[HN Gopher] In the belly of the MrBeast
___________________________________________________________________
In the belly of the MrBeast
Author : stafford_beer
Score : 445 points
Date : 2025-01-14 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kevinmunger.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kevinmunger.substack.com)
| eitally wrote:
| At the top of the heap (Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan, etc), this is
| true:
|
| > The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their
| persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their
| subjective experience already takes audience reactions into
| account.
|
| > Or more simply, YouTubers are not "Creators" but Creations.
| Audiences, rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who
| upload the videos those audiences consume are not separable
| either theoretically or empirically.
|
| It's pretty obvious, too, because these YouTubers have a distinct
| theme where their popularity is dependent on 1) the whims and
| algos of the platform on one side, and 2) the ability for their
| audience to care and relate to something pretty dang detached and
| irrelevant from their everyday lives (unboxing, aggressive acts
| of charity, etc).
|
| While you hear plenty (Most? All?) YouTubers complain about the
| ranking algorithms & capriciousness of their overlord, I don't
| believe most channels are quite as vapid as those at the top of
| the heap. Lots of deep subjective content, and lots of freaking
| annoying CapCut edits, but also a primary focus on meaningful
| content relevent to viewers. These people may not be getting rich
| from their vlogging, but it's also not fair to call what most of
| them are doing "vlogging", either. It's video-based short form
| content curation for a clearly identified audience. Not remotely
| the same as how the big guns like Mr Beast have to view their
| work [where they're much more similar to a cable TV network or a
| commercial production company than an independent producer].
| hylaride wrote:
| Youtube is also killing a lot of history channels because if
| there's any violence (eg war) they get demonetized, the
| algorithm avoids them, or they can even have their channels
| disabled. Most now blur out pictures of the holocaust, which
| negates a lot of the otherwise serious impact on a serious
| subject.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24QgMpvX3mw
| lolinder wrote:
| Obligatory plug for Nebula, where a lot of educational
| YouTube has gone for refuge from demonetization. Many
| creators will have different versions that they upload to
| Nebula containing the content that YouTube wouldn't let them
| add in.
| antasvara wrote:
| >but also a primary focus on meaningful content relevent to
| viewers. These people may not be getting rich from their
| vlogging, but it's also not fair to call what most of them are
| doing "vlogging", either. It's video-based short form content
| curation for a clearly identified audience.
|
| There's a fine line between "content created for X people
| interested in Y topic in Z form" and "content that's relevant
| to my viewers."
|
| The former is a channel that is avoiding the "creator"
| described by the author. The latter is on a path towards the
| author's "creator."
|
| For a long time, the two can be very similar. The group you are
| tailoring your content for and your viewers won't necessarily
| diverge quickly, especially in niche areas or highly technical
| fields. But they will inevitably diverge.
|
| Worth noting that the form this takes will depend on the topic.
|
| It's rare to find a creator that can avoid this trap long-term.
| I see it even with small channels I follow.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > YouTubers are not "Creators" but Creations
|
| This is such a broad and general statement for a platform that
| is unfathomably big.
|
| I don't any of the mass market Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan videos on
| my feed. At all. I get smaller (but still large) creators with
| videos that actually engage the mind. Example:
| https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio
|
| But I guess that's the distinction between a Youtuber and
| Creator.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Well put. As long as channels like Technology Connections can
| remain financially viable on the platform and not beaten down
| by the algorithm, I really don't care how many Mr Beasts are
| making "slop content".
| dom96 wrote:
| I do. Slop content is melting the brains of the people
| watching that content to the detriment of society as a whole.
| mperham wrote:
| Soap operas, reality TV and evangelists have existed
| forever in various guises. "Bread and circuses" is
| thousands of years old.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
| cogman10 wrote:
| I don't care so much about the dumb brain melting.
| However, what MrBeast and other youtubers do is
| exploitative to their audiences (which in the case of
| MrBeast skews young).
|
| It's not great to see young kids addicted to content
| designed primarily to rob them of their money with false
| claims of success. "Oh, if you send me money, buy my
| shit, or subscribe to my channel, you could win millions
| of dollars!"
|
| That sort of exploitative media should be illegal (and in
| the case of MrBeast appears to be illegal in some cases).
| timewizard wrote:
| If you remove this they'll simply substitute it with
| something else. Some people don't mind "melting" their
| brains as they didn't have a primary use for it anyways.
| 65 wrote:
| Probably. But this isn't really something you can control.
| So why bother?
| wussboy wrote:
| Why even make this comment?
| nemesis1637 wrote:
| "They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their
| subjective experience already takes audience reactions into
| account."
|
| This is great. I think there's a body of research to be done
| regarding the creation of self in the age of social media. (Not
| just creators but everyone)
| adamc wrote:
| Except that it's "interpolated".
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| No, it's "interpellated", i.e. 'brought into being'.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| That was my first instinct, too, but instead of reflexively
| posting about it I double checked and found I was wrong and
| learned something new.
| adamc wrote:
| I sit enlightened, although I don't like the word much.
| thfuran wrote:
| No, that's a different word that doesn't work in that
| context.
| gertrunde wrote:
| Perhaps not:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation
|
| (Specifically the top item, "the process by which we
| encounter a culture's or ideology's values and internalize
| them").
|
| Edit: Doh! On checking the article, that's even the same link
| the author embedded!
| ionwake wrote:
| ooof
| nucleogenesis wrote:
| I suspect they're using the second definition of the word
| (per Google):
|
| PHILOSOPHY (of an ideology or discourse) bring into being or
| give identity to (an individual or category).
|
| ---
|
| I read it as saying the audience and their reaction to the
| content is what gives the "creator" their identity.
| dmd wrote:
| No, that's inserting a value. Interpellation is the
| international police organization popularized by Carmen
| Sandiego.
| summarity wrote:
| > creation of self in the age of social media
|
| That's a large part of the field of Cyberpsychology, and of
| course there's quite a body of research already.
| iambateman wrote:
| First of all - the essay is phenomenal and his book is available
| online for free -
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36...
|
| > "Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning."
| The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as
| constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and
| more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as
| is the case with political ideology), the creator seeks simply
| intensification, to draw more and more of the world into his
| whirlpool of content.
|
| This idea - that meaning is replaced by intensification - helps
| me understand a lot about the world today.
| irrational wrote:
| Now I understand why numberphile has videos about infinity. I
| jest, but it seems like only certain content creators can get
| on the intensification train.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Seriously though, this is true. My YouTube feed has none of
| this "intensification" stuff. Perun, Blancolirio, everything
| Brady Haran has made (he's the guy behind Numberphile, Sixty
| Symbols, etc), Applied Science, etc.
|
| I think the idea that media aimed at education or sharing a
| passionate hobby is different from media that exists in the
| first place to just make money. If you start out with a goal
| that involves communication, I think it's more likely to
| stick than if your goal was just to become the Death Star
| from the start!
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It also explains why there's been an alarming trend over the
| last 10 years of people just getting more vehement about
| everything.
| dymk wrote:
| 10? We've been getting steadily more polarized since at least
| the 80s.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Possibly true, but I'm sure you'd agree that it can't
| really be called steadily since around 2010-2014
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There is a straight line through 70s Falwell, 90s
| Limbaugh, tea party, to MAGA. All fueled by a self-
| reinforcing rage machine.
| harywilke wrote:
| Reminds me of this quote: "The system itself could not
| have intended this in the beginning, but in order to
| sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." -They
| Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45[0] [0]
| https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Reminds me of the Ukraine war. The original intent was
| clearly a very short intense "operation" and then a quick
| annexation. Nobody planned to grind hundreds of thousands
| of bodies through a war machine, but "here we are" and
| now everyone is "forced" to go through the motions.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too.
|
| Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense
| for it.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| One only needs to observe societies response to Covid to
| see how "left leaning folks get swept up into rage
| machines". People were cheering on cars getting towed
| from popular hiking spots, skate parks getting filled
| with sand, crazy people "protesting" beachgoers, etc. if
| you dared to suggest schools should open you were a
| grandma killing MAGA hat wearing pariah. Don't forget the
| level of censorship, vaccine passes, wishing death upon
| those who didn't get vaccinated, etc.
|
| No sir, people of all tribes are fully capable of getting
| swept into rage machines. At the end of the day we are
| animals operating on animal instinct. No tribe gets to
| claim otherwise.
| standardUser wrote:
| I mean, _some_ people reacted how you describe, but the
| vast majority did not regardless of political leanings.
| Are you going to pretend that was the dominant reaction
| among left-leaning people just so you can be mad about
| it?
| throaway89 wrote:
| And the internet hijacks our brains so effectively; since
| it became ubiquitous, it is almost impossible for regular
| users to see how they are being conditioned.
| dmurray wrote:
| Wait, in my media bubble the American left is the one
| consumed by rage.
|
| The right is stupid or craven or greedy or just evil, but
| true righteous fury is reserved for those who saw a
| woman's rights not getting respected one time.
| harrall wrote:
| I find the right goes into rage machines and sees their
| way of life changing and double down on keeping things
| the way they have been.
|
| I find the left goes into anger machines and ends up
| suggesting overzealous steps for necessary changes that
| take many people aback.
|
| But that's not new. What's not new is that now we have
| social media and mainstream media that wants to fan the
| flames by giving voices to the most extreme.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They aren't obstructing Congress. That has been ongoing
| since 1994 when rational negotiation by civic minded
| leaders was replaced with hostage taking to suit an
| ideology without regard for public benefit.
| liontwist wrote:
| I don't think you understand these groups and their
| motivations very well. Fear and concern for the future
| are much more significant than "rage".
| nemo44x wrote:
| So basically since when cable TV came into mainstream
| existence.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Turning attention away from each other and toward images
| of each other
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think you're confusing the issue. Cable TV wasn't
| coming into mainstream that was the problem. The issue
| was the 1996 Telecommunications Act that was the starting
| gun.
| spokaneplumb wrote:
| - Huge shift in (near-total abandonment of) antitrust
| enforcement starting in the late 70s, driven by Chicago
| school assholes. Centralized economic power.
|
| - Fairness Doctrine killed in the 80s, resulting rise of
| partisan AM radio and, somewhat later, Fox News.
|
| - Media ownership concentration rules neutered in early
| '00s (iirc). More centralization, again in the hands of
| big capital.
|
| - None of those rules ever applied to the Web, so when
| its power as a propaganda and agitation tool skyrocketed
| with increased use by normal folks (rise of Facebook;
| usable smartphones with the iPhone) that immediately
| headed bad directions.
|
| Now we have LLMs, which are at their most-useful by far
| when you don't care about accuracy or reputation--so,
| scams and propaganda getting a big boost in productivity.
| guelo wrote:
| i remember when Obama took office Rush Limbaugh was
| worried that he would try to restore the fairness
| doctrine but it turned out Obama did nothing. Democrats
| never acted like they were in a battle while Republicans
| were executing on a media domination plan over decades to
| dismantle the propaganda safeguards put in place by post
| war politicians.
| NickC25 wrote:
| That's because despite the right wing propaganda that
| will tell you Obama is a staunch far-left communist,
| Barack Obama is a committed centrist, and a
| representative of the Corporate Party.
|
| He did nothing because he had no interest in doing
| anything to limit corporate influence or power. They put
| him in power, after all.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I think human nature dictates that this opens up a literal
| market for the opposite. People aren't served by exhausting
| hysteria, it's just a cheap date, a way to grab low hanging
| fruit. The more that's focussed on, the more an opportunity
| arises to cover abandoned needs and wants.
|
| The question becomes, is YouTube's algorithm good enough to
| itself pick up on this new market and serve it? I see no
| reason it couldn't. It's possible human algorithm-minders
| might sabotage this instinct by going 'no, this is the big
| win' and coaxing it towards MrBeast stuff, but surely the
| algorithm will eventually win out?
