and it's so redundant.

Well, you get a hit with a ton of ads. Hopefully that's going to stop soon because that cookie thing, you know, and then the retargeting is going to be over.

There'll be new ways, but there'll be new way.

Yeah, eventually someone will figure it out.

But the TikTok, like The fact that even Netflix is administering, I mean, like adapting the people to the scroll so that like you can, the people are shooting movies in that.

They're shooting movies like that? Yeah. I think they just take the videos to try to get you to watch like a TV show. Or a new movie that they have on there, and then you can scroll through and see a minute or two of those shows in a TikTok-style video. The one thing is that's crazy is like, there used to, you know, there used to be tons and tons of like dancing videos, or I haven't had videos with Rocky walking, and they would— I would have like a song playing, and I got so annoyed with Facebook every day sending me messages, oh, we cannot monetize this video, we're taking this video down, we're moving this video. So I ended up shutting off my professional mode on Facebook because I was getting 50 messages a day from Facebook. But now I'm getting 50 messages a day in the business inbox from Facebook from all these fake spammers posting in there, uh, do you know your page is breaking the— this is the Meta Police, and all kinds of stupid stuff. I'm not clicking on your link. Crazy people, you know, and I, and I— there's like 10 messages a day. I went in there the other day, I deleted like 40 messages out of the— out of one inbox on a business page.

That's a lot. I mean, if you— yeah, I don't know, man.

No, but you can't— you know, when you're getting that kind of traffic like that, you don't know whether it's— you, you then— you, you don't want to miss a real message.

Oh, that way, yeah.

You know what I mean? 'Cause you're getting annoyed with these spam messages. Even on LinkedIn, you get people, they go on there, they sign up for the free trial of LinkedIn, and they get a free trial of like Sales Navigator.

Right.

And then they go send out a bunch of weird emails. They're all the same. Oh, your profile is very impressive. I would like to learn things from you. Can we have a conversation?

Those are not the emails that I get on LinkedIn. I always get the, hey, do you want to expand your reach? Or how about we make some videos for you? Some customized videos.

I get that. I get digital marketers. Do you need a new website? And do you, you know, oh, we can rebuild your website. We can do this. You can be on the first page of Google. We have a special way how to do it. Patent pending. Get you on the first page of Google, Yahoo, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's just sad that like, to me that we're stuck in a world where they're making content for your phone.

Yeah, screen.

And not for your TV or, you know, it's crazy. I, I don't consume, you know, as someone who's on, you know, the other side of the matrix, right? Like, I create things for the matrix that we live in. So I tend to not—

Matrix.

Indulge in like plugging into the matrix so much. Like I don't, right? Like when I leave the office, I go to the gym. Most of the time I leave my phone in my locker and I see these people inside of the gym and they're literally like this the whole time. Like they'll do their set and then they'll stare at their phone. Or they'll be in the sauna staring at their phone. I'm like, what the hell is going on, dude?

People are stuck to the screen, man. Like, I'm— I've— I'm— my goal is like every week, you know, you get a little report from your phone. It says screen time. I want my screen time to go down.

My screen time is fairly decent.

But now, you know, it's like you get your email on your phone. You get your notifications of everything on your phone app, which you don't need to. No, you don't need to. But I'm just saying, like when you're trying to, you know, you might be on a phone call and then people are sending you text messages. Like a friend of mine once, he tells me, he goes, yeah, I really wanted to make a sale to this guy, right? He goes, I couldn't get a hold of him. He goes, I called the guy, left him a voicemail, called his office, left him a voicemail. Sent a guy a text.

I wouldn't—

that's the guy, just for him being so annoying, sent the guy WhatsApp message, sent the guy a Facebook message, sent the guy a message on LinkedIn, sent him an email. I was like, man, I'd kill you if you sent me all those messages. I don't know if I would want to deal with him.

Yeah, but I doubt I'd do business with him.

That's over persistence.

It's when, you know, I could see you getting taken one line, you know, of action, you know, whatever, one approach, one avenue towards to get to me. Yeah, repeatedly. But you hitting me up on every corner.

