u/LengthAggressive953

Buying followers can make an account look successful overnight, but I feel like it creates pressure to keep faking the numbers.

Once you have 50k followers, people expect your videos to perform like an account with 50k real followers. If they don't, the account starts looking strange.

Organic growth is painfully slow sometimes, but at least every new follower has a chance of actually becoming part of your audience.

Would you rather have 100k followers with weak engagement or 5k followers who genuinely watch everything you post?

I've been seeing people complain about this in different places and I've noticed it myself too. Sometimes my feed is almost perfectly tuned to what I've been watching. Other times it suddenly starts showing me stuff I have absolutely no interest in.

What's weird is that interacting with the content doesn't always seem to fix it immediately.

Maybe I'm just noticing it more now, but the FYP feels a lot less predictable than it used to.

Has your feed been feeling better lately or are you also getting random stuff?

I was scrolling through my FYP last night and realized almost every single video on my feed felt like a sales pitch or a performance, even the ones that are supposed to be "casual."

​It feels like the era of people just posting random, genuine thoughts without an agenda is totally dead. Now, even a 15-second video of someone making coffee in the morning has three hidden marketing tricks built into it. Either they’re casually holding a Stanley cup with the logo facing the camera, using a trending sound purely to hit the algorithm, or setting up a fake "unfiltered" rant that’s actually just a setup to sell a product in their TikTok Shop.

​The worst part is how calculated the "authentic" creators have become. They sit in their car, talk quietly like they’re telling you a secret, leave in awkward pauses, and pretend they didn't mean to post it—when in reality, they probably filmed four takes to make sure it looked just unpolished enough to go viral. It’s like we’ve traded obvious corporate ads for this weird, sneaky version of authenticity where everyone is constantly trying to manipulate your watch time.

​Maybe I’m just overthinking it, but it’s getting really exhausting trying to figure out who is actually just posting for fun and who is running a mini marketing campaign on me.

​Are you guys still finding genuine creators on your feed, or has your entire FYP turned into a giant, silent infomercial too?

​There is a weird divide on TikTok right now when it comes to creator behavior, and both sides have gotten out of hand.

​On one end, you have micro-influencers with barely 3,000 followers who treat their account like a media empire. They buy studio-grade mics, address their followers as a "community," and post dramatic announcements about taking content breaks or coordinating with their "PR team" over a $10 package. The level of self-importance before building an actual audience feels impossible to watch without cringing.

​On the other end, you have creators with millions of followers who go out of their way to fake low effort. These accounts pull in tens of thousands per brand deal, yet every video is deliberately shot on a smudged front camera in a messy room with awful lighting. They lean aggressively into a lazy aesthetic to signal that they're still just an average, relatable person hanging out, completely glossing over their multi-million dollar deals. It’s a calculated attempt to manufacture authenticity so you forget how commercialized they’ve become.

​Where do you draw the line? Does the over-polished micro-influencer bother you more, or the fake relatability from mega-creators?

My views have suddenly dropped and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has experienced this recently. I wasn't getting insane numbers before, but my videos were at least reaching a decent amount of people. Now it feels like they just stop getting pushed almost immediately.

The weird part is I haven't really changed my content style or posting schedule. Same type of videos, similar hashtags and everything.

I know views naturally go up and down, but when the drop happens overnight it makes you wonder if something changed with the account or algorithm. Has anyone managed to figure out why this happens?

I've always wondered how much of a suspected TikTok restriction is connected to the actual account versus the device or network being used.

Some people claim that making a new account doesn't help because TikTok can supposedly connect accounts through devices or IP addresses. Other people say that's mostly speculation.

It's hard to separate real information from theories because whenever someone's views are low, someone immediately blames a device ban.

Has anyone tested this themselves by using a completely different account or device?