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > is YouTube's algorithm good enough to itself pick up on
| this new market
|
| Something I find interesting is that there are good
| channels producing very high quality (non-extreme or non-
| intense) content for many interests on YouTube and they
| coexist with the hyperbolic large channels. I suppose that
| they make less money, but they do so without a large
| production crew. I think the algorithm is supporting both
| types of content (content for myriad mindless viewers, and
| content for the fewer discerning viewers) and accommodates
| both scales.
| cess11 wrote:
| By "human nature", what exactly are you referring to? The
| statistically most common amount of extremities?
| Applejinx wrote:
| People tire of being poked with an algorithmic stick,
| even though it ensures a reaction.
| cess11 wrote:
| Like the seasons and the phases of the moon and wandering
| of the stars?
| n3storm wrote:
| and I think "literally" abuse is a sympton of that
| iainmerrick wrote:
| But come on, that's been going on for literally centuries.
| alt227 wrote:
| They changed the definition of 'literally' to fit the
| modern meaning. You can no longer call it abuse now as the
| misuse fits the new definition.
|
| See definition 2 here:
|
| https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/litera
| l...
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Literally false: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/grammar/misuse-of-literally
|
| Use of literally in, well, the non-literal sense dates
| back hundreds of years.
| alt227 wrote:
| I literally had no idea.
| feoren wrote:
| That definition _genuinely_ gives me cancer. I
| _seriously_ , _100%_ am going to die now because
| dictionary editors don 't seem to grasp that this is
| simply a "tone" of ironically over-emphasized speaking
| similar to sarcasm, and not a new definition of one word.
| I'm _250%_ _honestly_ in chemotherapy now because they
| don 't get that. _Veritably, indubitably, unarguably_
| cooked now. Thanks, dictionary editors.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| The stronger player was handicapped when they gave their
| opponent a handicap, and yet they still won; they now
| held in their hands their prize that was the match's
| prize.
| bena wrote:
| Dickens did it. And people have been doing it since the
| 1700s.
|
| Not to mention, if you're using the word "literally" to
| mean "something that actually happened", you are also using
| the word wrong. Because it means "relating to or expressed
| in letters".
|
| I also notice people complain about "literally", but they
| never complain about "really" which also gets used in the
| same ways even though it means the opposite.
|
| And I've noticed people do it as a substitute for
| intelligence. They complain about these things to _seem_
| intelligent. To _seem_ knowledgeable. But when confronted
| with knowledge that contradicts the complaint, they try to
| dismiss the knowledge rather than adjust their point of
| view. Similar with fewer /less. These words mean the same
| thing. There are no rules as to when to use one or the
| other. There was the preference of one guy, who even said
| that he had no reason for it, he just liked it. And people
| took that as an ironclad rule. Or the gif debate. People
| try to invent all of these rules, but get pissy when you
| point out all the places where English does not follow
| those rules.
| alt227 wrote:
| What would you suggest using instead. Actually?
| bena wrote:
| People are generally good at context. Tone, expression,
| etc, all of these things are parts of communication that
| do matter. Assume your audience is at least as smart as
| you are.
| alt227 wrote:
| When communicating through text only, tone and expression
| is all but lost which means we need to rely on the
| literal/actual/exact definition of words to convey our
| intended meaning. However it seems people dont agree on
| the exact meanings of words (using literally in this
| case), and so the intention often gets lost in
| translation and causes disagreements.
|
| I feel personally this is a big reason why communication
| across the internet is becoming much more intense and
| full of conflict.
| jamincan wrote:
| Truly?
| stonogo wrote:
| There have been thousands of years of written language,
| and the worst thing that ever happened was the invention
| of the dictionary, which enabled generations of
| prescriptivists to pretend that word meanings can't
| change once they're written down, despite thousands of
| years of evidence to the contrary. Maybe look up
| 'hidebound' sometime.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| We started attaching public comment boxes to everything and
| now everyone thinks their opinion on everything is important.
| achierius wrote:
| Baudrillard just gets more relevant every day. Honestly I find
| it hard to imagine how someone could have media literacy in the
| modern day without coming to an intuitive understanding of
| semiotics, whether they know it or not!
| aiono wrote:
| I find the ideas of Baudrillard really accurate in describing
| some parts of modern life, but to be honest I feel like he
| just saying random stuff when I tried to read one of his
| book. It's so metaphorical and abstract it's very difficult
| to understand what exactly he is saying.
| cess11 wrote:
| He's not "just saying random stuff", he was a very serious
| thinker. Unlike Derrida he wasn't much of a joker.
|
| Perhaps language is fundamentally metaphorical, and perhaps
| reality is actually abstract.
| aiono wrote:
| That's just what I feel I didn't claim that it actually
| is just random stuff. But I value clarity and Baudrillard
| doesn't seem to try to be. However, as I said I do find
| his general points very valuable just his style is not my
| cup of tea.
| cess11 wrote:
| He wrote in many different styles, depending on the
| subject and likely audience. Simulacra and Simulation,
| Silent Majorities and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place are
| very different texts.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| My best experience reading Baudrillard was out loud with a
| group. Some passages spoke to some but not others, but most
| generated discussion. Some are also obvious to us now in
| the TikTok age - uncannily so.
| aiono wrote:
| Definitely when I read his works even though I didn't
| understand some of his writings it made me think about
| it.
| Communitivity wrote:
| I called myself a Semiotics Engineer for 4 years, but the
| title didn't catch. I did domain analysis, logical model
| creation, concrete model creation in XML/OWL/KML, model
| review and improvement, semantic reasoning-based system
| design/implementation, and message system
| design/implementation. This was before the rise of ML.
| j45 wrote:
| That collection of skills is still valuable.
| Xmd5a wrote:
| What's your take on LLMs ? I ask you to comment on any
| aspect, whatever you think is the most interesting from a
| semiotician's perspective.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Everyone who is familiar with Baudrillard goes
| "simulacrum!" whenever they encounter LLM output. LLM
| output is after all a pure chain of _symbols_ that is
| extremely far removed from a connection with ground truth
| reality.
| garte wrote:
| I'm not sure it's that direct of a connection.
|
| There's something to be said about the structuralist part
| of it: using large amounts of text as a rule set to
| return a semblance of truth seems to be a structuralist's
| wet dream.
|
| It's like drawing the map for the king: the real is being
| represented by reducing a huge number of data points to a
| mixture of randomness and hard rules that pretend to be
| real.
|
| At the very least it's a form of hyperreality as far as I
| understand it.
| Xmd5a wrote:
| Indeed this is what I was aiming at, however the concern
| for (a semblance of) truth seems rooted in a view that
| locates meaning in what signs refer to. This view feels
| incomplete when faced with a dyadic model where the
| relationship between signifier and signified takes
| precedence over reference. The notion of simulacrum only
| emerges in a technical culture that has elevated
| 'reality' to a special status. After all, what is
| 'reality' in technical systems if not itself a
| simulacrum? Hilbert's program, symbolic AI, rule systems,
| ontologies, the semantic web - they all struggled to
| capture reality as a whole precisely because they tried
| to grasp it through formal objects claiming universal
| scope via the machinery of said formalisms.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Yes, the 21st century is the age of simulacra and simulation.
| Post-truth society.
| coliveira wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this was set in motion in the 20th century.
| This century is only about refining and monetizing it to
| the nth power.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Him and also Marshal McLuhan. McLuhan realized all the way
| back in the 60s that computer technology (like all
| technology) in some sense _wants_ things and manipulates the
| user to get it. The 'electric' technologies have their own
| logic and are not neutral on questions of humanity, politics,
| nature, etc.
| stafford_beer wrote:
| OP here -- I like Baudrillard and McLuhan but the media
| theorist who best captures the present IMO is Flusser:
| https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-
| cybe...
| Salgat wrote:
| For people confused like me on what intensification means, it
| means maximizing the amount of attention and interaction that
| occurs. On Youtube this would be the metrics that drive
| engagement, including views, likes, comments, shares, and watch
| time. The issue is that the content focuses on driving
| engagement at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence
| and depth, for example by sensationalizing or oversimplifying a
| complex issue (especially for things like political discourse
| focused on sound bites and emotional appeals, or with virtue
| signaling and outrage culture). I think the above commentor is
| right, in my opinion, intensification shapes our world into
| being very reactionary, with only a superficial understanding
| of issues, and platforms like Youtube Shorts and Tiktok take
| this to its furthest possible level.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| For an excellent, prescient, hilarious, and terrifying book
| on this topic, I highly recommend "Amusing Ourselves to
| Death" by Neil Postman.
| stafford_beer wrote:
| OP here -- excellent suggestion, I've been heavily
| influenced by this book and would also recommend Postman's
| "Technopoly"
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _I think the above commentor is right, in my opinion,
| intensification shapes our world into being very reactionary,
| with only a superficial understanding of issues_
|
| In fairness, this is how the world has always been.
|
| In the US for instance, back when there were only 3 networks
| and a channel for public tv, people were _" reactionary, with
| only a superficial understanding of issues"_.
| Salgat wrote:
| To some degree yes. Funny enough, llamaimperative's book
| suggestion goes into detail on how television is where this
| really started ramp up and how the Age of Reason was likely
| the peak of rational argument, where the focal point of
| transfer of information was through the written word.
|
| "He repeatedly states that the eighteenth century, the "Age
| of Reason", was the pinnacle for rational argument. Only in
| the printed word, he states, could complicated truths be
| rationally conveyed. Postman gives a striking example: many
| of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have
| walked down the street without being recognized by the
| average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly
| known by their written words. However, the reverse is true
| today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers,
| lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically
| television images, but few, if any, of their words come to
| mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of
| carefully chosen soundbites. Postman mentions Ronald
| Reagan, and comments upon Reagan's abilities as an
| entertainer."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
| lupusreal wrote:
| Reagan apparently hated reading and would often skip
| written briefs given to him by, for instance, the CIA.
