May 5, 2023
Jenna Forss | Writer
If you want a guaranteed cringe, just tap on Instagram and scroll over to the Reels. You will find some of the most out-of-touch, outlandish humor. It is extremely unpopular compared to its counterpart, Tik Tok. TikTok now has a chokehold on people of every age. Ever since it began in 2017 after the death of the popular lip-syncing app, Musical.ly, it took the world by storm. After Tik Tok spiked in popularity, other social media sites began to follow suit to get their audiences hooked on that breakneck, 15-second video that put people in a 3-hour-long hypnotic trance. These include Youtube’s Shorts and Snapchat Spotlight. The formatting is practically the same, but they get an extreme amount of hate compared to Tik Tok because of their amount of “cringe”. Some may say the “king of the cringe” is Instagram Reels, launched in 2020, on the popular Facebook alternative. This platform was immediately met with backlash by the younger crowd that this type of fast-paced social media is targeted towards.
This next part is going to sound like some millennial sent from the beast of an app itself come to preach to you Generation X’s superiority in humor, but I am Generation Z just like you, and I have come to prefer Instagram Reels over Tik Tok.
As you may have noticed in a previous article of mine, I am not the biggest fan of Tik Tok. I believe the horrid app absolutely obliterates one’s time management skills and steals precious moments from your day because of how sucked in you become.
I believe Instagram Reels provides the perfect solution to this issue. The algorithm on Instagram reels is less advanced than Tik Toks. So since the videos are not as catered to your preferences you are less likely to spend as much time on the app because it is not the content that you enjoy the most. Junior Mika Kuhne finds that “Compared to Tik Tok, I find myself scrolling a lot less on Instagram Reels. I am more productive with it.” So skip the addictive algorithms, and you can still get the satisfaction of a good mindless scroll but when you need you can easily turn your phone off super and get back to more productive, mentally-enriching activities.
Another reason why Instagram Reels is more up my alley is that it is subjectively funnier than its counterpart. I find myself actually laughing out loud with the Reels’ more bizarre humor. I tend to prefer that to Tik Tok’s more complicated laughs or serious videos. Junior Jordyn Banks comments that “Even though I like Tik Tok more than Instagram Reels, there still are some funny videos on there.” Of course, humor is subjective so this is just my opinion, but I find myself walking away from a social media experience on Reels much happier rather than when I finally set down Tik Tok.
I can understand why my opinion is unpopular. Overall Tik Tok is a better-made app than Instagram Reels, but it’s the rawness and incapability of Instagram Reels that work for me. Maybe if you approach Reels with a more open mind, you might find a more pleasant experience than you expect.
i think we should implode all the new short form content copycats on other platforms. life could be a dream