Overnight my FYP became unrecognizable. Gone were the fan edits, pop culture commentary, and book recs that the TikTok algorithm once perfectly curated for me. Instead, a slew of overly long, swipeable slideshows of photos, memes, and screenshots took their place. 

Perhaps if you've got the time to sit through a 10-minute TikTok, you'd enjoy the new slideshow feature, called photo mode, in which TikTokautomatically cycles through images at a snail's pace. (Though, you can also take matters into your own hands and manually swipe through them.) These slideshows are a result of photo mode, a newer alternative to the "green screen"effect you can select when you upload a TikTok.

There are two types of slideshows that are particularly popular on the app. One is thematic collections of screenshots set to music. For example, the TikTok account @congeemommyposts a "daily anti-nihilism" slideshow. Each video features six eclectic screenshots that seem to be heavily sourced from Tumblrand the Instagramaccount @subwayhands. The account is currently on day 14 and has accumulated over 329,000 likes across their videos. Another slideshow that has since been deleted featured 35 photos, the maximum amount allowed — and all images were screenshotted text posts from Tumblr about the end of childhood. 

A taste of @congeemommy's "daily anti-nihilism" posts. Credit: TikTok / congeemommy

While the broader appeal of this trend seems to be recycling memes from other social media platforms, there are TikTokkers who are creating trends more native and unique to the app. Creators gather photos of a specific celebrity, animal, or character and post a series of them with captions that relate to their daily life. For example, the account @linkl8ruploaded 10 photos of Jake Gyllenhaal. The first in the sequence shows him getting out of the car wearing sunglasses, talking on the phone, carrying two iced beverages; the caption reads "me pulling up to class 30 minutes late cause I was getting coffee." The video has over 150,000 views and over 26,000 likes. It should be noted that each of these videos is set to "The Promise" by When In Rome. So far, over 25,000 videos have been made using the song. Creators have used the trend with everyone from Successionmeme faves like Kendall Royand Tom Wambsgansto Paddington Bearto the late Joan Didion. 

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These slideshows mark an obvious shift from the type of content we're used to seeing on TikTok. As platforms like Instagram try to become more like TikTok, it's strange to see TikTok implement features synonymous with apps like Instagram. Now TikTok is an aggregate of stuff found across the internet. For The Verge, writer Russell Brandom noted that TikTok’s "bootleg ratio" has recently shifted from more original content to more bootleg, or recycled, content. In June for the Embedded newsletter, Kate Lindsay wrote that TikTok is "no longer a corner of the internet, but the whole town square."

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When TikTok first went mainstream during the first year of the pandemic, it brought something new to the social media landscape: short-form video done right with an algorithm that seemingly understood your tastes better than you do. One of the novelties of the app was that it was challenging to include photos in a video without also including your face, making it tricky to be anonymous on the platform. It was an aspect that differentiated it from other social media sites.

Creators relied on the green screen filter to upload photos, and the effect is designed to add a background to someone's face in front of the camera. In order to post just an image, creators had to carefully move their faces out of frame while recording, resulting in numerous stray foreheads. 

To upload multiple photos using the green screen filter creators had to tediously upload each photo individually and record a clip of it before moving onto the next one. The latest update streamlines the upload process, allowing for the opportunity for more photo-based content on TikTok. In theory, these new tools are more efficient and easier to use, but at the same time, they ruin what makes TikTok so appealing in the first place.

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Photo mode sparks a similar frustration as Instagram's pivot to video and e-commerce. It's not just photo mode; instead of doubling down on short-form video, TikTok is trying to be everything at once. You can post videosas long as 10 minutes, you can repost videos, and you can even use TikTok Now, a new feature that mimics the daily notification and dual camera of BeReal. Users, like myself, value social media platforms that have a niche and stay in their lane. There is always a specific reason why a platform gains popularity that ends up being lost in the quest to become the only social media platform. 

Like we've seen with Instagram, when a social media platform tries to be everything, it offers us nothing unique or original.