| Then somebody got the idea to put those briefs in the
| form of a television news style video made just for
| Reagan. Some of them are on youtube now. They have the
| tone of spoonfeeding a midwit.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Trump was/is the same. At one point they tried powerpoint
| like presentations with graphics. I don't know about
| Reagan, but from my personal experience with dyslexia
| (though I love to read--and dislike videos--even as it
| takes forever), I think Trump may be dyslexic. I would
| not be surprised if Reagan were too. I only wish it was
| more public (if true). It would help eliminate the stigma
| and eliminate most of the cheap shots about how he can't
| read or spell and how his speech is "simple" (as he has
| trouble pronouncing more complex words). Things that
| those of us with dyslexia can have problems with also. *I
| did not vote for him
| snowfarthing wrote:
| Having learned in the last year that I'm autistic, and
| having learned a lot just about what that means, I cannot
| help but wonder to what degree Reagan and Trump may be
| dyslexia and not even know it.
|
| It's very easy to realize you're "different" from other
| people, but can't place your finger on it, yet manage to
| make up for the differences in odd and creative ways!
| Animats wrote:
| It's much simpler than that. Trump needs reading glasses
| but does not want to be seen wearing them.[1]
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-seen-wearing-
| glasses_n_...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| That's such a wrong take. Sunday TV was so boring because
| it was filled with panels of knowledgeable people calmly
| talking about subjects they were extremely knowledgeable
| about in calm, rational productive manners. Todays panels
| start with known battle lines already drawn populated with
| non-knowledgeable grifters.
|
| TV was also required to air a minimal amount of educational
| television for children under 16 during the day. I learn
| way more on days home sick (latchkey kid) than I'd learn at
| days in school.
| chasd00 wrote:
| IDK the over reactionary, fishing for outrage, talking
| heads were parodied in the movie Airplane back in 1980 i
| think? "They bought their tickets, they KNEW what they
| were getting in to. i say let them crash".
| prpl wrote:
| You see this a lot in strange ways these days. Rage bait,
| feigned ignorance, and things like that. It's anti-quality
| and it's just as effective (if not more) than quality
| content.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| What was the Twitter joke. 'If I want an answer to a
| programming question, I post the question, and then an
| incorrect response from a different account.' No ones
| posting to help, but a lot will post to smugly correct the
| wrong answer.
| snowfarthing wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure if smugness is the entire reason
| for doing it -- I suspect that for many of us
| (particularly autistics like me) there's a certain amount
| "But someone's wrong on the internet!" syndrome going on.
|
| Some of us just can't work up the energy to answer a
| question, but if we see something wrong, it doesn't sit
| well with us, and we have to correct it.
|
| And yes, sometimes when I see a question I _can_ answer,
| it gives me the energy to answer it ... but not always
| ...
| refulgentis wrote:
| old IRC joke
| sdwr wrote:
| This is enabled by the Internet and, weirdly enough, by the
| robustness of our social norms and legal system.
|
| It's possible to make 80% of people mad, 20% of people
| happy, and benefit from the 20% while the 80% can't do
| anything to you.
| brandall10 wrote:
| "at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence and
| depth"
|
| To be fair, while shorts is clearly designed to generate high
| virality and compete w/ TikTok, YouTube does incentivize
| longer form content. For regular videos the platform appears
| to optimize for engagement at about the 10 minute mark.
|
| Political/social discourse is complex and I believe goes
| beyond a simple soundbite problem. One could argue this began
| with 24 hour news cycles with all the time in the world, and
| news had to become entertainment to fill the space. The movie
| "Network" presaged this sensationalized this culture
| situation well before it became a thing, and certainly well
| before social media was conceptualized.
| tartoran wrote:
| > YouTube does incentivize long
|
| If they only gave you the option to remove shorts from
| results...
| lalalandland wrote:
| The creators publication frequency is also an important
| factor. If you don't put out content at least once per week
| you fall off the recommended and lose a lot of views. Once
| your content is shallow, simple and without reflection, you
| are trapped in a hamster wheel of click bait vapidness.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Is this accurate in all cases? Isn't Jenny Nicholson one of
| the bigger YouTubers, with videos coming out maybe once or
| twice a year?
| radpanda wrote:
| Seems like it might be the exception proving the rule.
| People say "every" restaurant these days needs to use
| something like Toast to provide online ordering and needs
| to play nice with DoorDash for delivery and needs to host
| ghost kitchens to increase income, etc. Of course there's
| that one old-school place with the established reputation
| that does simple dine-in only and is thriving. But the
| new upstart can't just not play the game - that privilege
| is reserved for those who have already won.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Jenny Nicholson and similar accounts rely on other
| channels than YouTube notifications. basically their
| video releases become events big enough to get minor news
| attention, chatter on discord, xitter traffic, etc.
|
| if your channel doesn't have dedicated enough fans to do
| that it's not gonna work on you. and you almost certainly
| aren't getting news coverage of your review of a star
| wars hotel, you know? Jenny is rare for that.
| gilleain wrote:
| There are a few 'long form' creators like Jenny Nicholson
| (I recommend the one about the failure of the Star Wars
| Hotel!).
|
| Contrapoints (eg the Twilight one), Big Joel's (recently
| made a 6hr one!), FoldingIdeas and so on. It's a very
| different model, and a number of these creators also make
| videos for Nebula.
| adeeshaek wrote:
| They also use patreon as a significant source of
| recurring revenue, so they can create a small number of
| high quality videos instead of putting out content
| constantly.
|
| It's a very different business model, and it doesn't have
| the potential to become as profitable as Mr Beast.
| jonlucc wrote:
| I know it's been a while, but I think Jenny Nicholson
| grew her audience with shorter content. I recall "script
| meeting" videos about a lot of movies as they came out,
| and those were shorter and more frequent. Now that she
| has a dedicated audience, she doesn't rely as much on the
| algorithm to surface her.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Well, no:
|
| On the "not even wrong" front, in the Pauli sense of the
| phrase: she's a relatively minor success, you'll find 20
| police bodycam video accounts created in the last year
| that get 10x views.
|
| There is a pattern with well-known creators that are more
| video-essay than intensifying whirlpoolers or whatever,
| where they keep YouTube productions to a handful of high-
| quality videos a year, and monetize via Patreon with less
| well-polished videos published much more frequently.
| lbotos wrote:
| You might enjoy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
| oulipo wrote:
| Exactly, intensification or acceleration, this is exactly the
| root of most issues. Since we've mastered energy (and in
| particular oil&gas), the world has been on an acceleration
| binge, which is now causing a lot of friction and overheating
| in the relationships and environment.
|
| We need to slow down and to connect back to nature
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Slowing down is not a solution since we're heading for a wall
| in some dimensions and a cliff edge on others. We need to
| find ways to drastically change course.
|
| We need to build maps and steering wheels.
| pixl97 wrote:
| And we need to convince everyone to do it, or we just end
| up in the Red Queen scenario.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Yeah, I do think that collective action problems
| summarize almost all of humanities problems though. So if
| we just found a way to efficiently make decisions as a
| collective we'd be in a much better situation.
|
| I might even suspect that solving collective action is
| the great filter that we have in front of us.
| nvarsj wrote:
| > This idea - that meaning is replaced by intensification -
| helps me understand a lot about the world today.
|
| I don't see much difference to the "old world" either. Yellow
| journalism existed in the 1800s. We just do it in a more modern
| format.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This is similar to what Vlad Vexler refers to as "being
| captured by the algorithm". That there are people on YouTube
| (and other platforms) that begin to mold themselves to fit into
| the algorithm's dictates so as to increase views and
| engagement. This means they may drift from their original
| political stance, for example, in order to please the
| algorithm. And this drift isn't always conscious - in fact it
| likely isn't conscious most of the time.
|
| If you want to be a content creator on these platforms and you
| don't want to be captured by the algorithms you have to be very
| conscious that algorithmic capture is a constant danger. You
| have to be willing to lose algorithmic points and give up
| income that you're getting from the platform if push comes to
| shove. You have to constantly be on your guard.
| griomnib wrote:
| I think this is a bit of a warped view as this is true for the
| _biggest channels_ , but the medium and long tail on YouTube
| has a lot of substance in computer science, engineering,
| geology, climate science, and much more.
|
| When I was a kid there was Mr Wizard, and then Bill Nye, but it
| was far more limited than what I watch with my kid.
|
| The land of videos with <1M views is full of gems - and many of
| the top notch science channels (eg Mark Rober), still give
| their creators a handsome income. And many of the channels,
| like Rober, do regularly crack 1M and the recommended list.
| wussboy wrote:
| I disagree. I think those things you mentioned as being in
| the long tail are just things that you like and that you
| think have value. But there's no reason in theory that the
| same radicalization process can't be happening with those
| areas as well.
|
| And if it was happening, what would it look like?
|
| I have a theory, but I don't want to give the game away yet.
| mhartz wrote:
| > The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their
| persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their
| subjective experience already takes audience reactions into
| account.
|
| Isn't this sort of one of the themes from The Prestige(2006)?
| That certain magicians were so dedicated to their craft that they
| became inseparable from it. The performance never actually
| stopped
| suyash wrote:
| Great analogy! As a performing magician and a big fan of the
| movie, I get how obsession with a craft can blur the line
| between reality and performance. But that line still exists.
| The best actors, creators, and magicians make us feel they're
| being real, even when they're not.
| HanClinto wrote:
| This is why I struggle with enjoying Andy Kaufman's content
| -- I'm never entirely sure where that line is. I respect his
| dedication to the craft, but I have a difficult time enjoying
| it -- on a meta level, it's unsettling.
| jprd wrote:
| Also, exactly his aim
| kevinsync wrote:
| Kaufman was Daniel Day Lewis-level dedicated to the
| character, but there are others, Tom Green for instance,
| who ostensibly was just as dedicated for the first arc of
| his fame and career, then loosened his grip on the persona
| with age. I often think about his trajectory compared to
| the average social media influencer -- he pioneered so many
| things and has worked in a bunch of mediums while they're
| basically imprisoned in their chosen persona, doomed to
| repeat the formula / gimmick / character day in and day out
| until the novelty wears off for everybody and they burn out
| entirely 12-24 months later. The ones with the most
| longevity seem to have been able to retain autonomy as a
| creator rather than a creation, as mentioned in the
| article, allowing them to grow and evolve rather than
| forever being a one-note wonder whose entire raison d'etre
| is eating shoe polish on camera.
| jplrssn wrote:
| Arguably also true for some (many?) tech entrepreneurs.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > they became inseparable
|
| If one spends most of their waking hours in front of camera
| producing video after video it's bound to happen subconsciously
| whether they like it or not.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| This isn't purely new, either. I'm perhaps dating myself a bit
| but I recall that over the years I have seen a few actors have
| this weird vibe where they're never "human", they always "on"
| and seem like their actor-thing has totally subsumed their
| humanity.
|
| David Cassidy and Shirley McClain come to mind for me on this.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Peter Sellers also had this problem; in his case, it was a
| problem with his personality (or lack of one) rather than
| something acting did to him.
| esafak wrote:
| Comedians seem to exhibit this trait more often than
| others. Norm Macdonald had a somewhat similar vibe.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Johnny Depp maybe?
