Short-form video rules the modern internet, and TikTok is the king of the format.

Great news for people whose life consists of doomscrolling and little else: we are quite possibly transitioning to a post-literate society. After all, who needs to slog through a bunch of boring old words when we can get all of our information and entertainment presented to us in amusing video snippets with blessedly short captions? The future is now, and it doesn’t involve universal literacy.

What it does involve, at least for the time being, is a heavy dose of culture as interpreted through the clock app. Even the haters can’t deny that TikTok is an integral part of how the internet functions today, with most major social media platforms having their own copycat versions of its central premise. We all just can’t get enough of the wide range of stuff that creators manage to squeeze into their short videos.

It has to be said, we can learn a lot from the stuff that people post on TikTok if we pay attention. It has the ability to create and direct major trends, as well as reveal some of the thoughts and feelings that are bubbling under the surface of society generally. Still, we don’t have to pay attention to that if we don’t want to, and we can just enjoy the entertaining distraction that it reliably serves us instead. We have to admit that it keeps us engaged much more easily than reading a book.