Live data from Hacker News

The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

coryzue.com

211–220 of 347 posts

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#211
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…

I do not understand the gobsmacked face thing. It has been going on for years. There’s no way Google doesn’t know about it. I guess we should assume they… want it that way?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 > To be fair, most web users are happy with the arrangement - they get an endless feed of free tiny doses of dopamine while they avoid the real responsibilities of life. I'd argue it's mostly the latter. Most creators produce content…

I think we are missing one important point. Communities acclaimatize to ground realities, though it takes time. In my early experience of social media, people were criticized for not writing correct English. That is almost gone. Infact, now people realize that people belonging to different backgrounds can't be expected to perform in one particular context. There is reverse sort of meme, where non-natives are celebrat…

*grammar

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#213

> 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…

I definitely think that if the product is good enough people will put up with ideological differences with leadership. Elon made it too easy to leave Twitter in this regard by making the product worse at the same moment he was posting half baked opinions about social issues.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#214
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I blame it's cold, sterile lighting. I don't know why, but something about Walmart's lights make it feel clinical. More like a laboratory simulating a grocery store and running experiments on the masses. Thus the walmart people (they're plants, obviously)

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#215

>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…

When MySpace first started getting big I remember people talking about how many friends you could have on it.

And I remember not understanding at all because these weren't friends and who the hell can handle having hundreds or thousands of friends?

I never understood MySpace and in many ways I still don't understand Facebook (I do on a rational level but not an emotional one).

I'd rather have 3-4 lifelong friends than thousands of online friends. And that doesn't mean you can't make real connections with people online, just that doing so takes years of effort just like offline friends, so doesn't scale, just like you said.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#216
post #68

One thing I’ve noticed is that the culture on Twitter now is quite different than it was a decade ago, and the platform has calcified. A decade ago the common adivce for how to connect with people - Tweet often, comment often, follow accounts - connected you with a lot of people, and you would often end up following each other. I started a new account recently (hadn’t used my old one in years), and doing so now got m…

The comment quality standards required for people to reply and/or follow you are higher now. Tweeting often is useless if you have nothing really substantial to say. There are millions of accounts that do that, and they’re mostly noise disguised as signal, but most of the Twitter community has caught on and now auto-filters it out. You’ve gotta get through that auto-filter now with information or insights of substance, and those simply take longer and more effort to generate, there’s no silver bullet.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#217
post #125
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!

Walmarts are full of broke, burnt out people clinging to survival, so it's like bumper cars with buggies due to already stretched attention spans. If you can afford Costco and have a place to put the bulk savings, you're probably a little better off and less harried.

"less harried" is not how I'd describe Costco. Just getting into and out of the one in Seattle is like visiting a theme park. Once you manage to find parking, you give up your personhood. You're now just part of the slowly moving mob with carts.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If I'm on my regular nightly haunting mission, and I decide to speak to the new owner of the house that I'm haunting, how do I convey to them that I am really, actually, truly dead? I could say, "I'm literally dead", but they would think I'm laughing at their joke they just made!

If the answer to this is to avoid the word "literally", and instead replace it with "really, actually, truly" (like I did above), then I might just decide to retire from haunting.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#219
Twitter isn't about people connecting, or even about advertisers and making money.

It's about controlling the national conversation. Anything noisy enough on twitter will be picked up by hungry media of all sorts, so a steady stream of disinformation can exhaust any real governance feedback cycle.

Elon bought Twitter so he could be a player in national elections.

(And the death of authenticity hasn't been particularly slow. It may be that people who sacrificed time and loyalty are blind to the possibility that it was a complete waste and a huge mistake to enable this.)

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#220
post #209
post #199

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.

that already exists...it's called tiktok

I'm talking about taking it even further.
Post reply on HN