| qskousen wrote:
| I realize I'm probably in the minority for this, but for me
| when people create a "persona" for their media, it turns me
| away. I prefer watching people who are more genuine, whose
| content is less entertainment and more just themselves, even
| if that isn't what the internet seems to be looking for.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I find it somewhere between "very uncomfortable" and
| "creepy". Even as a kid something felt very off in those
| interviews.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The people you consider "more genuine" are just cultivating
| a different persona.
|
| Don't ever believe you "know" someone you don't. Parasocial
| relationships are harmless at the low level but quickly
| become toxic.
|
| Always meet your heros so you can understand they are
| normal and flawed humans
| islanderfun wrote:
| I grew up watching The Rock. As an adult, it's hard to look
| past the persona he shows when talking about anything on any
| medium.
| kayvulpe wrote:
| A couple times that theme appears (there are more)
|
| ---
|
| https://youtu.be/uckLb_8LEGQ?t=36s
|
| ANGIER
|
| (scorn)
|
| It's misdirection- he leaves those things lying around to make
| you think he's using a double.
|
| OLIVIA
|
| All the time? He doesn't know when I'm looking
|
| ANGIER
|
| All the time, Olivia- that's who he is, that's what it takes-
| he lives his act, don't you see?!
|
| ---
|
| Also the dialogue after the fishbowl performance
| https://youtu.be/J8ZXT2HTxqE?t=34s
|
| BORDEN
|
| (points)
|
| This is the trick. This is the performance, right here. This is
| why no one can detect his method. Total devotion to his art...
| criddell wrote:
| Vonnegut also uses this in Mother Night. We
| are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we
| pretend to be.
| banannaise wrote:
| One of the problems with modern social media (and digital media
| in general) is that this is now happening, to some extent, to
| _everyone_. This is particularly a problem for children, who
| are exposed to this so early that they may never internalize
| the difference between existence and performance.
|
| Bo Burnham said it really well in an interview:
|
| "I'm saying I feel very stressed because I feel like I'm on
| stage panicking in front of thousands of people... and I feel
| like I'm trapped within a performance and I'm freaking out
| because of it. And 13-year-olds were going 'yeah yeah, I feel
| like that every day'. And I go 'what are you talking about?'
| and I realize that the stresses of a C-list comedian were
| democratized and given to an entire generation.... Social media
| has made life a performance."
|
| I'm not sure where the original interview is, but I found the
| quote at 9:43 of this analysis of _Inside_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHat1OlMPeY
| itsmorgantime wrote:
| Bo Burnham really does have a lot to say on growing up on
| YouTube and the effects of social media/always
| performing/looking for an audience. I agree with pretty much
| all of it, but the most thought provoking one to me was in
| his _Make Happy_ special right before his big ending. Him
| talking about the "Me Generation" from that special -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41hNI3YYnWk
| ericmcer wrote:
| They were dedicated to the craft though, there have been
| countless people who dedicated themselves to pushing the
| boundaries of their profession and lost their personal lives in
| the process. Losing yourself to achieve something new in math,
| art, science, etc. can be seen as a worthwhile sacrifice.
|
| Content creators feels more perverse because they are
| sacrificing themselves to making metrics go up. The act of
| creation is in service to metrics that please an algorithm so
| views go up.
|
| If the magicians didn't care about magic at all but were
| obsessed with optimizing the show around ticket sales it would
| be a shitty movie.
| patcon wrote:
| I am very skeptic of the creator economy, but to play devils
| advocate:
|
| Could it be that "craft" until now has been a high
| dimensional and abstract conceptual navigation exercise, for
| which some people had both (1) the compass of intuition and
| (2) the drive. Replacing craft with metrics means that people
| without the high dimensional intuition/compass (but with the
| drive) can still play a part in the game.
|
| So maybe this is just another example of unbundling and
| specialisation process, that is democratising access to
| renown (or whatever the wealth of "renown" is, in the sense
| of network topology)
|
| Of course, if the compass that is replaced with metrics is
| miscalibrated in the system, the end point can still be a
| very sick society (even if access to the renown in that sick
| society is more equitably distributed by some measures)
| liontwist wrote:
| And that those who most successful are able to appear magical
| because they are willing to do things so unreasonable that the
| possibility doesn't even cross your mind.
| jandrese wrote:
| It reminded me of the old Vonnegut novel "Mother Night". The
| refrain from that work was "You are what you pretend to be."
| infecto wrote:
| Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I
| genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video
| you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow
| related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining
| and really uncovered fascinating videos.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't.
|
| My experience with their algorithm between 2014 and ~2020 was
| that autoplay would quickly turn into a form of video diarrhea
| composed largely of Jordan Peterson and Lex Fridman. Was pretty
| bizarre because I only watched a few Peterson videos in the
| beginning, mostly his "Maps Of Meaning" videos which I think
| are mostly poppycock, and ever since then YouTube would quickly
| bring me back to his content even though I was never navigating
| to it organically. I had to resort to clicking "Not interested"
| and "Don't recommend channel" on several videos, which sort of
| worked, but it wasn't fool proof.
|
| These days it happens way less often, though usually that loop
| contains a lot of "gurus" in general and less of Peterson.
|
| I hope I never have to hear the voices of Jordan Peterson or
| Lex Fridman again. I'm not a fan of either one, but YouTube
| insisted I was for many years.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I think they can be paid to do that, but I'm not sure quite
| how it was arranged.
|
| That, or the Peterson pipeline is a good representation of a
| local maximum: a fairly obvious way a set of videos can
| direct people to related videos and increase the appetite for
| them. That'd produce algorithmic reinforcement without
| anybody getting paid. Apart from Youtube, content-
| agnostically hungering for being paid in views on their
| platform.
|
| It could have sent a very strong signal that 'this content
| maximally sends a statistically significant number of viewers
| down MASSIVE youtube rabbitholes never to emerge, therefore
| take the gamble and try to show everyone the content, ???,
| profit!'
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Funny, I have the opposite experience. I used to get relevant
| videos to what I was watching. If I'm watching a Phish video,
| it would recommend other Phish videos. These days, if I'm
| watching a Phish video I will literally, as in literally
| literally, get a Candace Owens video recommendation. I have
| literally never clicked on one of her videos ever. I don't
| watch political content on youtube at all, and if I did I am
| very left leaning. I can't fathom what has made the algorithm
| so terrible that if you're watching 90s Phish videos it
| recommends right-wing talking heads.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's so weird and obvious that shenanigans are going on in
| the recommendation algorithm. I'll watch a Video Game
| Streamer, and in the sidebar, the top ten recommended
| related videos are:
|
| - Same streamer, different video
|
| - Different streamer
|
| - Far right pundit blasts immigration
|
| - Video game streamer
|
| - Video game streamer
|
| - Video game review
|
| - Same streamer, similar content
|
| - Ben Shapiro OWNS Liberals with FACTS
|
| - Video game streamer
|
| - Video game streamer
|
| I've never watched one of these blowhards in my life, but
| man, YouTube thinks I'd love it. Because I watch video
| games? Is this the gamer-to-alt-right pipeline I keep
| reading about?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There is massive overlap between those who watch video
| game streamers and those who watch the right wing rage
| content. Youtube is recommending you the videos those
| other people who watch video game streams watched next.
| jamincan wrote:
| Aren't a lot of video game streamers basically alt-right
| rage streamers now too?
| zten wrote:
| There are a lot of video game players who are tooting the
| "DEI is ruining games" horn, with streamers amplifying
| this message. You could agree with that thesis without
| being conservative but even researching it will pull your
| YouTube recommendations in that direction; it seems to
| align well with conservative values.
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| This was at the center of controversy many years ago,
| described as a sort of alt-right pipeline. I believe there
| are studies about that exact algorithm behavior on youtube.
| My understanding is that it was changed to loop back around
| to trusted content sooner.
| nimajneb wrote:
| I miss YouTube where you could just browse topics, like right
| around when Google bought it is when I liked it the most I
| think. I much preferred categories/topics based UI over this
| spoon fed algorithm. I think there's also a sweet spot in
| production value that I prefer. I like Technology Connection,
| Adrians Basement, Cathode Ray Tube Guy (name?), etc level of
| production much more than LTTs high production value.
| x187463 wrote:
| I obviously don't know your personal experience, but your
| description is still how YouTube works for me. For example,
| over the holidays I would occasionally put on a video from a
| channel that plays holiday music with various videos of this
| guy's model train setup in the background. I immediately
| started receiving model train videos, which, of course, I had
| to click on and now I know a little bit about trains and
| building realistic environment models.
|
| That being said, occasionally I do have to go into my Google
| data and clear/clean the watch history to reorient my
| recommendations.
| infecto wrote:
| I don't think thats the case. Don't confuse homepage
| recommendations with end of video queue recommendations. It
| used to be end of video recommendations were heavily weighted
| on the current video or chain of videos you just watched.
| Essentially you could keep going to the next video and go
| down a weird hole of obscure videos. Now the algorithm will
| quickly circle you back to your profile homepage of videos as
| opposed to the video you just watched.
| x187463 wrote:
| Oh, I see. I suppose I do recognize more of the 'general
| recommendations' in the post-video grid rather than basing
| those solely on the video itself. That being said, I don't
| use that mechanism generally and tend to rely on the
| homepage-refresh and side bar to discover additional
| videos.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Agreed. This is still how YouTube still works for me. It's
| great.
|
| > That being said, occasionally I do have to go into my
| Google data and clear/clean the watch history to reorient my
| recommendations.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? What effect does this produce for
| your specifically?
| x187463 wrote:
| If I find I am receiving recommendations in which I am
| uninterested and are clearly based on a handful of videos I
| watched previously, I can clear those from the history and
| the algorithm doesn't use them for future recommendations.
| The simplest example would be watching videos for a one-
| time use case such as repairing a specific home issue. I
| definitely don't need more recommendations to fix
| that/related issues, but YouTube is likely to spend a
| little time sending them my way. I can fix that quickly by
| removing the original videos from my history.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| personally I just open up these videos in private mode
| 98codes wrote:
| Same, and now I've spent the last two weeks trying to
| convince YouTube that I don't need several different videos
| of Christmas music playing over a fireplace.
|
| Feels a whole lot like the dumb emails I get from places like
| Home Depot, where because I bought a table saw they feel I
| should know about all these other table saws they have.
| hn8726 wrote:
| I have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it
| latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is
| exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark
| videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see
| exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not
| interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months
| sometimes.
|
| I'm sure there's plenty of interesting content about topics I
| haven't searched for, but YouTube seems intent on not letting
| me out of whatever bubble it thought out for me.
| mavhc wrote:
| Don't use the homepage, use the subscriptions page
| cheschire wrote:
| When you turn off search history, it makes the homepage
| useless and the subscriptions page becomes unavoidably the
| next step.
