Snapchat's Strange, Cringey Attempt to Woo Back TikTok Users

Late last month, Snap released Spotlight, a new part of its Snapchat app that, on first swipe, closely resembles TikTok. The update adds a new tab to the app dedicated entirely to short, entertaining vertical videos. It incorporates some of TikTok's signature features, like vertical swipe and the ability to soundtrack your videos with music that's been uploaded to the platform. It's even powered by a mysterious, personalized recommendation algorithm so that, like TikTok, it serves you an endless stream of content without requiring that you follow or add the creators who made it. All of this amounts to a user experience that almost feels like a TikTok feed inside your Snapchat app, but with one noticeable difference: Unlike TikTok's carousel of delights, the content on Spotlight ranges from limp and joyless to cringey and grotesque. The notoriously confusing-to-adults messaging platform once seemed like a plausible rival to Facebook, until Facebook's Instagram ripped it off with Stories, rendering it obsolete for many millennials like myself.