Asking other creators about promote

So i, like many others, have been trying to grow a tiktok page. This is my second page and my first page really wasn’t doing well…i used to post film industry/ set content! It always seemed like that page was doomed to fail cus it was followed by too many ppl i knew as far as hs classmates, ppl from my old small hometown, none of them were gonna like it…we know how this goes…it was frustrating b/c i would see so many other film set creators get millions of views…its such a cool niche most ppl are interested in so i couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening for me….ultimately i decided to just make an all new account, one that had a more “lifestyle” centered niche…so i wouldn’t have to rely only on film content which has fizzled out anyway due to the strikes

On this new page i posted a couple videos and instantly started using promote b/c i, like most ppl, believed promote was there to genuinely help…i wanted this page to be different! I noticed right away ofcourse that my promoted videos would do somewhat well…but then my unprompted ones would do nothing…..after a while of scrolling reddit i now realize im being set up due to using promote!

I’m not gonna use it anymore, tiktok will get no more of my money…but my question now is…will my page ever get genuine following and viewership…i do enjoy making content for fun but id be lying if i said i didnt want it to go somewhere possibly…i dont wanna waste my time if this page is now dead with no hope of revival…. Is it more so that i need to just wait a few months of posting and not using it that things will start to be normal?