|
| Discovery of content happens in the sidebar from videos I
| enjoy now, and only when I'm in the mood to discover
| something.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| While I do agree it has a very strong focus on suggesting
| more of what you've recently watched, I feel it's also
| managing to suggest new and interesting unrelated stuff from
| time to time.
|
| Some habits I have is to subscribe to channels which I truly
| enjoy, instead of marking as "not interested" I select "do
| not suggest channel", and be cautious of click-bait titles.
| If I get lured in, I remove them from my history.
|
| So for me it's mostly great, though I get your frustration as
| well. For example I recently watched a couple of informative
| videos on the LA fires as I have some relatives living in the
| area, and suddenly my feed is tons of that and little else.
| hbn wrote:
| I've found sometime in the last year or so YouTube has been
| suggesting random videos from very small channels much
| more, which I like a lot. Most of the videos are garbage,
| but every once in a while I'll find a gem that entertains
| me and my friends.
|
| Recently I found a video of a young kid doing a taste test
| of a sour soda, and then demanding his dad come over from
| the other room to try it too. At one point the kid does a
| really loud burp that I found funny. Obviously not
| something that will do numbers, but it satisfies my people-
| watching itch.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| While I cherish other kinds of videos, I too have noticed
| smaller creators getting recommended, and few large ones.
| Perhaps because most of the channels I subscribe to are
| smaller channels?
| jonasced wrote:
| I too liked to prime my own algorithm but Yanis Varoufakis
| book Technofeudalism kind of ruined it for me. On a
| individual level it's nice to get good recommendations, but
| on a societal level I think it's starting to get a bit
| scary to the point of me wanting to opt out and instead
| curate my own feeds based on first hand sources.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Yeah I get your point, though I almost exclusively use
| YouTube as an alternative to TV entertainment. That is,
| rather than watching Mythbusters, I'm watching
| Numberphile, FarmCraft101 and such.
|
| I specifically do not normally view "pure" news or
| similar. I might make the rare exception, like in case of
| the LA fire where I saw a clip from PBS. That is a very
| conscious choice, for reasons similar to what you
| express.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| I think what you describe is what infecto was saying. You
| can't use YouTube to find interesting content anymore. You
| can only use it to find more of what you've already seen. In
| the past, it was better at unearthing new things.
|
| Personally, I added uBlock filters so the home page is empty
| and recommended videos aren't shown. I only ever go to
| subscriptions now.
| OJFord wrote:
| > I added uBlock filters so the home page is empty and
| recommended videos aren't shown. I only ever go to
| subscriptions now.
|
| There's a setting to turn it off, no need for uBlock
| filters for that
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| It's the hammer I have and it works on those nails, hah.
| OJFord wrote:
| Fair enough, just FYI. I couldn't be bothered to set that
| up on mobile personally; nice thing about the account
| setting is it will apply everywhere then (assuming logged
| in).
| gobeavs wrote:
| What setting is this? I'd love to disable the home page
| but I haven't seen any setting for it
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Turn off your watch history.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725
| rendaw wrote:
| It doesn't even show me more of what I've already seen,
| half the sidebar is videos I've already watched (or watched
| halfway before dropping, with a helpful indicator of my
| lack of progress). Like, "we see you like video X, why
| don't you watch video X today?" Thanks, I already have
| bookmarks.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Similarly, I use Unhook because it gives me fine control
| over what YT displays. I now find YT to be completely
| unusable without it.
| kccoder wrote:
| I made the mistake of clicking on a Jordan Peterson video
| several years back. I'd never heard of him before and the
| title seemed interesting, so I clicked. 15 seconds in my
| charlatan detector went off, so I exited the video. For the
| next couple weeks I was playing wack-a-mole with a never-
| ending supply of manoshpere and right wing nonsense. Easy to
| see how so many people get sucked into sphere of influence.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of
| mine,
|
| Its worse than that. I thought that Youtube worked as you
| described, trying to find videos suited to your interests but
| it actually works the other way around.
|
| Youtube has a series of rabbit holes that it knows maximise
| engagement, so its trying to filter you the human down one of
| those rabbit holes. Do you fit the mr beast ssniperwolf hole,
| or the jordan peterson joe rogan rabbit hole? Howabout 3 hour
| video essay rabbit hole, is that one your shape?
|
| Its designing paths for engagment and filtering humans down
| not filtering videos for humans, its perverse and awful and
| it explains why the algorithm simply does not work for
| humans, because you are not the target audience, you are the
| data being sorted.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| I've come accustomed to deleting cookies on browser close.
| The first ~10 or so YouTube page requests, the sidebar of
| recommended videos is pretty good. After that, as you said,
| it gets way too muddled. I think a good plugin for YouTube
| would be to always delete cookies before opening a video so
| that you're getting as close to a pure vanilla recommended
| feed as possible.
| timewizard wrote:
| You have to block entire channels. I've blocked all the major
| news networks, all the major content farms, and all the major
| "garbage" snack size content channels. There's hundreds of
| blocked channels on my account.
|
| It's _almost_ like the old youtube.
| 65 wrote:
| Usually the better content is down the page a bit on the
| YouTube home page. I use this CSS snippet to hide the first
| 12 videos from my home page. [page-
| subtype="home"] #contents > ytd-rich-item-renderer:nth-
| child(-n + 12) { display: none; }
| matsemann wrote:
| I don't miss watching a video about a dog herding sheep, and
| then getting nothing but dog herding sheep videos the next
| week, heh. But I also don't like the new algorithm, it is as if
| youtube has assigned me to a demographics and really wants me
| to watch what other techy males around 30 y.o. watch,
| constantly trying to give me some rage political content to
| test the waters.
| infecto wrote:
| What I am describing is not the home page recommendations but
| the hole you would go down on post video recommendations,
| essentially the queue that Youtube would create for you had
| for a long time a heavier weighting on the current video you
| were watching. The simple example being you watch the dog
| herding sheep, then you the next video was about sheep, then
| you got to some video from a different country with sheep in
| it, then finally you ended up with some person who pretended
| to be a sheep. Purely making that example up but it often
| even in weird obscure videos quite quickly.
| okdood64 wrote:
| This is exactly how YouTube still works for me... I'm still
| finding new interesting content and creators everyday.
|
| Do you subscribe to creators you enjoy, and like their videos?
| You still need to feed the algorithm.
| jandrese wrote:
| I hope it doesn't happen anymore, but it used to be a game to
| clear your history and go to a fresh Youtube page and keep
| clicking on the top video in the suggestion list until you hit
| UFOs, Flat Earth, Climate Change denial, Lizard People,
| Chemtrails, or some other crackpot video. It was shocking just
| how fast the algorithm would gravitate towards that content,
| sometimes after just a couple of videos. I have a theory that
| the YouTube algorithm is partially to blame for the explosion
| in conspiratorial thinking on the modern Internet.
| apricot13 wrote:
| I tend to agree with you there, admittedly there was a skill in
| not being accidentally radicalised but you watch one 'lo-fi'
| video and accidentally fall asleep to four more and that's all
| YouTube shows me now!
| satisfice wrote:
| Interesting experience to read an essay of such insight regarding
| a subject that is the opposite of insight.
|
| Best thing I've read this week. I am happy to say I have never
| seen a Mr. Beast video, and now I will be sure never to see one
| in the future.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| There's not much you're missing. His videos try to appeal to
| the lowest common denominator and are relatively vapid. Sort of
| like the junk food of YouTube.
| drawkward wrote:
| In analogy with the article: what is the junk food
| experience, but the craving for more junk food? It is
| literally engineered to make us want more.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| "YouTubers" are one of those things that a lot of people are
| interested in, yet everything I learn about them makes me not
| want to start.
|
| The world has so much good film, music, novels, even video
| games and TV - in a choice between any of those and watching a
| YouTuber, why would anyone choose the latter?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I mean, there certainly is a genre of "YouTuber", but there's
| lots of quality content. I just enjoyed a little 20 minute
| history of the Panasonic 3DO console that I managed to never
| hear about before.
| OJFord wrote:
| The 'Youtubers' I watch are those that do things that are
| also my hobbies or interests, for
| education/demonstration/inspiration.
|
| Woodworking, machining, 3D printing, electronics, that sort
| of thing. A modern alternative to magazines basically, or to
| regional/cable/'public access' (I don't really know how it
| works, not sure if we ever had that sort of thing here) TV
| shows like the fictional 'Tool Time' show within the sitcom
| _Home Improvement_ if you ever saw that.
|
| I got started via 'how to do x' for a couple of DIY things,
| realised there's _so much_ stuff like that, started watching
| for fun /interest (vs. actually having the job to do myself)
| and from there the more 'maker' (hate the term) side of doing
| it for a hobby to create a thing rather than household
| DIY/repair.
| ajkjk wrote:
| By never seeing one you are sure to insulate yourself from...
| something? guilt by association? Makes no sense. See one or
| don't, it has no moral meaning.
| mrkramer wrote:
| So formula for success on YouTube is to be constantly making
| crazy and then even more crazier videos and hope they become
| viral so more people discover you?
|
| I knew that even 15 years ago when I was watching crazy pranks
| pulled by French YouTuber Remi Gaillard[0]....he was so popular
| back in the day on YouTube.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Gaillard
| Applejinx wrote:
| The formula for success is more basic than that.
|
| Make people watch more YouTube.
|
| Crazy videos might become passe or burn people out, at which
| point the 'formula' will change, but the underlying reality is
| the same. It's a paperclip maximizer. To succeed at YouTube
| make people watch more YouTube.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >To succeed at YouTube make people watch more YouTube.
|
| Yea but how do you do that? By making more compelling content
| than competitors. That's the basic formula.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| What he's trying to say, is that compelling content is not
| necessarily what you think it is.
|
| There's whole subcultures of people doing unboxing videos.
| People framing existing videos as "unintentional ASMR"
| (https://www.youtube.com/c/PureUnintentionalASMR)
|
| The point is : it doesn't matter what you upload. As long
| as it allows Google to show ads to people.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It is indeed a fascinating topic, and it's completely changed
| content (for the worse, in my opinion) in the last ten years. I
| always wonder though, does the dead-eyed creepy smile factor into
| his metrics analysis? it must, or he wouldn't do it. something
| has always felt a little "off" about that guy, but if your entire
| adult waking life is devoted to the whims of the massive YT
| content space, I guess you'd probably seem a little kooky.
| yifanl wrote:
| It does at the moment. At some point in the future, it might
| not rank, at which point he and anyone else devoted to the rat
| race will get their teams to replace their thumbnails with
| whatever new thing gets more clicks.
| grahamj wrote:
| Please god let it be something other than faux surprise and
| arrows
| grahamj wrote:
| If there's no border between him and the Apparatus then his is
| literally the face of the Apparatus.
| alecco wrote:
| Watching YouTube anonymously with different browsers and cycling
| VPNs frequently, I see it quickly ends up suggesting the same
| videos during the same week. Not similar videos but the same
| ones. Many of those videos are below 1M and not particularly
| notable. This is after only watching a couple of videos and those
| videos are different every session. Either it has some magic
| fingerprinting I am not aware of (and I go to lengths to avoid
| this) or it quickly puts me in a bin of generic results.
