How TikTok can turn a book into a bestseller

I have an American friend who loves reading, but is clueless about technology. The last time I visited him he was still using Internet Explorer, which even Microsoft has given up on. My friend was puzzled when he walked into his local bookshop and was met by a table of books with the sign ‘#BookTok made me read it’. Soon afterwards I received a bewildered WhatsApp message: ‘What is BookTok?!’

Until recently, I didn’t know. Before the pandemic, I was a working stand-up comic. I’ve never been on television and you probably haven’t heard of me, but I was happy. I worked six nights a week, made enough to pay the bills and was recognised occasionally by someone in Tesco. And then came lockdown.

The life I had grown accustomed to vanished practically overnight. I handled it poorly. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a comedian who can’t perform, but I’ve been told it’s like spending time with a toddler who isn’t yours — cute for a bit, but soon tiresome, and then insufferable. A friend gently suggested I needed an outlet. I joined TikTok and started writing a novel.

One of those things is easier than the other. To join TikTok, you simply install the app and sign over your data to Xi Jinping. You then land on the FYP (For You Page). Here you see one-minute videos featuring, for example, male voice choirs, a physicist talking about antimatter, and a nice young lady selling tubs of her bath water to her ‘simps’ (a TikTok word for men who dote on girls on the internet). Your engagement with each video — how long you watch it for, whether or not you comment on it — teaches the AI what you’re into.