The Platform Colonized by Adults
"My dad went a little wild at Agent Provocateur."
That is a sentence that should NOT exist on the internet but here we are....unsurprisingly. Oh by the way, Agent Provocateur is a lingerie brand.
When someone frames a parent buying lingerie as a quirky little punchline, that isn’t “relatable content.” It’s shock value with a smile. It’s the kind of line that only makes sense in a world where the goal isn’t to communicate something real, it’s to trigger a reaction.
This is exactly what my friend’s daughter warned him about.
Years ago, when Musical.ly was becoming TikTok, she told him: adults are going to ruin this app. That young lady has the gift of foresight cause not one lie was found in her statement. She could feel, even then, that the platform had a youth culture vibe and that adults don’t just “join” youth spaces… they reshape them.
TikTok didn’t fall apart overnight. It got remodeled. Adults showed up with a different set of norms and the app started rewarding that version of behavior. The result is a different culture, a different tone, and a totally different platform.
The Early TikTok Social Contract
In the beginning, TikTok felt like a youth platform because it basically was. The dominant vibe was play—inside jokes, weird audios, dances, duets, chaotic humor, niche subcultures, and low-stakes creativity. People weren’t trying to be impressive. They were trying to be funny. It wasn’t polished, aspirational or a TED Talk. It was “we’re bored, we’re making something, come laugh with us.”
That’s an important point. A youth platform isn’t defined only by the age of its users. It’s defined by the unspoken rules. Youth spaces tend to value:
Experimentation over expertise
Participation over perfection
In-group language over broad appeal
Humor over status
Play over performance
Early TikTok felt like it was made for your friends, not for strangers.....Then everyone arrived.
When TikTok Became a Stage
Once TikTok crossed over into mainstream, it stopped being a hangout and became a stage. Celebrities, brands, and media showed up. Hell, even parents showed up. People who don’t understand the joke but still want the attention showed up. Entire industries learned how to farm it. The platform went from “look what we made” to “watch me.”
That alone doesn’t kill a culture. Platforms grow and people join. That’s normal.
The shift happens when the dominant incentive changes. When the audience becomes broader, the content starts getting designed for the broadest reaction. When the crowd gets bigger, creators start reaching for universals that travel: outrage, envy, sex, money, grievance, humiliation, moral posturing.
Those are adult internet staples.
TikTok didn’t become adult because adults showed up. It became adult because adult behavior outcompeted youth behavior in the attention economy.
Adult Internet Doesn’t “Join.” It Takes Over
Adults import a specific set of behaviors into any space. Not every adult does it, but adult internet as a culture has a signature. It brings:
Status signaling
Consumption flexing
Sexual framing
Grievance content
Moral policing
Brand-building
A teen might post something stupid because it’s funny. An adult posts something stupid because it performs. That’s why that Agent Provocateur line hits the way it hits. It’s not “my dad bought my mom lingerie.” It’s not “I got a gift.” It’s a story designed to make people react: shock, disgust, curiosity, laughter, whatever.
Adults are better at turning life into a pitch. They know how to tell a story in a way that gets a reaction. They know how to frame something as a confession, a flex, or a controversy. They know what makes people watch.
So they do it.
Money Changed the Whole App
There's a specific moment when platforms shift from culture to commerce. Once money enters the room, the platform stops rewarding creativity and starts rewarding conversion. If not directly through ads, then through brand deals, affiliate links, sponsorships, creator funds, TikTok Shop, whatever monetization pipeline exists.
Early TikTok was “this is funny.” Later TikTok became...
“This is my lifestyle.”
Then it became “this is my haul”
Then it became “here’s what I bought and why it’s not enough”
Then it became “here’s what you should buy so you can be like me”
That’s not youth culture. That’s adult consumer culture.
Play Turns Into Performance
When money enters the room, performance becomes mandatory.
You can’t just be a person who posts sometimes. You have to be a person who performs consistently, posts often, maintains a persona. You have to keep people watching. You have to stay relevant. You have to keep the storyline going. That honestly sounds exhausting just typing it.
That pressure produces two predictable outcomes: Oversharing and escalation.
Oversharing happens because intimacy performs. The more personal it feels, the more invested people get. The line between private and public gets moved on purpose.
Family becomes content
Relationships become content
Your body becomes content
Your conflict becomes content
Your trauma becomes content
Your boundaries become optional
Escalation happens because yesterday’s content becomes today’s baseline. If last week’s haul got attention, this week’s has to be bigger. If last month’s confessional got views, this month’s has to be more extreme. If relatable humor stops hitting, you reach for something sharper: sex, money, shame, outrage.
Again, adults are better at this because adults know how to build narratives and manipulate attention.
When Complaining Becomes Content
That brings us to the trend that makes a lot of people feel like something is wrong: hauls and then complaining about what you got, which SUPER ungrateful. People posting Christmas gifts, then nitpicking them. Comparing what they received to what they wanted. Making their disappointment into content and broadcasting entitlement like it’s a personality (it's not).
Complaint culture is algorithm-friendly because it generates reactions. It invites commentary, creates camps, and drives stitches. It makes people argue, judge, feel superior. It keeps people watching. That’s why it spreads.
Content doesn’t go viral because it’s good for you. It goes viral because it produces engagement.
People frame these posts like they’re “just being honest". BS. It’s a ritual of dissatisfaction. It trains the creator and the audience to orient toward what’s missing, not what’s real. It turns consumption into identity and discontent into entertainment.
This is adult internet at its finest. Great job, guys.
The Algorithm Rewards What’s Worst
The algorithm is the referee and it has one job: retention.
TikTok isn’t trying to make you wise. It’s trying to keep you on the app, so it learns what spikes attention and it feeds it back to you. The platform doesn’t choose what’s healthy. It chooses what’s sticky: shock, sex, outrage, envy, humiliation, complaints. So the platform selects for content that’s optimized for stickiness.
On adult TikTok, even vulnerability has a template. Same confession hooks, same “I’m just being honest,” same arc, same link in bio. No one will ever convince me that recording yourself crying then uploading and editing it isn't odd cause what?????
Once the system reaches that point, it doesn’t matter what the original culture was. The incentives win.
What We Lost Along the Way
When a youth platform gets colonized by adult incentives, you don’t just get different content. You get a different relationship to the platform.
Play gets replaced by performance.
Niche subcultures get flattened into trends.
The vibe shifts from “inside joke” to “broad appeal.”
Privacy disappears because everything is content.
Kids lose their space because adults bring adult dynamics into it: money, sex, status, moral policing, brand behavior, grievance cycles. Then everyone acts shocked when the platform starts feeling weird. It feels weird because it is weird. It’s a space built for youth culture being operated like a mall.....Well that's what it used to be. Doubt it ever going back. Ever.
I miss the days when we all knew less about each other....
Why This Keeps Happening
Any youth platform that becomes monetizable is going to attract adults who want attention, money, influence, or validation. Once they show up they don’t just add content, they bring an entire adult set of norms with them. The algorithm does what it’s built to do and starts rewarding whatever holds attention the longest. Creators copy what gets rewarded and the culture shifts until the original atmosphere is basically unrecognizable.
This lifecycle isn’t unique to TikTok. TikTok is just the clearest, fastest version of it.
“My dad went a little wild at Agent Provocateur” isn’t a random line. It’s a symptom. It’s what you get when a platform stops being a playground and turns into a marketplace where shock sells, oversharing performs, and “relatable” gets engineered for engagement.
Adults didn’t join TikTok. They turned it into a mall.
PS: I’ll save the story about a dad buying his daughter a see-through robe (and other things) for another time because… what the actual hell. 2026 is starting off strong.