"You need your first 1,000 followers before TikTok pushes you" The received wisdom says the algorithm gates reach behind some follower threshold. Beginners believe it because their early videos flop a…
"New accounts get throttled, you have to warm them up." The ritual: scroll, like, and lurk for two weeks before posting so TikTok "trusts" you. There's no documented trust-warmup gate on reach. Brand-…
"Saves are the strongest signal, optimize for them." The newer dogma: shares and saves outrank everything, so beg for saves. Half-right, weaponized into nonsense. Saves and shares are high-value becau…
"Editing the caption after posting kills your reach." The superstition: any edit "resets" or flags the video. It treats the system as a tripwire it isn't. A caption tweak doesn't re-enter the video in…
"Hit 10k followers and the money starts." The milestone myth: cross a threshold, unlock income. Follower count is one of the worst predictors of TikTok revenue. Creator Fund pays on qualified views an…
"Make videos super short so completion rate stays high." The hack: 6 seconds = easy 100% completion = viral. It games the metric and loses the war. TikTok doesn't reward raw completion percentage in a…