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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#41

Post by aiono »

achierius wrote: post #32
iambateman wrote: post #4

First of all – the essay is phenomenal and his book is available online for free – https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36... > “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with politi…

Baudrillard just gets more relevant every day. Honestly I find it hard to imagine how someone could have media literacy in the modern day without coming to an intuitive understanding of semiotics, whether they know it or not!

I find the ideas of Baudrillard really accurate in describing some parts of modern life, but to be honest I feel like he just saying random stuff when I tried to read one of his book. It's so metaphorical and abstract it's very difficult to understand what exactly he is saying.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#42

Post by derektank »

alecco wrote: post #33

Watching YouTube anonymously with different browsers and cycling VPNs frequently, I see it quickly ends up suggesting the same videos during the same week. Not similar videos but the same ones. Many of those videos are below 1M and not particularly notable. This is after only watching a couple of videos and those videos are different every session. Either it has some magic fingerprinting I am not aware of (and I go t…

I find that going into your history and removing offending videos that seem to be driving the algorithm is more effective than using the "not interested" option on newly recommended videos

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#43

Post by cjs_ac »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #26
mhartz wrote: post #5

> The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their subjective experience already takes audience reactions into account. Isn't this sort of one of the themes from The Prestige(2006)? That certain magicians were so dedicated to their craft that they became inseparable from it. The performance never actually stopped

This isn't purely new, either. I'm perhaps dating myself a bit but I recall that over the years I have seen a few actors have this weird vibe where they're never "human", they always "on" and seem like their actor-thing has totally subsumed their humanity. David Cassidy and Shirley McClain come to mind for me on this.

Peter Sellers also had this problem; in his case, it was a problem with his personality (or lack of one) rather than something acting did to him.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#44

Post by n3storm »

throwway120385 wrote: post #15
iambateman wrote: post #4

First of all – the essay is phenomenal and his book is available online for free – https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36... > “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with politi…

It also explains why there's been an alarming trend over the last 10 years of people just getting more vehement about everything.

and I think "literally" abuse is a sympton of that

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#45

Post by iainmerrick »

n3storm wrote: post #44
throwway120385 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also explains why there's been an alarming trend over the last 10 years of people just getting more vehement about everything.

and I think "literally" abuse is a sympton of that

But come on, that's been going on for literally centuries.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#47

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ffsm8 wrote: post #28
dymk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10? We’ve been getting steadily more polarized since at least the 80s.

Possibly true, but I'm sure you'd agree that it can't really be called steadily since around 2010-2014

There is a straight line through 70s Falwell, 90s Limbaugh, tea party, to MAGA. All fueled by a self-reinforcing rage machine.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#48

Post by Communitivity »

achierius wrote: post #32
iambateman wrote: post #4

First of all – the essay is phenomenal and his book is available online for free – https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36... > “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with politi…

Baudrillard just gets more relevant every day. Honestly I find it hard to imagine how someone could have media literacy in the modern day without coming to an intuitive understanding of semiotics, whether they know it or not!

I called myself a Semiotics Engineer for 4 years, but the title didn't catch. I did domain analysis, logical model creation, concrete model creation in XML/OWL/KML, model review and improvement, semantic reasoning-based system design/implementation, and message system design/implementation. This was before the rise of ML.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#49

Post by alt227 »

n3storm wrote: post #44
throwway120385 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also explains why there's been an alarming trend over the last 10 years of people just getting more vehement about everything.

and I think "literally" abuse is a sympton of that

They changed the definition of 'literally' to fit the modern meaning. You can no longer call it abuse now as the misuse fits the new definition.

See definition 2 here:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/literal...

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#50

Post by magicalhippo »

hn8726 wrote: post #30
infecto wrote: post #9

Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining and really uncovered fascinating videos.

I have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months sometimes. I'm sure there's plenty of interesting co…

While I do agree it has a very strong focus on suggesting more of what you've recently watched, I feel it's also managing to suggest new and interesting unrelated stuff from time to time.

Some habits I have is to subscribe to channels which I truly enjoy, instead of marking as "not interested" I select "do not suggest channel", and be cautious of click-bait titles. If I get lured in, I remove them from my history.

So for me it's mostly great, though I get your frustration as well. For example I recently watched a couple of informative videos on the LA fires as I have some relatives living in the area, and suddenly my feed is tons of that and little else.

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