|
| It feels like the YouTube algorithm is either way more manual
| than we think or it has rules that end up showing the same
| things. Or both. Or something more sinister.
|
| I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy
| clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to hook
| me up on those. Even after clicking around very different videos
| (infosec, low level code, workshop). It's like it refuses to
| learn what I want to watch.
|
| When watching with my account on YouTube mobile app it keeps
| trying to push dumber content. I wasted years giving it feedback
| with "not interested" and "Don't recommend channel". It only
| keeps pushing videos of channels I liked 1 video 1 time long ago.
| If I like a DefCon video the algo will pester me with garbage
| shock content for infosec.
|
| Recently, I liked a cppcon wait free programming presentation and
| then YouTube started pestering me (again) with the Indian
| programming 101 videos with terrible sound and rushed video. I
| had to give it like 10 "not interested" / "Don't recommend
| channel" for it to stop.
|
| Ironicaly, about a year ago, I started watching a really good ML
| channel by an Indian guy with great animations an in-depth
| explanations. Top level. And YouTube rarely suggested his
| content. I had to go to his channel to look for things or search
| the channel name and some keywords. It feels like YouTube
| punishes sophisticated content.
|
| I think there is no true algorithm. Or that it has rules to never
| suggest me the content I actually want to watch.
|
| And don't get me started with YouTube search.
|
| Sadly most of the content I want to watch is hidden deeply in the
| garbage pile of YouTube.
| derektank wrote:
| I find that going into your history and removing offending
| videos that seem to be driving the algorithm is more effective
| than using the "not interested" option on newly recommended
| videos
| alecco wrote:
| Yes. Forgot about it. I keep the history clean, too. But it's
| only fractionally better.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _I 've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in
| skimpy clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying
| to hook me up on those._
|
| There was another post on HN recently about "multi-armed
| bandit" problems and an algorithm which occasionally retries
| previously nonperforming choices on purpose to "test" if their
| performance has changed.
|
| I wonder if YouTube's algorithm works similarly, i.e.
| occasionally suggesting a video that has nothing to do with
| your preferences, to see if it can hook you.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| This seems logical to me, there have been times when I wanted
| to hop off a deep dive after watching enough and wanted to
| move to something else. But I was probably immune to
| suggestion before getting to that point.
|
| That satisfaction threshold is probably understood for
| someone like me who doesn't browse anonymously
| CYR1X wrote:
| > I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy
| clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to
| hook me up on those. Even after clicking around very different
| videos (infosec, low level code, workshop). It's like it
| refuses to learn what I want to watch.
|
| This has made me realize that YouTube is like the leading
| platform for piracy and porn. If you have any interest in
| sports the frontpage will be littered with pirated livestreams
| from channels like ESPN, and while they may not be explicitly
| pornography, the skimpy girl content is basically that.
| roland35 wrote:
| It's interesting how this is happening in software engineering
| YouTube content as well. It seems like things like "go sucks rust
| is great! Now rust sucks and zig is great!!" get way more views
| since it is basically clickbait for nerds.
|
| It's too bad that nuanced discussion doesn't do too well on
| social media.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| It also reminds me how the most upvoted comments on Reddit
| often reflect the consensus opinion but not necessarily the
| truth.
| okdood64 wrote:
| This is a great line, thanks.
| OJFord wrote:
| How could a voting system _anywhere_ be expected to represent
| truth rather than consensus?
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| It probably depends if the audience is intelligent and
| open-minded, but I agree, it will always be biased towards
| their preconceptions.
| OJFord wrote:
| Even then that's consensus on what the participants
| _believe_ to be true (whether it 's what they believed
| beforehand or not) - not a method of determining what is
| actually true.
| 65 wrote:
| Also, almost always highly emotional if you're on a popular
| subreddit's post.
|
| I picked a random post on the home page, this one for
| example:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/clevercomebacks/comments/1i1b4tn/i_.
| ..
|
| The comments are all
|
| "The oligarchs would never go for it."
|
| or "It's a cult." and on and on.
|
| I think this is particularly true in rage bait posts on
| Reddit, which is most of the home page these days.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I noticed this as well and it's been the first real moment
| where I feel "old" as a dev.
|
| I should acknowledge that our industry has always had some form
| of this - but it was contained predominantly to mailing
| lists/forums/blogs and eventually Twitter. It felt like all of
| these mediums (yes, even Twitter) required some form of proof
| that you're an authority or experienced on what you're writing
| about. I don't feel like that's what's happening with
| YouTube/Twitch here; these creators may very well be
| skilled/experienced/authorities (and I am explicitly not saying
| they are or aren't) but I don't see anywhere near the level of
| healthy skepticism that I feel like we've always had in our
| industry.
|
| Maybe it's a generational divide as the window of developers
| shifts. Maybe it's just the sheer size of the distribution
| channels now. I'm open to being wrong.
|
| tl;dr: Something about these mediums turbo charges the
| information in a way that I'm not sure is healthy.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| Nuanced discussion can only happen in good faith. It's
| impossible to enforce that so to prevent being turned in to
| 4chan, social media turns to the most obvious proxy- likes
| upvote etc.
|
| The logic underpinning this is that if a person is a jerk they
| will be downvoted- therefore there is an incentive to not be a
| jerk.
|
| However, because the person on the other side is anonymous and
| therefore people can't instinctively presume good faith,
| upvoting system turn in to a voting system - the goal is not to
| develop ideas, but to submit ones people will most agree with.
| When the main danger is apathy, there is no reason from self-
| moderation. Nerds are not immune.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| The incentives with YouTube just seem bad. Whenever I research
| a product (recent examples: Garmin Watches, DJI drones) I'll
| find a few great videos with informative and useful content. I
| hope those channels are doing well! But then my YouTube
| recommendations related to those will have titles/thumbnails
| with things like "don't buy until you WATCH this" or "I was
| wrong!".
| kccoder wrote:
| I've similar trends here in regards to new languages,
| technologies, ... People love to bandwagon.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| The more I learn about successful people, the more I realize that
| being an office drone with a satisfactory salary is where I want
| to stay.
| criddell wrote:
| You don't think of yourself as being successful? Do you think
| of success mostly in terms of what your job is?
| queuebert wrote:
| You should watch Severance.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > in cybernetic terms, a long lag time in production is deadly.
|
| Does "long lag time" or "deadly" mean something else in
| cybernetic terms than in regular terms? I found the "in
| cybernetics terms" insert quite puzzling.
| Tryk wrote:
| An interpretation that made sense is "cybernetics" as the
| ancient Greek word for the one who steers the ship.
| drawkward wrote:
| Cybernetics has a lot (everything?) to do with feedback loops;
| the word itself comes from the Greek for "steersman". If you
| have a long feedback loop in a process that is supposed to self
| govern, it would be potentially deadly to the equilibrium.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Also the etymology of kubernetes
| cyost wrote:
| Similarly, in a positive feedback loop (as in the article), a
| long lag time would decrease its growth rate.
| criddell wrote:
| I googled for a _cybernetics_ definition and this came back:
|
| > Cybernetics is the scientific study and mathematical modeling
| of regulation and control in systems, focusing on the flow of
| information and how it is used by the system to control itself.
|
| So maybe a long lag time is deadly because they lose control of
| the system? That doesn't really make sense to me either though
| because what control do they have in the first place? The
| author says as much when they call it an _ever-shifting
| target_.
| Xmd5a wrote:
| In control theory, this is called dead-time:
|
| >Dead time is the delay from when a controller output (CO)
| signal is issued until when the measured process variable (PV)
| first begins to respond.
|
| https://controlguru.com/dead-time-is-the-how-much-delay-vari...
| hartator wrote:
| > and I confess that I feel vindicated by the analytic approach
| in the book
|
| I feel the opposite, everything seems reasonable, business-
| centric, and marketing-aware strategies.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Isn't that the point? By purely focussing on business-centric
| strategies, the videos no longer have meaning.
| senko wrote:
| This presumes that MrBeast intended to create "videos with
| meaning" in the first place.
|
| In his defense (!?), most of what's churned out by the
| streaming platforms, hollywood, and the music industry, is
| also not very bothered by lack of meaning.
| n4r9 wrote:
| There's no such assumption being made. If anything, the
| linked article is about how MrBeast is intentionally making
| vapid slop.
| lanternfish wrote:
| This seems an insufficient analysis. The meaning expressed
| by contemporary music, film media, or streaming television
| isn't very profound, but they at least still make a passing
| effort to "signify" something. The highest grossing movie
| of 2024 - Inside Out 2 - is not a deep text, but it does
| have a thesis.
|
| The "Pixar apparatus" is definitely increasingly consumed
| by audience demand, but they're at a minimum in a
| transitional phase: something like Seeing Red would never
| get workshopped out of committees.
|
| Youtube and other social media (emphasis on media) is
| ground zero for the decay of meaning into intensity; the
| ultimate incestuous product of auto-simulacra.
| senko wrote:
| I heard a term for a specific version of this that I'm
| (mis)applying in all such cases: brainrot.
| liontwist wrote:
| Yeah, what major piece of film of the last 20 years isn't a
| carefully crafted business plan?
|
| I think YouTube was so exciting initially because it was so
| authentic, and now it's back to big studios.
| Velofellow wrote:
| Megalopolis. I didn't love everything about the movie, but
| it did come across to me as completely divorced from art
| created to benefit commerce. I loved that about it...
|
| You could argue the movie being made outside of the
| traditional studio system is case and point of this
| phenomenon.
| hartator wrote:
| > This beauty is an ever-shifting target. The platform
| architecture and viewer preferences can change overnight; in
| cybernetic terms, a long lag time in production is deadly.
| MrBeast needs to be able to adapt to trends, vindicating my
| audience-driven framework for understanding YouTube.
|
| That's actually not true. MrBest is saying the opposite in the
| leaked PDF, that fundamentals don't change much since he started.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The "fundamentals" don't change (ie, lighting, pacing) but
| trending topics are constantly shifting. The stuff he's doing
| today may not be popular in a month so being able to quickly
| put out a new video for the current trend is what he's
| optimized for.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| I'm interested in how many people here on HN watch Mr Beast -
| I've never watched any of his videos ever, and I spend far too
| much time on YT.
| cvoss wrote:
| I don't, on principle.
|
| A few years ago, if you opened up YouTube without being logged
| in, the algorithm would show you its default recommendations in
| the purest state, uninfluenced by your proclivities. MrBeast
| and similar dumpster clickbait videos were prominently
| featured. These days, I think you have to at least search for
| and watch some things before you are told what to watch.
|
| If MrBeast has ever shown up on my YT front page in the past, I
| slapped YT's hand until it stopped. Haven't had a problem
| since.
| OJFord wrote:
| I'd never even heard of him/it until a previous submission here
| (and I also watch a lot). Still hadn't heard of any of the
| other apparently big ones mentioned in another thread.
