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The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

coryzue.com

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Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#111

Post by falsaberN1 »

fullshark wrote: post #45

People aren't authentic when they are talking to everyone on the planet at once, unless they are incredibly naive. They are authentic talking to their friends, or family, in private conversations. A lot of people were naive in the early days and it made for amusing conversation, not any longer and these platforms are just about brand management / advertising now.

You call them naive like if it was a bad thing. I for one welcome the naive ones, they don't feel like they are transparently trying to take advantage.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#112

Post by rpigab »

dageshi wrote: post #71
kiwikan wrote: post #6

this phenomenon exists outside Twitter/X as well you know, Youtube is an example

It's true but I'm not sure youtube creators ever really claimed to be "authentic", a lot of them are acting as presenters and always have been. Twitter was always more towards "this is the real me"?

I miss the old Youtube when it was so hard to get money from ads that inauthentic channels were actually rare.

Most people just wanted to share stuff likes video games or memes, some dreamed of fame and money of course, but they had no idea how to get there, they filmed with whatever camera they already had without Youtube, they didn't take a loan to invest in a perfect sound studio setup.

Of course, I'm not taking unpaid labor for granted, I really wish they'd get the money they want and deserve from ads, but stayed simple. But because of competition, that's impossible. Now they all look the same, because they got advice directly from the Youtube company on putting red arrows and stupid faces on thumbnails. And jumpcuts.

Good thing there's still 10 year old minecrafters who don't give a damn about all this or can't buy decent equipment, if I can still find their channels through the impenetrable algorithms.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#113

Post by jklinger410 »

the_snooze wrote: post #26

>And yes, on the surface this incentivizes people to create better content. The better your content is, the more it gets seen, and the more money you make. And yet, my felt experience of this change is the exact opposite—as people seek more engagement, their content gets worse. What’s going on here? It always tickles me when terminally online people realize that human connection doesn't scale . It's valuable precisel…

> as people seek more engagement, their content gets worse. What’s going on here?

This is a well observed trend where appealing to a broader audience makes the content worse.

People, as individuals, are unique and therefore interesting. Appealing to more than one person relies on what those people have in common.

The more people you try to reach, the less in common they all have. If the content is going to speak to what they all have in common, it becomes very surface level.

Therefore all things that want to get mass approval must be very basic, vague, and shallow. This is the capitalist way of creating content.

Conversely, when real artists struck chords with large groups of people, it was because they stumbled upon something unique that many people shared. This unique thing was then valued by large groups of people, and became culture.

Real culture is hard, not reproducible, not predictable, and initially unprofitable. So it is not valued by capitalism. It happens despite the economy, not because of it.

Art must always start that way, or else it is simply content.

//EDIT

I also want to add that this is not a new thing and it's root cause is not social media. It is any media that is shared, whose goal is a large number of eyeballs. This has happened with every medium and will continue to happen forever.

If you don't like it and want it to stop, then you want more socialist policies.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#114

Post by nologic01 »

Authenticity and commerce are awkward bedfellows. Just take a look at corporate communications where complete vacuity and obfuscation is the status-quo, way before social media.

The main new thing is virality and actors trying to ride platform algorithms. This has led to a complex three-body system (producers-platform-consumers) the full degenerating dynamics of which we are only gradually discovering.

There must be better ways but they are still to materialize. The fediverse is super cool but that's mostly because it has not yet attracted the crushing attention of commerce.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#115

Post by medstrom »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #67
spacecadet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually infuriates me. All those people who spent the last 20 years building adtech and social media. Thanks! You created a world that is now skeptical of tech and makes the rest of our jobs harder. Frankly, Id be worried with social and ad tech companies on my resume. I basically throw these away now.

> Frankly, Id be worried with social and ad tech companies on my resume. I basically throw these away now. I sort of unintentionally ended up in ad tech recently, and deeply regret it. I enjoy the technical issues, but...ironically, anybody who would throw out my resume because it has ad tech on it is exactly the kind of person I would want to work for. C'est le vie, I guess I'll stay in ad tech.

Can you not remove it from your own resume?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#118

Post by k1ns »

the_snooze wrote: post #26

>And yes, on the surface this incentivizes people to create better content. The better your content is, the more it gets seen, and the more money you make. And yet, my felt experience of this change is the exact opposite—as people seek more engagement, their content gets worse. What’s going on here? It always tickles me when terminally online people realize that human connection doesn't scale . It's valuable precisel…

I think it's less to do with the internet and more to do with celebrity. Magazines push relatability and authenticity for a reason. We have to feel like they're relatable or their influence dissipates.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#119

Post by nullindividual »

> Some of them love it so much that they offer courses teaching other people how to do it—which amplifies this godforsaken death spiral even further.

Sounds like normal capitalism. Perhaps if the race to the bottom of capitalisms backside wasn't the goal, we'd have higher quality services.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#120

Post by izzydata »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #55
the_snooze wrote: post #26

>And yes, on the surface this incentivizes people to create better content. The better your content is, the more it gets seen, and the more money you make. And yet, my felt experience of this change is the exact opposite—as people seek more engagement, their content gets worse. What’s going on here? It always tickles me when terminally online people realize that human connection doesn't scale . It's valuable precisel…

There may be exceptions ( MMO guilds may be an examle ), where it is not meatspace, but authenticity may be higher.

I wonder if the newer generation of gamers can form connections from MMO style guilds like the past generation of gamers did. Everything that I've seen from young gamers today suggests that their motivations for playing games is quite different. Playing just for the sake of playing and socializing on a personal level is not part of it.

I get the impression it is about being seen doing things. If nobody sees you do something it basically never happened. The more people that see you do something the more important it is to them.

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