Uh, I had some scammer and they were trying— they were sending me messages on LinkedIn. Then, you know, whatever, my phone number is out there. It's not that hard to get. Which I don't care. And all of a sudden, you know, I'm seeing messages.

Hi, 5 for it.

No, no, but I'm seeing messages from this person on Signal app, Telegram app, WhatsApp, Skype, like everywhere. I'm like, come on, I'll just freaking block— put the— put block on the person. It's some fake scammer in another country. I want to deal— I don't want to deal with them, you know.

No, you don't.

You know, they, they approach and they go, yeah, like, oh, I should— whatever. There's just so many things going on today about with, you know, on social media, links coming through, don't, you know, sending to Sean how to block these people with the fake messages on Facebook. But, you know, these TikTok videos, it's crazy now because they had that ban with the music that started in Europe, came to the US. Now they're expanding the ban on music. So now there's no more— there's really no more music. Now everybody's reverting to this AI music, or they're reverting to this like Siri voice.

Like, I see— I like the videos of the people who are actually like singing. Yeah, in the video, like they're making their own music, right? That's dope.

Original, original music.

I mean, it's not their original music, it's just them singing to whatever song that was popular before they banned it. They're just like making the beat and singing along themselves and still doing the dance, which is super talented and creative.

I think like not all the music is banned. Like some bands have allowed like their music, like some of the record labels. Yeah, record labels have allowed like their music to be used.

Yeah.

In certain ways. But not for like the dancing for businesses, more for like if a band is playing it, it's allowed. But it's not allowed if me and Justin were doing the little dance and promoting credit card machines.

As it should not be. No one wants to see me dance.

No one wants to see me dance either. We do want to see Justin do a rap song though. He's been telling me he can rap for 2 years.

The raffity raps.

Yeah, we still haven't had that. We still haven't. We wrote the rap.

I rapped that one time on the song on the podcast.

Yeah, but we literally rapped. Okay, so we wrote— we wrote— I wrote you a rap song.

No, ChatGPT wrote it. Okay.

I changed some of the words. Yeah, I think it's still a good song. I think you should do it. But yeah, it's like it's getting a little crazy, you know, like Facebook wants you scrolling through the reels. Instagram, you can scroll through the videos. Now LinkedIn, scrolling through videos. Netflix, TikTok stories, stories and stories, stories. And then you have Threads. I don't know, Threads kind of like went up and then just went— I don't know, I'm not sure. I check it out once in a while, but just saying, I check it out once a day. I'm just saying it's very— I'm saying like With all these apps, everything's becoming very redundant. And now Facebook banned it.

That's my point of like, why would you— why, what's the, what's the big deal about turning, tilting your phone and watching it so it's, you know, landscape or horizontal?

Well, even, uh, you know, YouTube has it now with the videos.

The Shorts?

Yeah, the Shorts.

They've been having that for a while, but yeah, I mean, it's It's crazy how TikTok literally cornered the market because of 15-second videos. Like, that's where it all started. Was it Snapchat that started it though?

Yeah, Snapchat.

Snapchat really started the whole video thing.

Where you would make a video, then it would disappear. Disappears after you watch it, man.

I feel bad for all the people who got caught cheating on Snapchat. Actually, I don't, because how'd they get—

well, I guess you could screenshot the, uh, no, yeah, or turn on the screen recorder right before you open it up.

Women are smart, man.

They—

the other day my wife says to me, You know, I have to go through your phone because you don't tell me stuff. I'm like, what? Tell you stuff? What are you talking about? You didn't tell me your mom bought Ellie a fairy garden.

I'm like, what the fuck?

So what? I don't get it. But yeah, no, it's hilarious.

I was watching a dating show and there was a dating show where these people had to swap phones. Oh yeah, show each other the pictures, and then girl was going insane with the guy's pictures.

I just watched one the other day, it was the other, like she was doing something dirty to him. Just, I, I didn't watch it, it was on Facebook or probably Instagram actually, because that's where the videos that I watched, it was Instagram. Um, yeah. There are, it's just crazy, man. You know, we're in the information age and yet we're still very distracted. You know, like we have all this information right at our fingertips and we're stuck on videos.