|
| I assume _most_ of us aren 't using YouTube for that kind of
| doom-scrolling click bait scream face 'content' about nothing
| in particular, but I could be wrong.
| ajkjk wrote:
| It's a younger-people thing primarily.
| tim333 wrote:
| I've watched like three. They are quite entertaining but tend
| to follow a similar formula.
| thedman9052 wrote:
| I watched one of his videos and quit pretty early because it
| was boring. Thinking back on what I remember, it seems very
| weird.
|
| It was the one where he "gave away" a chocolate factory, after
| he did the Willy Wonka thing with his chocolate bars where you
| could win a chance to be on the show. I clicked because I was
| curious what he was actually "giving away", if it was actual
| chocolate factory property, shares in his snack brand, or some
| disused industrial building. They had a "candy room" with
| plants supposedly made of real sweets but it looked like a
| cheap imitation of the Willy Wonka movie, the walls were mostly
| white and it seemed like it could have used more set dressing.
| The actual content was a game show (seems to be a lot of his
| videos) but it didn't make good use of the space they built, I
| think it was a basic scavenger hunt. Then the contestants had
| to throw a giant Mento into a giant Coke bottle, it was
| impressively large but the game wasn't exciting at all, they
| just threw the disc at the bottle over and over without any
| drama. MrBeast even said something like "we're going to be here
| a while" so he started their ad read, that's when I turned it
| off.
|
| Unlike a TV game show or reality show the contestants had no
| characterization, they didn't play up any rivalries or
| reactions or drama. It seemed like they were there doing the
| most basic challenges so MrBeast could talk about what they
| made and give away something expensive at the end. I found it
| all very odd and it reinforced that I am very far from the
| median viewer since I found none of it interesting.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| What I feel gets missed in these kinds of discussions are that
| YouTube is a thousand things to a thousand people. I probably
| have it running more than any other streaming service, but I
| almost exclusively watch music videos and skateboarding videos,
| and there is nothing obviously algorithmically driven about
| their production. They're not made _for_ YouTube at all.
| YouTube just happens to be one of many distribution channels
| they end up available on, but the basic style and production
| methods of these videos hasn 't changed a whole lot since the
| late 1980s. I'd have never heard of Mr. Beast if not for
| HackerNews talking about him all the time.
|
| My wife is probably closer to a YouTube-native watcher, in the
| sense that what she's watching is created for YouTube
| specifically, but even then, it's informational deep-dives,
| lately on liminal spaces lore, Twin Peaks fan theories, and 3d
| printing. She raved glowingly lately about a 4-hour long Twin
| Peaks explainer. I'm sure that is many things, but it isn't
| flashy, short, there is no skimpy clothing, bright colors, or
| whatever it is that YouTube is supposed to be incentivizing.
| Whoever made it almost certainly made no money off of the
| effort and dumped decades of his life into the study of what
| ultimately came out there, and nobody is watching it because of
| the algorithm or a clickbaity thumbnail. The only people
| watching something like that are the most serious of serious
| nerds who deeply love Twin Peaks and probably have for most of
| a lifetime.
| queuebert wrote:
| I have never watched one, but I consume a lot of YouTube
| content. My teenager calls MrBeast-type channels "brain rot".
| He says teenagers watch YouTube when they want to make time
| disappear. (I guess they are uncomfortable being bored.) I find
| it sad because YouTube is actually a great source of
| educational content.
| nemesis1637 wrote:
| I watch it all of the time but only because of my daughter. I
| definitely wouldn't watch them on my own but it's tolerable.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I've watched a few of his videos, they're pretty good.
| dsego wrote:
| Never watched any and don't have a desire to.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I watched many of his videos. They're pretty good. I dont
| understand the complaints of click bait. One of the main
| reasons why he works so well is he makes outlandish premises
| that seem like clickbait, and then delivers. If he claims they
| will blow a house up, they literally will pack it with
| explosives and blow it up. If he says he will show a million
| dollar hotel room, thats what I'll see in the video. Throw a
| lambo into a crusher? Its going in for real.
|
| It's not even like he draws it out. Like lets say its time to
| blow something up as a finale: we see 2-3 shots of them
| waiting, we see it explode in 3 angles we get 2-3 reactions and
| boom video is probably over.
| physicles wrote:
| Nope, on principle. I've tried to make YouTube as "healthy" as
| possible -- disable shorts, disable watch history, only watch
| subscribed channels -- and I'm still not convinced it's a net
| positive in my life.
|
| The trick is finding something else to replace it during that
| time at the end of the day when I don't feel like I have the
| mental energy for anything else.
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| His view counts seem cooked to me. I would be interested to see
| what countries his viewers are claiming to be from. This article
| even reads as a guerilla upsell that his numbers are legitimate.
|
| Surely the urge to cheat is unbearable with millions of dollars
| on the hook. (Alot of apps on the app stores also claim to have
| quarter million 5 star reviews. Uhhuh)
| kube-system wrote:
| His viewers skew younger. Kids have a lot of time on their
| hands. Given how ubiquitously well-known he is among younger
| people, I doubt there's much fraud necessary.
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| I agree the kids will take it at face value all the more
| reason to not tolerate massive deception. What if his
| teaching them fraudulent representation pays. All pro
| athletes cheat a little bit at the highest levels but
| exceptional cheating is never tolerated.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't understand what you're saying. Kids don't watch the
| channel because it has a high number of views. And what
| "massive deception" are you referring to?
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| You are using deflection here (deceitful). Without a list
| of all viewer ip's it's hard to identify where his click
| contractor is. Just knowing what countries his viewers
| are from would be sufficient.
| spiderice wrote:
| What evidence do you have of him cheating other than your
| feelings?
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| Go read "Spy the lie". Accumulation of discrepancies (His
| viewers don't watch other similar content?) indicates
| deceitful behavior.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Breathless navel gazing. It's not that he's wrong, it's just that
| this article adds nothing new to the conversation other than
| excessively technical mumbo jumbo. Just read MrBeast's original
| document.
| lanternfish wrote:
| The actual work underlying the essay - the one published in
| Cambridge Core - is pretty strong and has a lot of pretty
| compelling analysis. It's just long.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I disagree that it's strong, I got up to section five and
| it's written in the same "I am very smart and this is very
| important" style while saying very little of substance and
| bouncing around like a rabbit on speed.
|
| The central thesis that demand creates supply is also just
| very obviously false, no one was searching for "100 identical
| twins fight for $250k" before Mr beast made that video.
| People watch Mr beast because they want 20 minutes of
| whimsical predictably mind numbing colorful emotional fast
| paced distraction and Mr beast fills that need perfectly with
| videos of all kinds. He transports viewers to a fantasy land
| far beyond their real world, where boredom doesn't exist and
| crazy things are possible. No one knew they wanted an iPod
| until Steve jobs showed it to them; they just wanted a better
| CD player. Same thing with YouTube; people just show up and
| click on something the algorithm puts in their way, there
| isn't a demand for anything really. No one knew they wanted a
| Mr beast. The consumer demand is some combination of
| distraction, entertainment, or education, it's not much
| deeper than that.
| queuebert wrote:
| Ironically I think one huge contribution that YouTube has made
| for the good is elevating the quality of STEM didactics.
| Channels like 3blue1brown and Veritasium have shown what STEM
| instruction could look like when not relegated to tenured
| professors who DGAF about teaching.
| coopykins wrote:
| Really liked this sentence:
|
| "YouTubers are not "Creators" but Creations. Audiences,
| rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who upload the
| videos those audiences consume are not separable either
| theoretically or empirically."
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| I ran a YouTube channel seriously for a couple of years. Chasing
| the whims of the algorithm contributed to burnout and now I only
| release one or two videos a year.
|
| My reason for starting a channel was to have a discussion around
| some of the projects I was working on that I found interesting.
| This never materialized. I never had a ton of engagement, but if
| I did most questions asked by viewers that are answered in the
| video.
|
| I monetized my videos and started making beer-money amounts of
| revenue. I put more and more time into them but never gained
| traction. I had a few "evergreen" videos that would make maybe a
| thousand bucks a year, the rest of the videos hardly got any
| views at all.
|
| Eventually, I found myself making videos to feed the algorithm
| not because it was a project that I wanted to do. This is where I
| had to stop. I realized that I just don't like editing videos.
|
| My channel makes no revenue now because YouTube requires an
| upload schedule and shorts. Mr Beast's job sounds awful to me.
| The videos I make now only get dozens to hundreds of views when
| they're published. I mostly share them with friends and in online
| communities where the info contained might be helpful.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Thank you for your story. I have been running a low traffic
| blog for decades now and there was a time when I craved
| engagement. I never put too much effort in but I did change the
| things I wrote about to try to get noticed, a strategy that was
| unmarred by success.
|
| The creators that find success need to pump out content at a
| ridiculous rate. It is a faustian bargain that sucks in a lot
| of people.
| coliveira wrote:
| These people are essentially competing against an algorithm,
| not against other humans. I consider this to be an extremely
| distasteful endeavor.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| There's a lot of drama around the MrBeast YouTube channel lately
| --some of it justified, a lot of it manufactured...
|
| I think the main thing is Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) has stated
| numerous times his goal in life (at least publicly) is to make
| the best YouTube videos possible. Realistically, a lot of the
| things that feed into drama are related to that goal: overwork,
| inadequate planning. They take 'move fast and break things' to
| the extreme to make the videos they make, and unfortunately the
| 'things' they break are often people.
|
| The tough thing is, at least until recently, it seemed like
| MrBeast and the 'Beastification' of YouTube (where all content is
| loud, shouty, super-quick cuts) was inevitable. And in many
| corners (especially kids-centric content) it kind-of is. But
| luckily I think some people have pulled back. I feel like we're
| currently in kind of the anti-thesis of the '2001 Space Odyssey'
| era of entertainment. Instead of long, thoughtful content for
| consumption, it's fast-paced, zero-thought content with splashy
| colors.
| cedws wrote:
| I think MrBeast and other high end influencers like the Paul
| brothers are harmful to children. Kids see them flaunting their
| huge wealth and abandon all their other ambitions in favour of
| wanting to become a YouTuber. Which, now, is a very competitive
| platform few succeed on. Kids should be nudged towards working
| fruitful careers beneficial to society.
|
| Although MrBeast has done some good things with it, I find the
| way he flaunts his wealth perverse.
| munchler wrote:
| > Kids should be nudged towards working fruitful careers
| beneficial to society.
|
| It's all about incentives. I think we should nudge society
| towards rewarding kids who choose fruitful careers.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Yes, that too, but it might not help kids whose main
| perception/exposure of "society" is MrBeast et al. Kids can
| be quite oblivious to how "society" works in practice and
| what will be rewarded.
