[HN Gopher] Sludge Videos Are Taking over TikTok-and People's Mind
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Sludge Videos Are Taking over TikTok-and People's Mind
Author : belter
Score : 15 points
Date : 2024-01-10 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm old. I barely engage with "normal" social media and thus
| TikTok and its appeal are an absolute mystery to me. All the
| TikTok trends - the dances, the "icebergs", side-by-side video
| "responses", and now "sludge" videos - feel like communications
| from an Alien race. Heck, I still feel slightly annoyed when I
| see a vertical video of any kind.
|
| I guess this is how my parents felt about the internet and video
| games.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| I dont know. Video games was one thing. It didn't context
| switch as a 10 second video with flickering content does. Next
| video. Next video. Next Next Next Next....
|
| I am no brain expert but I know when our kids are over
| stimulated
| thih9 wrote:
| > When the Stockton-Darlington Railway opened in 1825, people
| feared the worst: the human body, surely, wasn't made to
| travel at incredible speeds of 30 miles per hour. People
| genuinely believed that going that quickly would kill you in
| gruesome ways, such as your body melting.
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-
| tech/12-technologies...
|
| And both can be true, trains have killed people and tiktok
| can have adverse effects.
|
| So far we've kept trains, added safety measures and made them
| faster. I guess we'll do the same with tiktok and the like.
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| now compare tiktoks net benefit to society with that of
| trains
| thih9 wrote:
| I use tiktok daily or every other day, I can provide some first
| hand anecdotes.
|
| Dances are funny to me, at least the ones I see, they remind me
| of memes; it's about 10% of my feed.
|
| I have no idea what are icebergs (please explain).
|
| Video responses ("duets" / "stitches") can be funny or
| informative. Also perhaps 10%.
|
| I've seen "sludge" only in a simpler form (minecraft gameplay
| and an automated voice reading a reddit post), I saw it maybe
| 2-3 times total.
|
| My point is just like you can tweak your twitter, reddit, etc
| experience to show you the content you want and enjoy - you can
| do the same with tiktok.
|
| Although if you don't like vertical videos then absolutely skip
| it.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| I thought I was immune to the dance video trend, but then I
| encountered the slick back slide and lost my job, my wife, and
| my kids
| sureglymop wrote:
| I'm young and I feel the same. And I have many younger cousins
| (gen alpha) who don't understand or don't like these new age
| platforms like TikTok and would never use them.
| thih9 wrote:
| Putting multiple videos together also helps avoid copyright
| strikes - another reason this kind of content gets more popular.
| At least until copyright algorithms catch up I guess.
| parkrrr wrote:
| These videos always seem to be posted by content harvesters and I
| presumed the side-by-side video was intended to add randomness to
| avoid content detection.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Or simply to keep users staring at the video, wondering what on
| earth they're looking at, for long enough to count as a view.
|
| When your only objective as a video creator is to maximize
| total view time, spewing out a bunch of garbage videos that
| users will look at for a few seconds each is, unfortunately,
| locally optimal.
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(page generated 2024-01-10 23:01 UTC)