Audience capture is a term for it I guess, but I prefer self-flanderization. It's usually not as sinister as the examples in this article. One particular sort of self-flanderization I've noticed noticed is British entertainers with primarily American audiences will often start talking posher and acting quirkier. I guess that's what aggregate anglophile Americans expect, so they play into it.
The Perils of Audience Capture
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Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#12It's more economics than psychology though right? Everyone is in search of an audience, or in economic terms, each producer is in search of consumers. Once you find a market you can tailor your fit to suit that market. I might start out making leisurewear, but when I discover most of my sales is sweat-pants, I'm likely to focus my attention there, creating more designs in a narrower niche. "influencer" is a recent ca…
Your comment has a ton of great insight about the people it applies to, but to circle back to its opening couple lines: > It's more economics than psychology though right? … Everyone is in search of an audience This is not nearly so universal. The word used to describe creators/influencers/artists/politicians/etc that don’t succumb to this pressure is integrity . If you want to be critical instead of laudatory, you c…
It wouldn't surprise me if, within 15 years, the pendulum goes the other way and anonymity is prized again, with the former "influencers" deeply regretting their public exposure. I was briefly (barely) famous in the tech world and it sucked.
There are a lot of evil governments in the world, and nearly all private companies are functionally evil. You don't want them knowing who you are. That information will only be used against you. The government is not always your friend and your employer almost never is.
It seems to be rooted fairly deep in us to believe that if we just told our stories and had our true selves known to the world--if our reputations portrayed us fully and fairly--we would be not only accepted but embraced by the world. This isn't the case, and it's not for a lack of personal value, but because the human world is not always a benevolent place. It's full of conflict, and it has a lot of terrible people in high places.
As I get older, I'm increasingly convinced that, while I have no patience whatsoever for the intolerant, self-righteous, and right-wing strains of US Christianity, we do need something like religion, at least enough of it to convince people and society (a) that cultural integrity is important and worth fighting for, and (b) that playing a decent role within one's culture, rather than trying to dominate or "influence" it as much as possible, is enough. Sadly, the most effective strategy for preserving a culture seems to be convince people that terrible supernatural consequences will occur if the culture is violated--the most dangerous individuals won't necessarily believe in these consequences, but their potential followers will, and so one could (in theory, anyway) proactively deprive these would-be warlords and CEOs of the supporters they would need in order to seize power. Worse yet, it seems in practice that this doesn't help, because nothing prevents horrible people from using religion to their benefit (in fact, it is historically very common). So... I don't know. All I know is that mukbang is fucking disgusting and anyone who watches it should feel bad about themselves.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#13It's really easy to fall prey to this. You become target-fixated on your attention metrics, but it's often the worst content that spikes your numbers. You don't become an influencer; you become a hub of "influence"--a force you cannot really control, the will of which is not always benevolent.
For a while, I was pretty well known within a certain toxic niche. What I learned is that you can't "influence" anything, not very much, and certainly not in the short term (which is the timeframe on which most of us are forced to operate, just to survive). A "brand influencer" can convince a few thousand Pepsi drinkers to try Coke's latest product, but who cares? If any of these influencers actually had something to say, their followers would get fed up and move on to someone else.
It's tempting to believe that the thousands or millions of followers you can get by posting stupid shit will convert when you feel the need to say something important, but conversion rates are astronomically low. All that "influence" evaporates if you have a real reason to use it.
All that said, the good news is that this isn't a new problem. False personalities have been dominant in our psychobiome for decades. In the 1950s, it was the man in the gray flannel suit, the "organization man" who never discussed sex, politics, or religion (or, for that matter, anything else important). In the 2020s, it's insufferable young people trying to make a decrepit, failing economic system appear "cool" and even "woke" (a term no one but Boomers uses anymore). Same shit, new stink. We have lived under economic totalitarianism (whether of the Soviet command-economy variety, or the capitalist "ignore the man behind the curtain" variety) for a century now, and so we've been dealing with phony personalities (and false consciousness) for a long time. If they were going to destroy us, they would have done so by now.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#14Great piece. I personally distinguish a difference between audiences and customers: the former is/should be when your ideal (performance) self is aligned with the attention of others; the latter is when you shape your self/offer to the expectations of others.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#15This whole piece is spot on.
The most obvious example of audience capture that occurs to me is Joe Rogan's podcast. From about 2010-2013, it was a comedy podcast that was just starting to get some high-profile guests. My theory is that his numbers with the conspiracy theorists and MMA bros were doing too well to ignore, and the transition into increasingly alt-right commentators was slow enough to not scare off regular listeners. The rest is history.
