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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

#181

Post by hotnfresh »

pif wrote: post #81
Enginerrrd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ugly truth of it is, just like there's a noticeable difference between shopping at costco and shopping at walmart (because of the annual fee at costco), there's just some people that are going to have an undesirable influence on your community. The temptation to try and rope in those extra users is often irresistible but to get them you have to tank your content to appeal to the lowest common denominator.…

> difference between shopping at costco and shopping at walmart Could someone please explain to me what is implied here? I've been to the USA only once, and I didn't visit neither a Costco nor a Walmart. The only difference I could point to between them, is that no "Costco people" phenomenon exists on YouTube. Sincere thanks in advance!

Walmart shoppers are uniquely incapable of existing in an area without being in the way. I've not experienced anything like it in any other store. It's like they're constantly trying to take up as much space as possible.

Between that and Walmart having narrower aisles than most stores, the place feels busy even when there aren't many people in it.

Also, the workers and shoppers alike all seem depressed, which is another thing I've not experienced in any other store. Walmart's weird, sickly lighting and color scheme probably don't help.

It's a miserable place to be in. Mood instantly plummets on entering. Combo of the seemingly intended-to-make-you-feel-bad design, and the people.

It's not even just a poor-people thing. Aldi is fine. Dollar General isn't as depressing. Plus, wal mart didn't used to be so bad, but that was like 20 years ago.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#182

Post by monknomo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #164
ragazzina wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very interested in your take. When Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà, the pain it expressed was a feeling that many people had shared, so it became culture. But when a teenager makes a tiktok about the pain of being rejected by their crush, and it's a feeling many people have shared, and many people like it, that's basic, vague and shallow.

What makes the tiktok vague and shallow isn't the topic itself, but the awareness that there's already a hundred thousand identical tiktoks expressing the same or similar feelings in roughly the same way. What makes it "not culture" is that everyone is watching one or few of those hundred thousand fully exchangeable tiktoks. A thing which is basic, vague and shallow can become an important cultural work too - it just…

There are an awful lot of sculptures/paintings, etc. about the sixth sorrow of mary, and most are pretty interchangeable, imo.

I wonder if the difference with tiktok is that there are thousands of videos about the same thing, everyone sees a few of those thousands, but they see a different few. So even though we're sharing the feeling, culturally, we're not sharing the same artifact.

Like maybe the trouble is that tiktok puts each user into their own custom bubble, and the bubble the user finds themself in is completely opaque - you can't readily compare what you're seeing to what your friends are seeing?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#183

Post by willismichael »

TehShrike wrote: post #98
pif wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> difference between shopping at costco and shopping at walmart Could someone please explain to me what is implied here? I've been to the USA only once, and I didn't visit neither a Costco nor a Walmart. The only difference I could point to between them, is that no "Costco people" phenomenon exists on YouTube. Sincere thanks in advance!

If there's a stereotype of costco customers, it's probably "middle-aged dads stoked about the fact that they can get a deal on good bulk food and quality products like socks". ( https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-men's-merino-wool-... btw)

Guilty as charged.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#184

Post by hotnfresh »

jtr1 wrote: post #94
pif wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> difference between shopping at costco and shopping at walmart Could someone please explain to me what is implied here? I've been to the USA only once, and I didn't visit neither a Costco nor a Walmart. The only difference I could point to between them, is that no "Costco people" phenomenon exists on YouTube. Sincere thanks in advance!

They are implying that Costco's yearly membership fee filters out poor people, who shop at Walmart instead. They consider these people to be undesirable customers because people with money do not like to associate with them.

Costco shopper here who likes shopping at Dollar General and Aldi. Hell, even Dollar Tree and such.

It's not just that they're poor. There's something about wal mart.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#185

Post by huevosabio »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #148
huevosabio wrote: post #139

Some thoughts: > Megathreads about AI, thoughtful, longform narratives that could have been blog posts... Honestly, the long form tweets became a signal to just ignore that tweet. I unfollow or block users that tweet long form often. > The people in my feed—most of whom I’m not following, by the way— Yea, just use the chrono-tab ("following"). Only usable version of Twitter. > love posting for engagement. Some of the…

Their lists feature is a massively undervalued feature. Pretty certain if lists was deprecated I would disband Twitter.

I don't use it all, I should give it a try!

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#186

Post by Ensorceled »

bachmeier wrote: post #21

> Elon’s political antics chased away a lot of good people. Many of my favorite follows have moved to Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky. Also, more and more people are waking up and realizing that social media is actually quite bad for you, and leaving it behind. Good for them. Bad for me. It's common to blame the move from Twitter on Elon's politics. And that's perfectly valid. I moved away for a much simpler reason. H…

> It's common to blame the move from Twitter on Elon's politics. And that's perfectly valid. I moved away for a much simpler reason.

The bulk of the people I follow (mostly authors, journalists, and geeks) have moved off or drastically reduced their activity on Twitter and it's almost entirely due to Elon's politics and the changes he's making in support of that world view.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#187

Post by huevosabio »

IKantRead wrote: post #158
huevosabio wrote: post #139

Some thoughts: > Megathreads about AI, thoughtful, longform narratives that could have been blog posts... Honestly, the long form tweets became a signal to just ignore that tweet. I unfollow or block users that tweet long form often. > The people in my feed—most of whom I’m not following, by the way— Yea, just use the chrono-tab ("following"). Only usable version of Twitter. > love posting for engagement. Some of the…

> Honestly, the long form tweets became a signal to just ignore that tweet. I unfollow or block users that tweet long form often. Even though I don't use Twitter much any more, I fully agree here. Whenever I see the "[thread emoji] 1/?" I'm already done. I can't even fathom why anyone would put the energy in these "thread" style tweets. Twitter content will forever remain fundamentally ephemeral: it's hard to find my…

> Similar to how a typical child's sand shovel is correct tool for building sandcastles.

I am certainly going to steal that analogy!

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#188

Post by redleggedfrog »

"authenticity", "attention economy", "engagement"... This is just stirring the turds around in the cesspool. Deadbird is a net negative in the world, run by sociopath, and has no redeeming value, is actively harmful, but is addictive, like meth. Why do any of you actually care? Do something useful with your time.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#190

Post by photonthug »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #170
jklinger410 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

Interestingly this is the exact opposite of the usual argument as to why Shakespeare is still popular, i.e. that his work speaks of a deep universal truth about the human condition.

> Conversely, when real artists struck chords with large groups of people, it was because they stumbled upon something unique that many people shared.

Shakespeare has exactly this going on too, though. He contributed like a thousand neologisms to English that actually stuck. That probably doesn't happen unless your art is a bit like science, almost "discovering" something in the collective unconcious rather than an act of invention. When that happens, you have something that's new/unique but also something that is deep/universal. Cubism and surrealism are also like this

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