[HN Gopher] Only bad poems go viral
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       Only bad poems go viral
        
       Author : areoform
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2025-02-20 22:26 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (donotresearch.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (donotresearch.substack.com)
        
       | taeric wrote:
       | Feels like "Signaling a Political Ingroup" is enough of a signal
       | to explain all of these examples?
       | 
       | Not that I don't think they aren't also trying at the other
       | points. I think they are over explaining, though.
        
         | redeux wrote:
         | > One caveat: the six triggers are, importantly, specific to
         | Twitter. On Instagram--where a poem might pop up accompanied by
         | a coffee cup or pen artfully in frame, as well as watercolor or
         | pen-and-ink illustrations--even terrible verse rarely provokes
         | vitriol. This stark difference suggests our relationship to art
         | is increasingly shaped by the architectural affordances of the
         | social platforms where we encounter it.
         | 
         | I believe this is the point they're ultimately making.
        
           | taeric wrote:
           | I don't really disagree with that. I'm just challenging that
           | many of those points are how people signal to their in crowd.
           | 
           | Also notable that twitter, specifically, is overwhelmingly
           | signalling to the crowd. I think this has been true for a
           | long time, but it does feel that it is more extreme now.
           | 
           | My guess is that this would be a more constructive argument
           | against algorithms driving engagement. They are
           | overwhelmingly hijacked by in group signals in ways that
           | curated data, oddly, was not. Not that curation always
           | worked, mind. You could build up more trust that curators at
           | least put some reputation on the line with regards to other
           | factors.
        
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