Just like the wildfire situation in Los Angeles County, my For You page on TikTok was flipped overnight.

When I woke up last week, my phone screen was filled with videos of blazing flames and one after another of homes, businesses and other buildings being leveled to the ground. Influencers broke from their regular content cadence and filmed themselves packing their bags and preparing to evacuate; nameless accounts shared footage of streets I didn't recognize showing the devastation; newly created profiles asked for help finding missing people. pet. Scrolling through TikTok feels like trying to keep track of 1,000 live feeds at once, each urgent and scary in its own way.

What all this means is another question entirely. While disaster content is inevitable, the edits, commentary, check-ins, and footage don't actually help much. Our information sources are filled with both too much and not enough information. Although it's unclear how these fires started, scientists say climate change will only continue to exacerbate wildfires. Current weather conditions — including a severe lack of rainfall in Los Angeles this year — have created a powder keg in the region.

Questions like “Where is the shelter?” "Should I evacuate?" and "Where can I buy masks and other supplies?" went unanswered, in favor of horrific first-person reports. Who can blame Los Angeles area residents? this is you hypothesis Things to do on TikTok. They cannot share links to mutual aid resources or news reports about important, up-to-date evacuation information. They can scroll endlessly on the algorithm's "Recommended for You" page, but there's no way to sort the content to show the latest updates first. TikTok was simply not created to deliver potentially life-saving breaking news alerts. Instead, it's filled with endless clips of news crews interviewing people who have lost everything.

The Wildfire content machine echoes a similar phenomenon a few months ago, when Hurricane Milton devastated Florida in October, killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damage. Some of the most eye-catching and viral content from this storm came from influencers and other content creators who stayed on to vlog the entire event, racking up millions of views. So far, the Southern California fires haven't presented the same risk of viral content, but the overall experience isn't that different: a random source of infotainment, a video of a guy losing nearly all his possessions on the planet, followed by someone testing new ones cosmetic. Media critic Matt Pierce said it best: “TikTok is largely indifferent to my life and death.”

Instagram seems slightly more useful, but I suspect, only if you follow the people who post relevant content. In times of crisis — the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising or the ongoing bombing of Gaza — Instagram Stories have become a bulletin board for re-sharing infographics and resources. Linking to relevant announcements and news stories is really only possible through stories, but at least you able. Instagram searches, on the other hand, are a confusing mix of user-generated infographics, grainy images of fires that have been screenshotted and reuploaded multiple times, and disgusting selfies of bodybuilders wishing Los Angeles well.

It goes without saying that nefarious conspiracy theories are once again spreading on X, including rumors from billionaire Elon Musk and other right-wing influencers who falsely claim DEI initiatives are responsible for the fires. Twitter, which once functioned like breaking news, is now filled with crypto-spam and Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile, smaller, more specialized apps like Watch Duty, a nonprofit wildfire monitoring platform, have filled the void. On X competitor Bluesky, users have the option to create custom landing pages for Los Angeles Fire content based on pinned feeds of popular topics.

We will face more, not fewer, extreme weather events such as storms and heat waves, and it’s worth asking ourselves whether we are ready to do this again. In emergencies, the decline of platforms is even more apparent when users are forced to browse astronomical amounts of junk: video content that’s scary but doesn’t help us, news sites with tons of pop-up ads that feel illegitimate, or otherwise rambling. Purposelessness comes from the tech elite who are looking for someone to blame rather than a way to help. By my estimation, our show will be back to its regularly scheduled programming in about five business days, and the devastation caused by these fires will be drowned in a sea of ​​comedy skits and PR unboxings. Until the next one, of course.