Comment by munificent

Comment by munificent 4 days ago

22 replies

> the algorithm will learn you like authenticity and show you more of it.

Jesus, this is like a line out of a William Gibson novel. I hope you wrote that aware of the irony inherent in it.

I'm also reminded of this George Burns quote: "The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made."

thorum 3 days ago

Connecting people to other people, to life changing art, places and things that they end up loving and wouldn’t know about otherwise? That has to be one of the best uses for technology. I’d like to see more of it.

I think you and others here are focusing on the stereotypical “influencer” faking authenticity for views but there are literally millions of human beings posting on TikTok about all kinds of things. A lot of them are pretty cool. Just click “not interested” on influencers and click like on the stuff you want to see instead.

  • corimaith 3 days ago

    I think it's fair to say after a decade or so social media does not "connect people to other people", what you are describing are parasocial relationships. People are lonelier than ever, not just in America but worldwide.

    Besides, for any hobby, recommendations are only really relevant for newcomers without solidified preferences and knowledge, after that the space of available content quickly dwindles as one seeks increasingly ambitious and avant-garde works to their preferences. Amateur stuff can be quite generic after all, what not with the lack of resources and experience. If you're still relying on an algorithm, I'd see it more as a vapid surface-level engagement with a hobby/medium than a genuine interest to dive further.

    Well, I guess that's what people want, but I'd argue that we're not better of it, that despite the greater size of it all, the culture of the early 2010s internet still produced far higher quality and authentic cultural products than today, hell alot of shorts I see today is just a rehash of well-known facts back then.

    • snoman 3 days ago

      > Well, I guess that's what people want, but I'd argue that we're not better of it, that despite the greater size of it all, the culture of the early 2010s internet still produced far higher quality and authentic cultural products than today, hell alot of shorts I see today is just a rehash of well-known facts back then.

      You’re just getting older. You’ve seen it before in another place, another medium, a different author, actor, photographer, director, philosopher, painter. You just haven’t realized that the internet isn’t just for you, and that reel you saw that just rehashed something well-known to you, was new info to someone else, somewhere. I can assure you, in 2010, there were plenty oh people bitching about bloggers retelling the same old things they learned decades prior.

      “Everything old is new again” is a centuries-old expression. Every generation tells their tales, and shares their cultural experience in their own way. Right now, people express themselves in short-form video. I’m curious to see what comes next - you and I probably won’t like it.

      • mullingitover 3 days ago

        Everything invented up to your 20s is just the innate environment.

        Everything invented from your 20s-40s is cool, you accept it and will probably make a living with it.

        Everything invented after your 40s is a perversion of the natural order and must be destroyed.

      • corimaith 3 days ago

        >“Everything old is new again” is a centuries-old expression. Every generation tells their tales, and shares their cultural experience in their own way. Right now, people express themselves in short-form video. I’m curious to see what comes next - you and I probably won’t like it.

        You know it's interesting to frame these arguments because it's exemplar of the clash of worldviews here, between the classic view of an cyclical history, and the modern linear view of historical continuity. The latter was birthed in reaction against the former, yet as the inheritors of Rennaisance conquered the world, it eventually became the norm, the "old" of which the "present" would be compared against.

        So if the present now cycles the past, is this an abberation or the norm here? The past is the "future", and the present is "stagnation". It is both revolutionary and regressionary. The TikTok Bill, the need to retake the Narrative by the Establishment thus represents itself the Past reasserting Continuity, and thus the Future, while Present pushes back to the very denial of the Future itself, to establish it's totalizing dominance of an endless now. So for the question of whether I would like the future, well that depends on which of the two sides win.

      • photonthug 3 days ago

        > You’re just getting older. You’ve seen it before in another place .. You just haven’t realized that the internet isn’t just for you.. same old things decades prior..

        This reads as both extremely condescending and extremely naive at the same time.

        An earlier version of the internet had blogs and meme lords sure, and a generation consumed that stuff and found that it was good. And after that consumption, it turns out kids still wanted to grow up to be doctors, astronauts, or whatever.

        Another generation consumed another kind of content which was mostly leaning towards short-format, after many years spent researching/weaponizing dopamine and misinformation. Almost all of that content was mediated by corporations really, with as little involvement from people as the corporations could manage. That generation wanted to be influencers and "content creators" when they grew up.

        The basic incentive structures are radically different now, for companies, creators, and consumers, and we're sort of past doing things for the lulz. There's a difference here that actually makes a difference, and writing it off as "yawn, more of the same if only your perspective was as wide as mine!" seems more ignorant than enlightened.

  • motorest 3 days ago

    > Connecting people to other people, to life changing art, places and things that they end up loving and wouldn’t know about otherwise?

    Does your opinion change if you understand that none of that is remotely real or actually exists?

    You have an app that is designed to feed you Potemkin villages, and here you are praising their real estate value.

    > That has to be one of the best uses for technology. I’d like to see more of it.

    That's like praising psychosis for being one of the best mental illnesses, and concluding that you'd like to see more of it.

echelon 4 days ago

> Jesus, this is like a line out of a William Gibson novel. I hope you wrote that aware of the irony inherent in it.

There's a spectrum between Vaudeville and sharing family recipes. YouTube's MrBeast is on one end of that spectrum.

This is the kind of stuff that happens on TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXhx-yECOc

This is what was meant.

  • karmakaze 3 days ago

    It all looks the same to me. Something made to be amusing/viral for the clicks.

  • wqaatwt 3 days ago

    > This is the kind of stuff that happens on TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXhx-yECOc

    still confused. Is this supposed to be an example of “bad” or “good” content?

    Because I can’t (perhaps due to lack of empathy.. idk) imagine why anyone would want to waste their time watching stuff like that.

    • jerojero 3 days ago

      It's pretty creative and funny stuff, imo. If you consider that to be "good" or "bad" that's up to you I guess.

      The way people choose to spend their lives is largely up to them, I'm not sure it's good to be labeling things as a "waste of time" when they're deriving something from it that you simply do not understand. Particularly when they do it in a way that is pretty harmless.

      I don't know if you have pets, but if you spend time observing them you'll see most of what they do is simply letting time pass and for them, that's enough. Believe it or not, for many people the same is the case. Finding meaning in the acts we do is a personal endeavour so I think rather than telling people they're wasting their time instead try to understand what they're seeing in such things that you don't see.

      I think a lot of people find creative acts very rewarding, there's an element of surprise that comes from it. The unexpected can be enjoyable. I think one of the reasons why the TikTok algorithm is so powerful is that it really succeeds in giving people the feeling of constant surprise.

      Personally, I've found really inspiring art on Tiktok, as well as new music and also a lot of simple but engaging content in german (which I'm trying to learn).

  • motorest 3 days ago

    > This is what was meant.

    I think you inadvertently made an entirely different point: it's all fake, but you just swallow some content acritically believing it's something personal that speaks to you.

    In the end, you're just complaining that some sirens are fake but others really do love you.

mambodog 4 days ago

'authenticity' in the sense of content made by normal people without any strong goals other than 'some other people might like that' (and for some, maybe eventually getting some income from monetization) rather than highly produced content with the goal of reaching the largest possible audience and extracting the largest possible amount of money from that, which is what reels feels like. if you want to see that type of 'more authentic' content, tiktok's approach to populating your feed will be much more responsive to that than instagram's. there also seem to be a lot more people creating content on tiktok aimed at that level.