41–50 of 61 posts
To some degree we are to blame, however this doesn't take into account the fact that there are armies of psychologists, marketers and developers and billions of dollars' worth of equipment at the other end of your feed. They aim specifically to get you to stay in the Skinner box so it's not exactly fair to say it's on us.
The author appears to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the so-called "cargo cults" in the pacific. Our best understanding is that these cults amounted to scams conducted on a vulnerable population by their own leaders - leaders who had suffered irreparable damage to their ability to control the local economy when the US army briefly thrust their culture into post-scarcity. The infinite scroll of mindles…
> Our upvotes, likes, shares, and retweets need to be reserved for only those things which truly deserve to be amplified, not just because we personally appreciate them, but because they’re of exceptional quality. Sounds great, but with all the morons reacting prolifically to every piece of trash, will my one carefully allotted upvote be valued? I like the idea of Quadratic Voting: https://www.economist.com/interacti…
In the case of social media, how are credits even allocated? If a simple daily model, that already feels bad. See something great in the morning, don't vote for it! You might see something better in the evening. Should be able to dip into negatives somehow for urgent, high importance matters.
The rise of long form YouTube videos and Podcasts directly contradicts this. Summoning Salt, Technology Connections, and the dozens of other small documentary channels. Heck Matholger is able to regularly hit 500k+ views with 30min+ math videos![1]
True crime podcasts and history podcasts are also in direct opposition to the idea that we only consume short form content.
Then there is the entire rise of Medium and Substack. 10 years ago if I wanted long form journalism it was either The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or some tiny indie news magazines.
Now long form articles are more popular than ever.
Heck even movies are getting longer! [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@Mathologer/videos [2] https://www.whattowatch.com/features/are-movies-really-getti...
I think the main error of the author is to assume that short content equals low quality content. There's value in conciseness.
- "mcdonalds is having a sale on fries" - fine, whatever, it's not bad or dangerous information but I don't care if it spreads
- "former president indicted on 37 charges" does a lot of work, there is of course tons more to read, but it's hard to say that statement on its own isn't huge news
- "normalize talking about mental illness" doesn't require much explanation to anyone who's struggled to talk about mental illness, but certainly a lot of thought went into the concept, and then it was fit into a known format
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people could do this conciously, we wouldn’t need this article.
I think the author is just asking us to vote more thoughtfully. Currently, especially on sites like Reddit, the upvote/downvote buttons are abused as agree/disagree buttons and are clicked with little thought. The recent troubles on Reddit have people talking about alternatives. An old site - one of the first voting based forums - was brought up, Slashdot. It has an interesting voting system. Only some people can vot…
> We favor videos that either are very short or don’t require dedicated focus, confident in the knowledge that we can move on to something else whenever we want to. We ignore thoughtfully composed “walls of text,” but we electronically applaud memetic image macros and single-sentence references that aren’t inherently entertaining or insightful The rise of long form YouTube videos and Podcasts directly contradicts thi…
This is not true. You cannot trick your brain into enjoying a mediocre "healthy" thing more than the enjoyment that you actually feel.
This a recipe for burning out and relapsing. Your brain will always know the actual ratio of effort/reward over time, and will prefer the skinner box without question.
If you are truly consciously aware of yourself while scrolling, you might find (to your disgust and dismay) that just being in front of the slot machine is a reward to your brain.
The unfortunate truth is that you can "cargo cult" yourself into all kinds of debilitating addictions and behaviors with their own twisted, undeniably sound logic that you can't "mindset" your way out of.
> We favor videos that either are very short or don’t require dedicated focus, confident in the knowledge that we can move on to something else whenever we want to. We ignore thoughtfully composed “walls of text,” but we electronically applaud memetic image macros and single-sentence references that aren’t inherently entertaining or insightful The rise of long form YouTube videos and Podcasts directly contradicts thi…
And are you using relative or absolute popularity? E.g. "medium form" articles in pop magazines were probably always more popular than longform ones in literary mags, but were they more relatively popular than "tweets" or "tiktok videos"?
Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248 million tickets today? And that number has a lower total population size to pull from! For a focused experience without your phone, or work, or anything else (compared to listening to a podcast in the background while working or driving)?
There are groups that still enjoy, or are learning to enjoy, longer stuff still. But that's not the dominant trend.