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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#171

Post by mrguyorama »

ryandrake wrote: post #150
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I have the opposite experience. I used to get relevant videos to what I was watching. If I'm watching a Phish video, it would recommend other Phish videos. These days, if I'm watching a Phish video I will literally, as in literally literally, get a Candace Owens video recommendation. I have literally never clicked on one of her videos ever. I don't watch political content on youtube at all, and if I did I am v…

It's so weird and obvious that shenanigans are going on in the recommendation algorithm. I'll watch a Video Game Streamer, and in the sidebar, the top ten recommended related videos are: - Same streamer, different video - Different streamer - Far right pundit blasts immigration - Video game streamer - Video game streamer - Video game review - Same streamer, similar content - Ben Shapiro OWNS Liberals with FACTS - Vid…

There is massive overlap between those who watch video game streamers and those who watch the right wing rage content. Youtube is recommending you the videos those other people who watch video game streams watched next.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#173

Post by garte »

pjc50 wrote: post #134
Xmd5a wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your take on LLMs ? I ask you to comment on any aspect, whatever you think is the most interesting from a semiotician's perspective.

Everyone who is familiar with Baudrillard goes "simulacrum!" whenever they encounter LLM output. LLM output is after all a pure chain of symbols that is extremely far removed from a connection with ground truth reality.

I'm not sure it's that direct of a connection.

There's something to be said about the structuralist part of it: using large amounts of text as a rule set to return a semblance of truth seems to be a structuralist's wet dream.

It's like drawing the map for the king: the real is being represented by reducing a huge number of data points to a mixture of randomness and hard rules that pretend to be real.

At the very least it's a form of hyperreality as far as I understand it.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#174

Post by xoxxala »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #53
hn8726 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think what you describe is what infecto was saying. You can't use YouTube to find interesting content anymore. You can only use it to find more of what you've already seen. In the past, it was better at unearthing new things. Personally, I added uBlock filters so the home page is empty and recommended videos aren't shown. I only ever go to subscriptions now.

Similarly, I use Unhook because it gives me fine control over what YT displays. I now find YT to be completely unusable without it.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#176

Post by lanternfish »

senko wrote: post #107
n4r9 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point? By purely focussing on business-centric strategies, the videos no longer have meaning.

This presumes that MrBeast intended to create "videos with meaning" in the first place. In his defense (!?), most of what's churned out by the streaming platforms, hollywood, and the music industry, is also not very bothered by lack of meaning.

This seems an insufficient analysis. The meaning expressed by contemporary music, film media, or streaming television isn't very profound, but they at least still make a passing effort to "signify" something. The highest grossing movie of 2024 - Inside Out 2 - is not a deep text, but it does have a thesis.

The "Pixar apparatus" is definitely increasingly consumed by audience demand, but they're at a minimum in a transitional phase: something like Seeing Red would never get workshopped out of committees.

Youtube and other social media (emphasis on media) is ground zero for the decay of meaning into intensity; the ultimate incestuous product of auto-simulacra.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#177

Post by stafford_beer »

llamaimperative wrote: post #90
Salgat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people confused like me on what intensification means, it means maximizing the amount of attention and interaction that occurs. On Youtube this would be the metrics that drive engagement, including views, likes, comments, shares, and watch time. The issue is that the content focuses on driving engagement at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence and depth, for example by sensationalizing or oversimplif…

For an excellent, prescient, hilarious, and terrifying book on this topic, I highly recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.

OP here -- excellent suggestion, I've been heavily influenced by this book and would also recommend Postman's "Technopoly"

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#178

Post by stafford_beer »

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!

OP here -- I like Baudrillard and McLuhan but the media theorist who best captures the present IMO is Flusser: https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybe...

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#179

Post by lanternfish »

Invictus0 wrote: post #101

Breathless navel gazing. It's not that he's wrong, it's just that this article adds nothing new to the conversation other than excessively technical mumbo jumbo. Just read MrBeast's original document.

The actual work underlying the essay - the one published in Cambridge Core - is pretty strong and has a lot of pretty compelling analysis. It's just long.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#180

Post by dmonitor »

eitally wrote: post #2

At the top of the heap (Mr Beast, Nastya, Ryan, etc), this is true: > 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. > Or more simply, YouTubers are not “Creators” but Creations. Audiences, rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who upload the videos those audie…

Well put. As long as channels like Technology Connections can remain financially viable on the platform and not beaten down by the algorithm, I really don't care how many Mr Beasts are making "slop content".
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