| ndileas wrote:
| Franz Liszt is a Menace to Society and all those whose consider
| themselves Decent, Hardworking, Folk should warn their Children
| aginst[sic] him. Composition is of course a Good, but the
| competition is too steep, and if the Young seek to imitate the
| likes of him it will end in Tears. The Young should be guided,
| steered into more reliable, beneficial aspirations.
| andrewla wrote:
| In general I'm in agreement that they present a life where
| being an "influencer" is a goal in and of itself, but I think
| it's mostly harmless, like kids wanting to be a rock star or a
| professional athlete. These are unobtainable for most people
| but learning some music or sports or video production isn't a
| bad idea for anyone because you don't know where it will lead.
|
| The specific criticism of "flaunting their huge wealth" does
| not apply at least to MrBeast -- he specifically is not very
| wealthy (I mean, he may be, but he says that he is not and he
| does not flaunt any such wealth; on the few occasions where his
| personal life is highlighted it seems he lives rather humbly).
| He claims to put all of the money he earns back into his
| videos; so when he makes enough to buy a "lambo" or whatever he
| will buy one and give it away to whoever can swallow the most
| toothpicks or whatever.
|
| MrBeast does not push a life of luxury as his lifestyle, he
| presents a life of being a celebrity influencer whose life is
| making more spectacles.
| walthamstow wrote:
| In my opinion, giving away large sums of money, loudly and
| publicly, is very much flaunting wealth. It's good too, it's
| great, but it's also flaunting wealth.
| andrewla wrote:
| I guess what I mean is for a typical "influencer", you want
| to be that person to both be famous and also be rich and
| have cool stuff like they have.
|
| But if you want to grow up to be MrBeast, you want to just
| be famous. Maybe you want to be MrBeast-famous and also buy
| cool yachts and lambos and private islands for yourself,
| but that's not the "lifestyle" that he's selling. The
| lifestyle he's selling is "be famous but still hang out
| with your loser friends but get to give away and/or destroy
| awesome things".
|
| This is maybe not the thing we should aspire to, but for
| kids I think it's fine to imagine that for yourself the way
| that you imagine being an NFL quarterback or something. Not
| every kid imagines growing up and being a moderately
| successful CPA.
| campbel wrote:
| The reciprocal relationship between speakers and audiences is
| well documented in rhetorical studies. The example of Hitler's
| development as a speaker is discussed in Ian Kershaw's biography
| "Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris." According to historical accounts,
| Hitler's early speeches in 1919-1920 for the German Workers'
| Party were rather technical, focusing on economic topics like
| inflation and the Versailles Treaty's economic impact. Through
| audience reactions, he learned which themes resonated most
| strongly and adapted his rhetoric accordingly. His latter
| speeches focused on topics like nationalism, anti-semitism, anti-
| marxism, etc... topics far more popular with his audience.
| stafford_beer wrote:
| totally agree--and I think this is key to Trump's success as
| well, that he used audience feedback on Twitter to figure out
| that there was unmet demand for harsh anti-immigration policy
| and then win the 2016 primary
| tdb7893 wrote:
| So firstly I think for understanding YouTube it's much longer but
| it's better to just read Mr Beasts onboarding guide
| (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-
| WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS...). It gives a more complete picture
| straight from the horses mouth (and I always prefer primary
| documents if I can).
|
| That being said I think the author here is taking some things for
| granted. An example of this to me is "As I wrote in the book, "If
| creators are speaking their authentic truths, how can they also
| be accountable to audience feedback? I am personally bemused to
| see 'authenticity' invoked as a criterion for what is ultimately
| and obviously a performance". So firstly I don't view
| authenticity as some binary thing that is mutually exclusive with
| taking feedback and context. Just because I act differently with
| my boss, my parents, and my friends based on feedback from them
| I'm not being inherently inauthentic. To me authenticity and
| external pressures are at odds but from the few videos and
| interviews I've seen of Jimmy he seems to genuinely enjoy
| creating the spectacles he does so beneath all the artifice in
| the videos I think you're still seeing the core of Jimmy making
| content that he wants to make. Anyway, I think if you stop
| looking at stuff like authenticity as less rigid rules for how to
| act and more as a spectrum or very broad category what the
| creators say makes more sense (because it's not just Mr Beast
| saying similar things).
| lanternfish wrote:
| Your conclusion is the exact same one the above essay comes to
| in the next paragraphs. It concludes that the "alignment"
| between MrBeast and his work is a result of the larger thesis:
| creators are ultimately created by the audience conditions of
| the platform. Or, authenticity doesn't mean much when the root
| of the creator isn't a ground truth, but a synthesis of demand.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| We do not come to the same conclusions. The last paragraph is
| this:
|
| "Luckily, I'd say I'm a pretty predictable guy." Luck has
| nothing to do with it, Mr. MrBeast. Your predictability is
| the result of years of an information diet consisting of
| audience feedback metrics. You are the proudest creation of
| the YouTube Apparatus."
|
| Audience feedback metrics are only part of what a creator
| does. They are people with complex motivations and being
| sensitive to audience feedback metrics doesn't eliminate
| that. I could see saying the ecosystem being a synthesis of
| demand (I mean that's just trivially true, we don't need an
| essay on Mr Beast to say that) but from interviews Mr Beast
| is very much a product of the pressure of YouTube mixed with
| the very specific nature of who Jimmy is as a person (from
| interviews he seems like a pretty weird guy and his videos
| definitely reflect his particular quirks).
|
| Edit: I'm trying to see how the author and I agree but unless
| the author is saying that people who succeed on a platform
| are the people that do things that are successful on the
| platform (i.e. align with audience metrics) then I don't
| think we agree. And I don't think that's all they are saying
| because that's just trivially true everywhere and it would
| make all the talk about philosophy and authenticity useless
| cruft. I think that Mr Beast is the sorta platonic ideal of a
| "content creator" driven by metrics and even he cannot escape
| his own Jimmy Donaldson-ness in his videos.
| nluken wrote:
| The way I read it, the author says not that the creator as
| persona is synthesized by metrics, but rather that Jimmy
| himself is subsumed by MrBeast. He _is_ being authentic,
| but that 's true only because the platform inculcated those
| desires over a years long "information diet".
|
| It's a view I sympathize with, even though I'm reticent to
| apply it to specific cases like this. Rather, when we look
| at these systems, we should treat their demands as
| prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Spotify is an
| excellent example. Say the recommendation algorithm starts
| recommending a genre, but not for any aesthetic reason.
| Over time other musicians that internalize the aesthetics
| associated with that genre and will succeed because they
| also get picked up by the algorithm. These artists are
| succeeding by making algorithm bait, but they're also being
| authentic because the algorithm they're courting shaped
| their sensibilities as artists and as people.
|
| The article isn't making a novel observation that people
| are shaped by the systems around them but applying that
| idea to the creator economy.
| 01308106991 wrote:
| Khbib
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > I am personally bemused to see "authenticity" invoked as a
| criterion for what is ultimately and obviously a performance
|
| Imagine someone is actually an actor. They might play two
| different roles, one in a character and show they find boring,
| and one in relatable character in a show whose message they think
| is important. Don't you think their performance in the second one
| might be more authentic, despite being a "performance" in both
| cases?
|
| This essay starts interesting, but I think it overreaches at the
| end.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I was thrown off by the use of the word, "wordcel," which the
| author defines as almost the opposite of what I would expect it
| to mean. Just like "incel" is a portmanteau, I expect "wordcel"
| to mean "word celibate." It didn't fit the context. The word is
| linked to a longer article that has the author's definition
| buried in it, which just distracted more from this article.
| andrewla wrote:
| I'm perhaps too online, but this is not the author's coining.
| There was discourse ages ago about how some people are "shape
| rotators" -- that is, they could reason about complex stuff in
| their heads, and their counterparts, the "wordcels", that could
| express ideas through writing. The latter admittedly does not
| make sense as a portmanteau, likely because a shape rotator
| came up with it.
| _blk wrote:
| Thanks op. This sums it up pretty well for me: In
| what sense is any of this authentic?
| coliveira wrote:
| Consider the following: my personal youtube feed has never shown
| a video of MrBeast. I never asked to remove it from my feed. I
| only know the he exists because I see it being debated in the
| media. So, this tells me more about what people in general are
| interested in and click to watch, than about the nature of
| youtube itself.
| artur_makly wrote:
| Dhar Mann's channel is another interesting cultural signal of
| what kind of content tweens are being groomed with:
| https://youtube.com/@dharmann?si=vsNv2M2S7LfbVvVt
|
| What is abhorrently revolting is the total amount of "Gold
| Digger" videos +100 and counting..
|
| https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=76583c995a4c1c88&rlz=1...
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Dang. I wanted to see what "the youths" were watching so I
| scrubbed through a couple of those videos.
|
| The people in them make me feel like the world's most
| accomplished actor.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >like is there a correlation between better lighting at the start
| of the video and less viewer drop off (there is, have good
| lighting at the start of the video haha)
|
| This gives me the smell and sight of red flags in their
| methodology. It reeks of unsuspected hidden variables. Such as
| what is really going on is that focusing on lighting in the
| beginning of the video simply makes people put more thought into
| the into thereby having a hook that keeps people interested,
| rather than lighting having anything to do with it.
|
| That means this is just a pseudoscience blog of throwing darts to
| me. Sure call me a curmudgeon or whatever.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| > As I wrote in the book, "If creators are speaking their
| authentic truths, how can they also be accountable to audience
| feedback? I am personally bemused to see "authenticity" invoked
| as a criterion for what is ultimately and obviously a
| performance;
|
| Who are you to deny their authenticity, though? If authenticity
| is being true to one's own character, and one's entire character
| is driven by YouTube video metric optimization (and perhaps
| ultimately by the profit thereby obtained), then isn't their
| behavior on screen authentic?
|
| Put another way, if MrBeast says "your goal is to make me excited
| to be on screen", he's explicitly saying he doesn't want to have
| to act or otherwise be inauthentic on screen. Whether his
| excitement about a certain topic is tied to the views he expects
| it to garner is immaterial, if that's his authentic motivation.
|
| Or put yet another way, what drives anybody's "authentic"
| behavior? What audience are they playing to? It may not be the
| entire internet, but it's certainly influenced by "performance"
| in front of friends and family. We're all Creations of our
| environment. MrBeast has just kind of found himself in an
| environment where feedback from YouTube videos motivates him and
| creates a ton of positive feedback loops.
| donatj wrote:
| > the MrBeast with two backs
|
| > haha just kidding. MrBeast does not have sex. YouTube doesn't
| allow pornography, so what would be the point?
|
| Why was this included in the post? What does it add? It seems ...
| just sort of mean spirited and out of place in an otherwise good
| article.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I feel like I need to see an Adam Curtis documentary* on this.
|
| [*] Spanning 5 hours.
| nikcub wrote:
| Curtis heavily applies quick cuts, emotive footage,
| authoritative English narration and emotional music to lull the
| viewer into his views. His message wouldn't work as written
| essays or books because they're just not very deep - it's early
| YouTube MrBeast-like audience optimisation for those who don't
| want to discover or read on topics.
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