Admit it.
You doomscrolled until the early hours again last night.
It’s not that you didn’t know you should go to sleep. Your rational mind was screaming “put down the phone.” But your finger—that damn thumb—just couldn’t stop. Swipe after swipe, 15 seconds, 15 seconds, 15 seconds. By the time you finally glanced at the clock—
2:40 AM.
You hate yourself. But tomorrow night, you will do the exact same thing.
You think you lack self-control? Wrong. You have simply encountered the most sophisticated “mind-reading” mechanism in human history.
Instagram: The Posturing Samurai
Before TikTok emerged, the rules of the social media game were dictated by Instagram.
That was a curated arena.
You needed to find the perfect lighting. You needed to meticulously plate your food—the latte art had to be a perfect heart. You needed to spend 10 minutes color-grading, agonizing over whether to use the Clarendon or Valencia filter. You needed to write a caption that was neither trying too hard nor entirely casual.
Then you post it. And wait. Anxiously wait. Refreshing repeatedly to see if the likes crossed 100.
Instagram taught the world one thing: You must display the best version of yourself.
In Kendo, this is called Chudan—the most traditional, standard, and orthodox stance. The tip of the sword points directly at the opponent’s throat, the body faces squarely forward, meticulous and strict. Textbook perfection.
What Chudan wins on is—presence. It is the overwhelming domination of “I am more perfect than you.”
Instagram is the Chudan of the business world. Precise, rigorous, exuding high-end polish. But it has one fatal weakness: It is exhausting.
Meticulously maintaining a perfect persona is like holding the Chudan stance indefinitely—your arms ache, your breath shortens, and you become increasingly afraid to relax even for a second.
TikTok: The Barefoot Ronin
Then came TikTok.
In 2017, the international version of TikTok officially launched. No elaborate matrix of filters. No pressure for “curated photos.” You didn’t even need to follow anyone—the algorithm simply shoved what it thought you would like right into your face.
You didn’t need to plan your content. All you had to do was—swipe.
TikTok’s stance is Mukamae—the stance of no stance.
In plain terms: no posing. Lip-syncing in your pajamas? 1 million likes. Your cat knocking over a cup? 5 million views. A middle-aged guy doing a bizarre dance on a construction site? 200 million views.
No rules. No barriers to entry. No invisible conditioning telling you “it must be filmed this way.”
In the dojo, Mukamae looks like the weakest stance—arms hanging down, sword held loosely, like someone who just woke up. But the masters know: Mukamae is the most terrifying. Because you have absolutely no idea where the next strike will come from.
Did Zuckerberg see it coming?
In 2018, Instagram boasted 1 billion monthly active users as the undisputed king of global social media. Zuckerberg didn’t take TikTok seriously—to him, it was just a place where a bunch of kids posted stupid videos.
By 2021, TikTok’s global monthly active users surpassed 1 billion, tying with Instagram. But what was more fatal—the average time users spent on TikTok was twice that of Instagram.
In 2023, Zuckerberg completely panicked. Instagram wholesale copied TikTok—force-feeding a short-video feature called “Reels.” The result? Old users complained, “I just want to see photos, stop shoving videos at me,” while new users said, “If I want to watch short videos, why wouldn’t I just go scroll TikTok?”
It pleased no one. A “posturing samurai” trying desperately to learn the parkour of a ronin—but its armor was too heavy to run.
Sen-no-sen: Acting Before You Even Think
The truly terrifying aspect of TikTok is not the short video format.
It is its algorithm.
Traditional social media waits for you to make a choice—you see who you follow. This is called Go-no-sen—you act first, I respond.
TikTok plays Sen-no-sen—pushing content to you before you even realize what you want to watch.
You just watched a video about puppies and lingered for an extra 0.3 seconds—OK, out of the next 20 videos, there will be 5 of puppies, 3 of idyllic country life, and 2 funny pet compilations. Each one is a custom-tailored dopamine injection just for you.
You never made a single “active choice.” You think you are “scrolling”—but you are actually being “fed.”
In Kendo, a master of Sen-no-sen can read the opponent’s unformed intentions. The moment the thought “I’m going to attack his right hand” arises in your mind, before your shoulder even moves—he has already preemptively positioned his sword to block your right flank.
It’s not about having fast reflexes. It is because he lives inside your head.
TikTok is exactly like this. It doesn’t need to wait for you to tell it what you like. Through your watch time, scroll speed, and replay counts, it knows your interests earlier than you do—even the interests you refuse to admit to yourself.
Drop the Facade to Gain Vitality
Finally, let me say something that might make you a bit uncomfortable.
The fundamental reason TikTok beat Instagram isn’t just having a stronger algorithm— It is that it allows people to stop pretending.
The world of Instagram is a never-ending performance. Everyone is meticulously maintaining a “better self.” Every photo you post has been approved by a review committee (yourself). Isn’t that exhausting?
TikTok says: Drop the act. Just be who you are. Wearing pajamas, wearing no makeup, having a thick accent, dealing with a messy kitchen—it doesn’t matter. Your authenticity has a hundred times more penetrating power than your perfection.
This principle holds true everywhere in life systems.
Your meticulously rehearsed interview introduction will never move an interviewer as much as a sincere, slightly stuttering, true story. The exquisite lifestyle you maintain on your social feed will never make friends want to reach out to you as much as a late-night post simply saying, “I’m just really tired today.” The grand, posturing lectures you give your kids will never make them open up to you as much as crouching down and saying, “Mom/Dad doesn’t know what to do either.”
In a world where everyone is posturing—the first person to drop the facade is actually the most powerful.
What about you? Are you still “posturing”?
One practical exercise for this week: In the next situation where you need to speak or present yourself (even if it’s just a social media post), deliberately retain a “genuine flaw.” Don’t retouch the photo, and don’t memorize your script perfectly. Try to honestly expose a moment where you are not 100% perfect. Experience the genuine goodwill that flows toward you from others once those defenses are dropped.