There is enormous latent demand for right-wing commentary. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity dominated AM Radio and Fox News, but now that demand is being fulfilled where the audience is—podcasts and YouTube. I've seen whole YouTube channels go full right-wing-talking-points, solely based on audience requests in the comments section.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#16outstanding essay - suddenly we have an explanation how people can 'self radicalise' - it is in fact via a tight feedback loop with an audience. Milo went down this route - he was always a provocateur but dove deep into the alt-right when the found he could gain an audience there.
Not clear how people can get out of this once they are there - the acquired audience is never going to signal 'stop' so the the motivation is just to keep going ever deeper. There is an argument that de-platforming - severing the feedback loop - might be the only way, which chafes against our instincts for freedom of speech, expression, association
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#17> One example is Louise Mensch, a once-respectable journalist and former Conservative politician who in 2016 published a story about Trump's alleged ties to Russia,
Basically the entire mainstream media went on that route during the second part of 2016, some of them are still on it, 6 years later, not sure why this lady (of whom I had never heard until now) got the short stick out of it.
> In January, after he lost his position at the radio show LBC due to his increasingly careless theories about a secretive New World Order
The only false thing is that there's no secret about it, cue the current war in Ukraine which is fought in relation to that "order" (or the "unipolar liberal order", as the West tries to depict it). On top of that, as a citizen of an EU-member country I experience this first hand, as more and more rights and privileges that used to be decided at the national level (at the highest) have now been transferred to a rainy city a continent away, to some people I have never voted and of whom I know next to nothing (I'm talking about Brussels and the European Commission). This is a coup almost by definition, only that it doesn't involve that many guns (just yet).
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#18One overgeneralization I've become allergic towards is the Girardian theory of mimetic desire applied to everything.
To me, there are internally and externally generated desires, and most of the external ones really are mimetic. But internal desires really exist almost anyone, yet for most people they can only bubble up when all is quiet and we're alone with out thoughts. We're so hyperstimulated that there is no space for those original desires to germinate, and that same phenomenon can happen not only for people scrolling Instagram, but also for those creating content.
It's probably the same mental process through which a group becomes often the opposite of their enemy, even though both extremes are absurd.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#19Audience capture is a term for it I guess, but I prefer self-flanderization. It's usually not as sinister as the examples in this article. One particular sort of self-flanderization I've noticed noticed is British entertainers with primarily American audiences will often start talking posher and acting quirkier. I guess that's what aggregate anglophile Americans expect, so they play into it.
It is a form of flanderization, but I guess the difference is that nobody would boo at Flanders if he stopped (well, "if his creators redesigned him to stop") being the current caricature.
But I think the phenomenon here is that the audience actively and aggressively discourages deviation from the expected behavior, which becomes more and more extreme.
I've seen this even in mild YouTubers, as soon as they make a statement (say, about inclusiveness or whatever) that was out of the norm -- or even, surprisingly, changing the focus of their channel -- a group of very vociferous fans will leave while heaving insults and claiming the YouTuber has "sold off" or is not being true to him/herself anymore.
As an example: I don't know if you're familiar with the current Return to Monkey Island debacle, but some "fans" and trolls are harassing Ron Gilbert because they don't like the art style of the new game. They are judging the previews, because it's unreleased. Now, regardless of what one may think about the style, what the trolls are saying is brutal. They are accusing him of trying to put (and I quote) "left-wing BS" in his new game. All because they don't like the polygonal cartoony art style! A minor deviation from their expectations gets punished with insults.
The feedback loop with an aggressive audience is essential for this phenomenon, I think, and it doesn't happen with Flanders.
Re: The Perils of Audience Capture
#20Audience capture is a term for it I guess, but I prefer self-flanderization. It's usually not as sinister as the examples in this article. One particular sort of self-flanderization I've noticed noticed is British entertainers with primarily American audiences will often start talking posher and acting quirkier. I guess that's what aggregate anglophile Americans expect, so they play into it.
It is a form of flanderization, but I guess the difference is that nobody would boo at Flanders if he stopped (well, "if his creators redesigned him to stop") being the current caricature. But I think the phenomenon here is that the audience actively and aggressively discourages deviation from the expected behavior, which becomes more and more extreme. I've seen this even in mild YouTubers, as soon as they make a sta…
> They are accusing him of trying to put (and I quote) "left-wing BS" in his new game
The culture war is totalizing, and gamergate was a key point in its expansion across the internet. And itself is another of these feedback loops.