The short-form video craze started in the U.S. though, right? And with firms like Vine and SnapChat rather than TikTok. Like I said, media (particularly social media) has strong network effects, so if you get a critical mass of early users you can take over the rest of the population even if the initial spark that attracted them doesn't apply to the rest of the world. Same as how Facebook started out at the most prestigious dorm in the most prestigious college of the U.S. - by the time it got to senior citizens they don't care about college prestige, but they got on because their grandchildren were sharing their photos on it, and the reason the grandchildren got on was because they wanted to be cooler.