[HN Gopher] Hocus focus: how magicians made a fortune on Facebook
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Hocus focus: how magicians made a fortune on Facebook
Author : pseudolus
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-08-04 10:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| data4lyfe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Tg6Hy
| timbit42 wrote:
| ...or you could install the 'Bypass Paywalls Clean' browser
| add-on and bypass over 100 paywalls automatically.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The chances of a piece of software being decent, performing
| well, and not doing anything secretly nefarious behind the
| scenes plummet as soon as the author of that software starts
| adding adjectives to the official title talking about how
| great their software it.
| wsinks wrote:
| Or we could not install anything that needs to go through a
| security check and use existing public internet infra
| matbilodeau wrote:
| Even better: don't read tfa and still post an opinion
|
| p.s. I learned a new word "shittainment"
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| And if your actions end up undermining an independent free
| press and you're stuck with just propaganda in the future,
| well, at least you have some rhetoric to hide the guilt.
|
| If you use someone's work, pay them for it.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Is it any different than using archive.ph?
| shapefrog wrote:
| > undermining an independent free press and you're stuck
| with just propaganda
|
| Ship sailed on that one a while ago!
| wsinks wrote:
| Thank you
| Gunax wrote:
| I am struggling to understand how they are earning so much.
|
| They mention getting between $1 to $40 per thousand ad views.
| Let's say on average $10.
|
| A video that gets 165000 views is only earning $1,650--not bad
| for a days work, but not millionaire potential.
|
| Unless I am reading it wrong and '165m' means 165 _million_ but
| that just doesn 't seem possible that one in five English
| speakers on Earth would watch one video.
|
| Either way, I am very happy for his success. It's clear he found
| a particular niche to fulfill.
| ccity88 wrote:
| I think it's a reflection of our modern age that, and I know this
| has been said before to death, that authenticity has been chased
| out of the window. The social media of 2006 is gone. I can never
| see a viral clip and take it at face value, because in all
| likelihood it's a manufactured, scripted and acted gig. I don't
| think we'll ever get authenticity back unless we get rid of the
| incentive to make videos - i.e get rid of the pay per view
| schemes, and the ad dollar machine altogether. One day we're
| going to look back on this age and marvel at how much lost
| productivity, time and energy was spent on creating useless
| videos to capture attention for a minute or so.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Has there been a time when authenticity was guaranteed? Books
| like "English as She is Spoke", Pliny's "Natural History", "The
| Protocols of the Elders of Zion", fanciful paintings and
| drawings of exotic animals, explorers' dubious memoirs, paid
| mourners/celebrants/demonstrators, nasty allegations against
| rival political/religious groups, etc. are as old as history
| timdellinger wrote:
| In 2005, you could trust Amazon ratings and reviews.
|
| The early phase of - well, basically everything - tends to
| have authenticity. Then the opportunists step in.
|
| This is true of any trend, be it cultural or technology.
| sharkweek wrote:
| The Nathan For You episode where he makes a video of a goat
| being saved in a pond by a small pig that went insanely viral
| pretty much made me aware that anything I could be watching has
| been manufactured.
| personjerry wrote:
| Once you understand how social media works it's not surprising at
| all - it's just an adversarial cycle where they come up with new
| rules for content and bad actors learn how to exploit them until
| the rules change again. At Facebook scale of course it's bound to
| make a ton of money.
| namaria wrote:
| "Free" ad driven content has always been crap. I still remember
| local "newspapers" distributed for free a couple of decades ago
| covered with local ads. Some smaller cities still have them. With
| content, as everything else, you get what you pay.
| cableshaft wrote:
| From the tagline:
|
| > Did it cost them their souls?
|
| No. At least no more than anything else in this modern society.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| It feels kinda sad, like they all had these dreams of becoming
| artists, musicians, dancers, and instead made click bait.
| Obviously it was very lucrative, but there was a tone of
| melancholy in most of the actors.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Not any worse than people who dream of being creatives but
| have to work a boring corporate job during the day in the
| meantime _waves hand_. Nothing stopping them from working on
| that in their downtime. Looks like they 're doing much more
| fun things than people working corporate jobs also.
|
| And they seem to be doing well enough they can probably take
| a break and focus on other creative things if they want to,
| and have a bunch of followers to direct to that content if
| they want.
| hnrich wrote:
| > Nothing stopping them from working on that in their
| downtime.
|
| Maybe. Some of them have burned bridges with the
| communities they once loved, all in the name of being more
| viral and making more money. Justin Flom, Julius Dein, Rick
| Lax, and Jibrizy are all now despised in the magic
| community because of their actions. That's touched on in
| the article, with Julius even stating that he'd give all
| the money back to go back in time and undo the damage to
| his reputation. While it is still possible to change their
| ways and be successful in their original passions without
| the surrounding community behind them, it does make things
| more difficult and ultimately less fulfilling.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The difference is introducing and broadcasting
| disinformation to the world. There are doctors hawking
| bullshit cures that they know does not work, and
| pharmacists espousing untested products using their
| previously legitimate credentials. Hell, one of them is in
| a competitive race for a US senate seat.
