The Algorithm of Aspiration: How TikTok Used Soviet Statecraft To Take Over The Internet
To beat the most advanced companies of the 21st century, the Chinese upstart is using a playbook straight out of the 1930s.
Accidents don’t happen in Silicon Valley.
The business of Big Tech isn’t just ultra-competitive, it’s anti-competitive — and the likes of Facebook and Google never take their eyes off the ball.
After all, when you’re responsible for over 70% of internet referral traffic, you don’t just watch the ball — you are the ball.
Yet, against all odds, a lip-syncing upstart somehow snowballed into a juggernaut in Silicon Valley’s backyard.
TikTok’s explosion into the mainstream is a cultural revolution. It has become impossible to ignore whether you’re a suburban teenager, a tech billionaire, or the onetime leader of the free world. It’s gotten to where the best content on Instagram is just a repost from TikTok.
Indeed, the surest sign that you’re onto something in tech is being cloned by FAANG. So let’s have a look at TikTok’s current record:
- Nov ’18: Facebook launches TikTok challenger, Lasso
- Nov ’19: Instagram launches TikTok challenger, Reels
- June ’20: YouTube launches TikTok challenger, 15s videos
- July ’20: Facebook Lasso is killed off
- Oct ’20: Snapchat launches TikTok challenger, Sounds
- Nov ’20: Snapchat launches TikTok challenger, Spotlight, backed by $1m in creator incentive fees every day
Yikes. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but this is straight-up desperation.
So, how did an app from China crash a party in the USA? To answer this question, we’ll have to go back to 1935.
To a coal mine. In the Soviet Union.
Where a 29-year-old man named Alexey Stakhanov is about to go viral.
Keeping Up With the Stakhanovites: Influencer Marketing in the 1930s
On the evening of 30 August 1935, Alexey Stakhanov began his six-hour shift in the Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine outside Kadievka, Ukraine.
But this was no ordinary shift. The former shepherd had devised a plan to improve mining efficiency and was keen to prove himself to the local journalist and Communist Party secretary in attendance who had caught wind of his scheme.
Little did he know that within days, he would become the USSR’s first viral star.
Per Stalin’s rapid industrialization plan, each miner had to produce 7 tonnes of coal per shift. That hot summer night, jackhammer in hand, Stakhanov mined an astonishing 102 tonnes over 14 times his quota.
Slack-jawed, the journalist knew he had a bombshell to drop. Within two days, Stakhanov was on the front cover of Pravda, the national newspaper, winning approval from Stalin himself.
Stalin quickly saw Stakhanov’s marketing potential for Soviet industrialization. The man was as relatable as they come — the latest in a long line of farmworkers, little more was expected of him than shepherding.
But with hard work, creativity, and the opportunity provided by Stalin’s industrialization plan (obviously), he became a superstar. The message was crystal clear:
“You could be the next superstar if you work hard enough”
The impact was immediate and electrifying.
Workers from every industry raced to become the next superstar worker, or “Stakhanovite” as they came to be known. In Moscow, Aleksandr Busygin forged a prodigious 1,115 crankshafts in a single shift. Locomotive engineer Pyotr Krivonos reportedly increased the average speed of freight trains to match that of passenger trains.
As for Stakhanov, he was launched into a nationwide tour, and Stalin himself spoke at the first Pan-Union Conference of Stakhanovites. And just four months after that historic mining shift, the young Communist miner graced the front cover of TIME magazine in the US.
Just like that, the Community Party had created the world’s first superstar influencer.
By concentrating the accolades onto one highly relatable man, workers across the USSR battled to imitate his success, building a deep “middle class” of prolific industrial creators whose labour would power the Soviet Union.
And this is where TikTok comes in.
Because TikTok hasn’t just copied the principles of the Stakhanovite movement — they’ve turned it into an algorithm and put it on steroids.
TikTok’s Stakhanovites — Creating the Digital Middle Class
When you open up TikTok and begin scrolling, what is striking is the sheer abundance of “ordinary people” whose names you’ve never heard of.
They are TikTok’s middle class, the beating creative heart of the platform. And there are a lot of them.
Sure, you might recognise a few names here and there — the Rock lifting weights, Will Smith making Fresh Prince references. But these mainstream faces are a drop in the ocean compared to the TikTok middle class.
From hobbyist paint mixers to fishermen, pasta makers, and even bricklayers, why is it that so many TikTok stars seem so… ordinary?
Well, accidents don’t happen in Silicon Valley, and this is no exception.
TikTok’s algorithm borrows the Stakhanov concept of making superstars out of engaging creators who are otherwise fairly ordinary. Indeed, the most popular TikTok accounts at the time of writing are former high school student Charli D’Amelio and former college student Addison Rae, with a staggering 112m+ and 79m+ followers, respectively.
To be clear, YouTube does this too and has produced its own Stakhanovite superstars, from MrBeast to Logan Paul.
But what sets TikTok apart is that it does one thing does better than every company bar Amazon — it obsesses over the customer.
And by doing so, TikTok has realised that to maintain and grow its middle class, it needs to manufacture belief, by proving to them they really could go viral.
This means TikTok needs to mint new viral stars every single day out of its middle class — hence the abundance of “ordinary people” amongst its upper class. While one Alexey Stakhanov may have been good enough for the Communist Party, TikTok knows it needs to produce hundreds of stars every year to keep the faith.
It’s here where YouTube slips up — there is a much clearer divide between aspiring middle-class creators and the upper class of superstars like MrBeast, effectively shutting down YouTube’s social class mobility.
As TikTok co-founder Alex Zhu put it:
“If it’s only a dream, people will wake up eventually. They know they don’t have the chance. You have to give the opportunity to average people… to make sure there is a middle class coming up”
In this way, TikTok is engineered like the slot machines in Vegas — nobody will play them if there’s no chance of winning. But by strategically drip-feeding players with the thrill of hitting the jackpot, they will keep plowing cash into the machine.
Posting a TikTok is like pulling the slot machine arm — the more you post, the more likely you’ll go viral and hit that jackpot.
Just remember that TikTok is the house, and the house always wins.
Final thoughts
The irony that the Communist Party benefitted so much from the creation of a Stakhanovite “middle class” is not lost on me.
But there is perhaps an even sweeter irony in TikTok’s rise.
By stealing the techniques of a centrally planned economy, TikTok has built a deep, innovative, and prolific middle class of creators, driven by the belief that with hard work and dedication, they too can “make it”.
A Chinese company has turned the American Dream into an algorithm.
TikTok isn’t just doing business — it’s doing statecraft.
And their playbook to beat the most advanced companies of the 21st century comes straight from the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
