Whereas Facebook and Twitter were built around making friends and adding followers, TikTok is about winning fans. It makes its users believe that they have a chance at global celebrity, irrespective of where they live, as long as they can get online and hold people’s attention for anywhere from 15 seconds to one minute. This promise is built into TikTok's artificial-intelligence-driven interface: It shows its users content they didn't ask to see, made by people they probably don't know, "opening up," the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote, "new routes to serendipitous discovery."

Nowhere is the impact of this promise better represented than here in India. TikTok is currently the most downloaded mobile app in the country, with more than 200 million users, and it's shaping a new youth culture in which millions of young people - in big cities and small villages alike - are trying to be TikTok's next big star. The results are both magical and nightmarish.

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