Well, it's like dating apps too. Now all these dating apps, swipe left, swipe right, swipe left, swipe right. So many, like I have a friend of mine Allen Kopelman is an IT guy for a big company. So he was telling me, he's like, he's like, every— he goes, every week the comp— his bosses are giving him new websites where he has to go in and block the, block the URLs. And they have to block it on their Wi-Fi so people can't get on their phone on dating apps during the day. And he was telling me, he's like, he goes, the dating apps and all the social media is the worst. Is the worst thing. Used to be like March Madness and dating apps. And he goes, now it's all these, he goes, we have to block the Wi-Fi in the, so people can't be on phones and tablets and looking at this stuff too. He goes, it's all blocked on their computers. He goes, now they had to come up with new software that just blocks people from getting on it on their phones too. And he's like, because people are wasting tons of company time, you know, on March Madness brackets, which just ended, and then looking at all these social medias instead of doing their work.

Yeah, I mean, there's days when I feel like, oh shit, what did I do today? You know, I mean, obviously I did a lot more than that, but you know, you can get yourself in a, you know, like you're hypnotized.

Right.

Like literally, you're not, I don't even, there's times when, you know, like if you're on the toilet, you just scrolling through and it's like, man, you've been on the toilet 45 minutes in there. You know? What are you doing? I don't even remember any of the, you know what I'm saying?

I used to read a whole newspaper. Exactly.

But that was actually beneficial. Exactly. You were using your brain.

Yeah.

Yeah, the way that, you know, all the social media platforms and, you know, even the YouTube video content, you know, the Netflix, for the fact that Netflix is like, they ain't, you know, having straight TV shows that are shot or designed to be in the, you know, the, the portrait style, right?

That's crazy.

That is insane to me, man.

Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, the one thing is, is, you know, the one thing that's crazy is, is, you know, the television, right, as we know it, I think is going to go through some major changes in the next couple of years because I think—

I don't watch television.

No, no, but I think a lot of these like apps are gonna start including like live TV stuff on there.

Well, yeah, I mean, YouTube already has the YouTube TV and it's very cheap, inexpensive in comparison to what you're paying for like DirecTV with the basic cable. I mean, yeah, it's just consume, consume, consume. That's all the people are doing, you know. It's Go outside.

Yeah, like, yeah, when we were kids, we would go outside and play football and baseball and tag and hide and seek.

And I was talking to one of the younger little homies in the gym yesterday, and there's a meme going around, like, kids who grew up in the '70s, '80s, and '90s Their moms thought that you stayed in the neighborhood when you're on your bike, not knowing that you were like 20 miles away in an abandoned house. You know, little Tone broke his ankle and you had to like lie to his parents about how he did it.

Right.

And then you'd come home before the lights came on. Right. And, oh, what'd you do today? Uh, we rode our bikes to the park. You know what I mean? Like, these kids nowadays, what'd you do today? I, I played Fortnite and Roblox until 5 AM. Bro, go get a life. Get outside. That's, you know, but the and then film the content outside if that's what you want to do.

Right.

Go ahead. You know, 'cause people are gonna want to see you in action. But it's just nuts that, you know, we're, there's nothing different. You know what I mean?

It's like when we did the podcast about like dating and sales, like people are hiding behind screens.

All the time.

You know, hiding behind screens. So you could be whoever you want behind the screen. You could act the way you want. You could say anything you want.

Trigger fingers turn to Twitter fingers, right?

You could do whatever. You could get canceled if you say the wrong thing.

As you should, but—

No, I don't believe in that. The thing I don't like is, you know, you want to go back. I was watching something about comedians and they were talking about, you know—

Comedians shouldn't be— they're not— comedians are— They're meant to stir the pot and hurt your feelings.

Right.

That's what comedians and actors do.

That's what they're paid to do, literally. I just don't think that it's right that you want to go back 20 years ago, find some joke that a guy told 15, 20 years ago, and then go, oh, well, you need to be held accountable for that today. It's still funny. You said it.