|
| This is counterproductive to society's long term interests,
| and they are actively working against mine and my
| descendants and fellow citizens of the world's interest.
| is_true wrote:
| They are digital drug dealers
| bambax wrote:
| Indeed it didn't, 'cause they don't have any.
| hbn wrote:
| Viral content has gotten so weird alongside the rise of the
| algorithms. A funny cat video is no longer interesting enough to
| get shared around by millions of people. The trick I've noticed
| now is to make the viewer seem smart and/or above the person in
| the video. People doing bizarre, baffling things that you
| couldn't come up with an explanation for so that people will see
| it and go "wow this person is an idiot!" and share it around.
|
| There's an entire genre of videos that feature a woman in a
| (expensive-looking) kitchen, saying she's gonna show you a super
| easy and convenient recipe, and as it goes on it turns out to be
| the dumbest thing you've ever seen. There will always be a man,
| assumedly her husband, behind the camera narrating along and
| agreeing that whatever she's making looks delicious. Then they
| eat the weird concoction at the end and pretend like it's
| amazing. Again, this is the same kind of content I described
| above, where it's designed to make the viewer think the people in
| the video are stupid, when really the viewer is the one being
| gamed when they share it around to their friends and give those
| "idiots" more ad revenue.
| nindalf wrote:
| Another popular trend is videos where they ask people on the
| street easy questions. Things like "can you name any country on
| the world map?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o).
| The video creators then cherry pick the dumbest responses. The
| person watching the video on youtube is thinking "damn, I might
| not know much, but I'm better than these people!" providing
| that subtle ego boost. Meanwhile in the comments there's a
| debate raging about how dumb Americans are, and the Americans
| are talking about the educational system and what not.
|
| No, it was just a cherry-picked video. Don't overthink it.
| [deleted]
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Sounds like reality TV has made its way to the TikToks.
|
| Also, makes me wonder how viral the feeling of condescension
| is.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I saw a woodworker on TikTok say he intentionally does
| something in every video that is against standard practice and
| _appears_ unsafe, because that drives comments which then drive
| his revenue.
| thih9 wrote:
| I saw this technique in a cooking video, someone called
| pomegranate seeds "strawberries". There were a lot of
| comments, half of them were about the mistake, while the
| other half were saying that the mistake was intentional. I
| guess it's a modern version of a flame bait?
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| ElectroBOOM on youtube has 5.2M subscribers and that's
| exactly what he does: Every video he zaps himself, but while
| also trying to be educational.
|
| I prefer EEVBlog as a result: No nonsense, no clickbaity
| titles (mostly). He's discussed the merits of "selling out"
| and had a frank discussion online with ElctroBOOM:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UStV3zyhgnQ
| hbn wrote:
| I've watched him for years, and I think what he does is
| different from what we're talking about with this new form
| of viral content. Electroboom zaps himself because people
| think it's funny to see a guy hurt himself, and it's also
| impressive in some respect that he's good enough at what he
| does that he can do controlled, but safe stunts like that.
|
| I think what the previous poster is talking about with this
| woodworker guy is he tries to make himself look incompetent
| so people will go to the comments and point out his
| "mistake." Electroboom would never expect people to go
| "hey, you shouldn't do that, it's dangerous." Whereas it's
| normal to bait people into engaging in that way on tiktok.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| That's not particularly new - fail videos have been around for
| decades.
| hbn wrote:
| It's not in the same spirit as a classic internet fail video.
| People liked the fail videos because it was someone obviously
| hurting themselves or screwing something up.
|
| The key here is that the people will act like the failure is
| something they haven't noticed, so people will be baited into
| engaging -- either posting a comment, thinking they're the
| first person to point out the "mistake" or "failure," and/or
| share it with their friends. The entire thing is staged to
| fish for a very specific type of engagement.
| dntrkv wrote:
| I've seen those videos you are talking about but I think
| they're all made by the same group. I don't think it's
| necessarily a "trend."
| slim wrote:
| I want to add that stupid people have a natural advantage in
| doing these videos which is alarming.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The truly stupid people, rather than people only acting
| stupid, rarely make anything off of youtube. The term is "lol
| cow". Other youtubers take the idiot's content and "comment"
| about it on their channels. The original idiot gets nearly
| nothing, serving only as a source of content for the comment
| channels.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Friend works in mobile gaming and mentioned that their most
| successful ads are showing someone playing the game slightly
| wrong. People feel enticed to play correctly. Pretty
| fascinating!
| omega3 wrote:
| Reminds me of Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the
| right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's
| to post the wrong answer."
| bambax wrote:
| > _more ad revenue_
|
| Yes all of this exists because of advertising. uBlock Origin
| maybe isn't just a way to stay sane while browsing the web;
| it's the best tool we have to save the world.
|
| All forms of advertising should simply become illegal. There
| goes Facebook, Twitter, all of "social media", and the worst
| behaviors of Google. I think most people would pay for a good
| search engine (I would); the "content" that people won't pay
| for out of their own pocket, should probably not be made in the
| first place.
| clove wrote:
| Who will continue making content once all their advertising
| revenue is deemed illegal?
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(page generated 2022-08-05 23:01 UTC)