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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

#191

Post by hightrix »

random3 wrote: post #163
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…

IMO it's bit ironic that people seek maximum diversity within a single platform without taking into account the effort to seek the diversity beyond that platform. There are online communities beyond X and, event within X you can just choose to track select groups you follow and constantly unfollow what you don't like.

> There are online communities beyond X

As an aside, I find this phrase funny today. In the past, I would have known you are using the term 'X' to be a generic reference to online communities. Today, I don't know if you are talking specifically about twitter or just a generic online community.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#193

Post by BiteCode_dev »

random3 wrote: post #163
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…

IMO it's bit ironic that people seek maximum diversity within a single platform without taking into account the effort to seek the diversity beyond that platform. There are online communities beyond X and, event within X you can just choose to track select groups you follow and constantly unfollow what you don't like.

People don't seek maximum diversity. People seek the exact diversity of a small sample of the world they tolerate.

The people that say they do are just unaware of all the diversity they reject.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#194

Post by wuliwong »

Someone else mentioned about the differences between different categories of content on Twitter and I agree. Mainly, I like Twitter for sports. I have not experienced another platform that gives me this type of interactions with writers, show hosts, players, and other fans. I find Twitter for political stuff to be pretty bad. It's kind of amusing but that no matter how irrational and unhinged sports fans are in the U.S., they aren't as bad as what I see on political Twitter posts. :) I barely follow any tech/startup stuff on Twitter anymore. I'm not sure why, I guess the content just wasn't engaging to me. A side note, I've also bailed on IndieHackers as it seems to have changed (in my opinion) with regards to the type of content that made it cool in the beginning to whatever is going on there now. I guess IH is starting to experience this evolution in content that the author is talking about.

I still read HN though! HN has the most insightful and thoughtful comments/discussions and cause doom scrolling.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#195

Post by _jal »

function_seven wrote: post #106
Retric wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation is still valuable over time. Some YouTube creators I ignore irregardless of the thumbnail, while other content creators get a click automatically. The same happens with websites and everywhere else in the attention economy.

> while other content creators get a click automatically. A number of times now Youtube has shown me a video recommendation that I ignored for days. The thumbnail with that stupid "gobsmacked" expression of the creator (:-O) with some dumb headline in big block letters ("IS GRAVITY A LIE?"). You know what I'm talking about. Then I finally get around to looking at it closer, and it turns out it's one of my favorite ch…

> They went with the stupid title and thumbnail because "the algorithm demands it"

The end result is I don't use their discovery crap at all, because it all looks like garbage I don't care about.

My use of Youtube has become very similar to my use of Xitter - never log in, almost never look at content on their domains, only on other peoples' sites.

I'm sure it works for them on average.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#196

Post by JohnFen »

oangemangut wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation is still valuable over time. Some YouTube creators I ignore irregardless of the thumbnail, while other content creators get a click automatically. The same happens with websites and everywhere else in the attention economy.

some content creators I click on _despite_ them having to do the click-bait stupid YouTube thumbnails. As an aside - word you may have been looking for is irrespective, or perhaps just plain old regardless. irregardless is not a word.

> irregardless is not a word.

"Irregardless" is absolutely a word. It's not a word I personally like, but there's no denying its status.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#197

Post by JohnFen »

jfengel wrote: post #127
kogus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100% with what you are saying, but I don't think you need a human connection to have good content. The encyclopedia Brittanica didn't establish a human connection, but it was a valuable resource. An ugly problem with an attention economy is that you are rewarded for seeming useful and interesting, but once the attention has been given, there is no incentive to actually deliver. So we get clickbait headlines a…

The weird part to me is that the ad dollars have to lead to some sort of connection. The ad buyers need you to want something. Sure, some of it is just scams and politics (yeah yeah the jokes write themselves). But at core there are people who have an actual thing to sell, and people who want to buy things. It may not make them happy in the end but that's up to each of us to figure out for ourselves, and the philosop…

> In the end we've got to learn which ones matter to us.

Not all content is intended to sell a product or service. The really great stuff is not.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#198

Post by falsaberN1 »

DrammBA wrote: post #154
narcraft wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that people use literally to mean figuratively now which is literally the opposite of literally, but I've literally never seen someone use literally to mean figuratively. I have often seen it used to hyperbolize the strength of analogies or generalizations, which means they apply literally somewhat figuratively, but that doesn't mean that they literally mean for literally to mean figuratively.

> I'm literally dead right now Is that figurative speech?

Yes. Definitely.

If I say "I literally broke my arm" after I actually broke my arm, that use is completely correct. But you cannot be literally dead and still type a message, unless it's an automated message that you ordered someone/something to send AFTER you died.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#199

Post by Gud »

I think by now the most efficient social media would be an endless doom scroll with sub 5 second videos that the viewer gets to like or dislike to train the algorithm.

No thinking, just flashing lights straight into the brain.

I'm sure this is what the kids will be watching in 2-10 years. Total mindless entertainment. I'd develop it myself and get rich, if I didn't have a conscience.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#200

Post by ceejayoz »

passion__desire wrote: post #133
andsoitis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it would deflate the bias they wanted to project on the rest of us. I think that an important thing to understand is that social media generally doesn't project a single bias . It is more dangerous: it creates bubbles that encompass groups of people and then mine their minds for attention. This results in polarization, increased rage, and fake outrage, and the like. So it isn't really helpful to complain that…

Community Notes corrects for atleast factual claims right away. I have seen it on ads of products where the product is free and the Community Notes said the product is free only for a week. Here's a thing about fake outrage, for an outrage to be effective the opinion expressed in the tweet multiples the fact vector by a million, but community notes effectively deflates the opinion if it tries to do that. A person get…

> Community Notes corrects for atleast factual claims right away.

No, it doesn't. It's vote-based; enough people have to vote that it's a helpful vote for it to appear. That can take hours/days/weeks.

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