181–190 of 410 posts
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Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too. Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.
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People who want a certain party to be in power should hold that party to a higher standard. Independent of the party. Being "better than the others" is not good enough.
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.
So firstly I think for understanding YouTube it's much longer but it's better to just read Mr Beasts onboarding guide ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS... ). It gives a more complete picture straight from the horses mouth (and I always prefer primary documents if I can). That being said I think the author here is taking some things for granted. An example of this to me is "As I wrote in t…
Your conclusion is the exact same one the above essay comes to in the next paragraphs. It concludes that the "alignment" between MrBeast and his work is a result of the larger thesis: creators are ultimately created by the audience conditions of the platform. Or, authenticity doesn't mean much when the root of the creator isn't a ground truth, but a synthesis of demand.
“Luckily, I’d say I’m a pretty predictable guy.” Luck has nothing to do with it, Mr. MrBeast. Your predictability is the result of years of an information diet consisting of audience feedback metrics. You are the proudest creation of the YouTube Apparatus."
Audience feedback metrics are only part of what a creator does. They are people with complex motivations and being sensitive to audience feedback metrics doesn't eliminate that. I could see saying the ecosystem being a synthesis of demand (I mean that's just trivially true, we don't need an essay on Mr Beast to say that) but from interviews Mr Beast is very much a product of the pressure of YouTube mixed with the very specific nature of who Jimmy is as a person (from interviews he seems like a pretty weird guy and his videos definitely reflect his particular quirks).
Edit: I'm trying to see how the author and I agree but unless the author is saying that people who succeed on a platform are the people that do things that are successful on the platform (i.e. align with audience metrics) then I don't think we agree. And I don't think that's all they are saying because that's just trivially true everywhere and it would make all the talk about philosophy and authenticity useless cruft. I think that Mr Beast is the sorta platonic ideal of a "content creator" driven by metrics and even he cannot escape his own Jimmy Donaldson-ness in his videos.
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…
Exactly, intensification or acceleration, this is exactly the root of most issues. Since we've mastered energy (and in particular oil&gas), the world has been on an acceleration binge, which is now causing a lot of friction and overheating in the relationships and environment. We need to slow down and to connect back to nature
We need to build maps and steering wheels.
The reciprocal relationship between speakers and audiences is well documented in rhetorical studies. The example of Hitler's development as a speaker is discussed in Ian Kershaw's biography "Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris." According to historical accounts, Hitler's early speeches in 1919-1920 for the German Workers' Party were rather technical, focusing on economic topics like inflation and the Versailles Treaty's economi…
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Dickens did it. And people have been doing it since the 1700s. Not to mention, if you're using the word "literally" to mean "something that actually happened", you are also using the word wrong. Because it means "relating to or expressed in letters". I also notice people complain about "literally", but they never complain about "really" which also gets used in the same ways even though it means the opposite. And I've…
What would you suggest using instead. Actually?
I'm interested in how many people here on HN watch Mr Beast - I've never watched any of his videos ever, and I spend far too much time on YT.
It was the one where he "gave away" a chocolate factory, after he did the Willy Wonka thing with his chocolate bars where you could win a chance to be on the show. I clicked because I was curious what he was actually "giving away", if it was actual chocolate factory property, shares in his snack brand, or some disused industrial building. They had a "candy room" with plants supposedly made of real sweets but it looked like a cheap imitation of the Willy Wonka movie, the walls were mostly white and it seemed like it could have used more set dressing. The actual content was a game show (seems to be a lot of his videos) but it didn't make good use of the space they built, I think it was a basic scavenger hunt. Then the contestants had to throw a giant Mento into a giant Coke bottle, it was impressively large but the game wasn't exciting at all, they just threw the disc at the bottle over and over without any drama. MrBeast even said something like "we're going to be here a while" so he started their ad read, that's when I turned it off.
Unlike a TV game show or reality show the contestants had no characterization, they didn't play up any rivalries or reactions or drama. It seemed like they were there doing the most basic challenges so MrBeast could talk about what they made and give away something expensive at the end. I found it all very odd and it reinforced that I am very far from the median viewer since I found none of it interesting.
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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!
Yes, the 21st century is the age of simulacra and simulation. Post-truth society.
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The murder of the united healthcare CEO, or more specifically, the positive reaction towards it, seems rather associated with the left, doesn't it? People who want a certain party to be in power should hold that party to a higher standard. Independent of the party. Being "better than the others" is not good enough.
Harris vs Trump voters who...
Approve: 5-11% vs 2-8%
Neither approve nor disapprove: 6-12% vs 7-13%
Disapprove: 65-71% vs 72-78%
Not sure: 6-12% vs 4-10%
Not a super substantial difference. The outrage machine wins again!
Source: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Reactions_to...
I'm interested in how many people here on HN watch Mr Beast - I've never watched any of his videos ever, and I spend far too much time on YT.
My wife is probably closer to a YouTube-native watcher, in the sense that what she's watching is created for YouTube specifically, but even then, it's informational deep-dives, lately on liminal spaces lore, Twin Peaks fan theories, and 3d printing. She raved glowingly lately about a 4-hour long Twin Peaks explainer. I'm sure that is many things, but it isn't flashy, short, there is no skimpy clothing, bright colors, or whatever it is that YouTube is supposed to be incentivizing. Whoever made it almost certainly made no money off of the effort and dumped decades of his life into the study of what ultimately came out there, and nobody is watching it because of the algorithm or a clickbaity thumbnail. The only people watching something like that are the most serious of serious nerds who deeply love Twin Peaks and probably have for most of a lifetime.