Dave Chappelle is hilarious, and I don't think— whatever.

No, I'm just saying, like, Kevin Hart got in trouble. I was watching some special, he got in trouble for some joke that he said. Matt Rife, a bunch of these guys got in trouble for saying jokes. I don't think it's just wrong. It's like, if you don't like the content, like, if you don't like Howard Stern, turn the channel off. If you don't like ABC News, go watch CBS. If you don't like CBS, go watch TikTok. Or go watch TikTok, dance, go watch the naked news, whatever that is. No, there's a channel, Naked News, where there's topless people doing the news. I think it comes from Europe. No, but I'm just saying that, you know, people have become too sensitive with everything. And, you know, and then you go see these videos like you're talking about scrolling through the videos and some of them you see there's hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of comments. Going on, you know. Pete, it's, it's not real life, you know.

No, it's not. And, and I don't understand it. I just can't. I, I can't because I, I have a lot of kids, you know, and I can see— actually, now that I'm thinking about it, yeah, all of them consume they're going to be watching the shit out of some videos.

Yeah, it becomes very much like brainwashing if you don't— I hate to use that term, but that's what it is. Because the whoever control— I think these platforms have way too much control. And when you look at who owns them, it's just a few companies that own all the social media, and they'll have this 230 protection. Which I think needs to end. That's my personal opinion on that. And, and, and they need to be held, you know, liable. And they have way too much power, you know, Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, all these companies have way too much power over the, over the thought process of what people think in the, not just the United States, but in the world. And they have way, way, way too much control over that. It's not like in the old days you would watch, you would read a newspaper. You can read more than one newspaper. I mean, growing up in South Florida, you had the Miami News, the Miami Herald, you had the Sun Sentinel, you had TV stations. And I don't know if you remember this, but sometimes you would watch your local TV station at the end. TV stations weren't necessarily owned by huge companies. They were owned by a family, possibly. Right. And the owner of the TV station would give like an editorial on what he thought was going on in the community.

That's a little, a little before my time, but I understand like there was, you know, we had everything, you know, separate. There was, you know, it wasn't all, it wasn't all the same.

No, exactly. You weren't looking at the same thing. But the other thing is, is, you know, it's hard to distinguish. Like, I'm watching a— I'm watching a news program, or I'm watching what I think is a news program. Is it a news program or is it an opinion program?

It's an opinion, right?

But that's what I'm saying.

Like, because there's— I mean, being back in the day though, like, you know, like when you think about it, it was all channel— whatever channel you were watching that program director's opinion.

Well, they're reporting the news and say, oh, car accident on I-95, film at 11, and then they'd show it at 11 o'clock, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's some in that sense. Yeah, but anyway, man, the fact that everything is just literally turned— like, every— it's like, what are you watching? Oh, I'm on Instagram, but it's TikTok.

Like, yeah, well, it's the same videos. It's all regurgitated across all the platforms. That's what I can't—

I can't I can't deal, man. It's not for me. People need to be more original. People need to take some time and really think about how they can stick out like a sore thumb. I know that was, you're gonna stick out like a sore thumb. I always did. I'd wear one yellow Chuck Taylor and one blue one.

Well, that's like Punky Brewster.

Well, I just, she, yeah, I've had a big crush on her. Ooh wee, I love me some Punky Brewster.

No, it's like, what do you think about all these videos? Let us know, what do you think? Is it video overload right now? Is it too much people spending too much time on the information overload? Not enough news and too much opinion? I think there's just a lot of news that's happening and Well, news gets reported in real time, and then the TV shows that you watch are more opinion-based.

Exactly.

So, but the problem is, is where, you know, like when I look at a news story, even something about payments, like, oh, there's a lawsuit, you know, I'll go look at 3 to 4 different articles about that.

As you should. Do your due diligence. Anyway, man, that's the pod. Thanks for listening. Today's date is 4/23/2024. Hit that like button, smash the subscribe button. Tune in next week. Peace.

Peace out. Carpe diem.