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TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

thenexus.media

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Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#121

Post by bstsb »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #116

To be fair, you can just ignore TicToc. Okay... maybe you can't. Maybe there are people in your life that won't let you forget it exists. Maybe your job is in communications and you have to get on TicToc (or YouTube or InstaGram or whatever.) 170 million people is about half the U.S. population. And I can't say this without sounding like an elitist pr*k, but it's always seemed like about half the population is below…

there are some amazing creators on tiktok. yes, the core user loop rewards fast-paced content, but that's led to some amazing educational creators using the short nature of the videos to their advantage. for example, etymologynerd makes really interesting videos on the origins and definition of newly spreading slang online, and goes really in-depth with his content.

also not sure why you kept purposely misspelling TikTok given the app name is the first thing in the headline?

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#122

Post by kelseyfrog »

Reading Debord's Society of the Spectacle in the age of TikTok is surreal.

In some ways, it reads like prophecy. He mapped the inevitability of image-mediated life before we had the feeds to prove him right. In other ways, it feels trivial. Today's hyperreality makes the theory so obvious it barely registers as theory at all, more like a weather report. We don’t have to imagine the spectacle when we're already drowning in it.

My gripe with "How is new media transforming us?" journalism is that it never gets past the pre-theoretical stage. It inventories symptoms: shorter attention spans, algorithmic optimization, but won't name the cause. It's like reporting the moon's position every night and refusing to mention gravity.

The point that matters is Debord's: social relations mediated by images have replaced embodied relations. Platforms sell us connection, but what they deliver is commodification. Yes, some internet friendships spill into real life. But most are fragile, living inside economic structures designed to monetize attention. Everyone already knows the real relation isn't friend-to-friend but user-to-advertiser, and money always wins.

That's the basecamp for any way out: recognizing that hyperreal social life can't substitute lived social life. The spectacle doesn't mediate friendship, it mediates consumption. And if Debord feels obvious now, that's only because his warning has become the background condition of everyday life. Facebook can't really connect you to friends; it can only connect you to advertisers.

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#123

Post by cogman10 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #66
quxbar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't even look at a youtube video essay about an obscure vintage RPG (my preferred form of guilty pleasure viewing) if it's under 20 minutes long.

I understand the motivation but this mindset has failure modes of its own: I'm noticing an increasing number of longform YouTube essay channels adding tons of unnecessary padding to increase the runtime. They don't all do this-- to pick a random example, I think Defunctland videos are exactly as long as they need to be-- but a bunch of the smaller ones do. Ultimately there's no metric shortcut for actual quality.

The other failure is that youtube wants quantity over quality. That incentivizes some bad behaviors. The hbomber video about plagerism is ultimately about that. Taking shortcuts, using 3rd parties (or now AI) to write scripts. It's all really negatively impacted the medium.

AI in particular is like coke to lazy content makers. I've had to drop a few because it became clear that AI took the lead in writing.

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#124

Post by sirbutters »

daedrdev wrote: post #26

Youtube forces 30 seconds of adds multiple times a video. Tiktok has absolutely become more popular than youtube thanks to its less intrusive ads.

Am I the only one who absolutely despises vertical videos? For that reason alone I would not touch TikTok with a 10ft pole.

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#125

Post by markus_zhang »

ndriscoll wrote: post #5

This post popped up a blocking window before I was even 3 sentences in, so maybe unsurprising that I clicked away in less than 60 seconds. If the author wants people to read whatever it is they have to say, maybe they should not put distractions in front of their writing?

Also the margins are too large. I really disdain the "modern" UI designs and I'm not afraid to disdain the people who design them.

Better to be just a txt file. If OP wants $$, just put up a Pantheon page.

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#126

Post by gchamonlive »

keiferski wrote: post #12

Too simple of a narrative. At the same time, YouTube videos are getting longer, and people are watching more YouTube videos on TVs than on mobile devices: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2025/02/12/launched-... So I think we're seeing more of a bifurcation: in-depth longform videos are becoming 30, 40, 60, even 90 minutes long, whereas anything shorter than 10 minutes is being compressed to 30-60 seconds. The…

Yeah that's kinda like pushing the narrative of "the end of history" just for social networks which I think is very flawed. We can't underestimate the influence the medium has on thought, but I think we aren't in a dystopian monopoly of social interactions just yet.

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#128

Post by AlexAplin »

moduspol wrote: post #84
zoba wrote: post #7

So strange to think about how Vine could’ve won this and an American company could’ve been the leader here.

And remember Quibi [1]? Short-form video in vertical format specifically for mobile devices? They didn't have every aspect nailed, but they were definitely trailblazers on that front. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi

Quibi launched in April 2020. TikTok by this point would have 2 billion downloads [1]. It's difficult to assess they were trailblazers here. I might even say a component of their failure is free mobile video was widely accessible by this point.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/29/21241788/tiktok-app-downl...

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#129

Post by mtalantikite »

rrgok wrote: post #74
mtalantikite wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could watch an hour long fast paced video just fine, but watching a slow paced show, or reading a book is so much more difficult. Attention and concentration are skills that can be trained, so not all is lost. I was feeling like I was losing my focus about a decade ago and decided that every morning I'd wake up and read a novel for 30 minutes or so. Within a few weeks you'll notice the difference.

I don't understand. The problem is not that we don't have attention or concentration. Otherwise how can he watch hour long fast paced video. This a different form of attention. I would like to call it the intensity of attention. Reading a book, require attention but of lower intensity. While watching an hour long fast paced video, require a high intensity attention.

Well, one is active and the other is passive.

In the case of watching an hour of video, you're just there consuming what's going on. Reading a novel requires you to world build internally. I'd say that sort of attention is a much higher intensity version. Or at least it takes a lot more active involvement.

If you've ever sat for meditation you'll know that low-input stimulation can be much harder to keep your attention on, but being lost in daydreaming and 'monkey-mind' chatter is pretty effortless. Once you train in it it becomes no big deal, though. Same is true for reading novels.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23988110/

Re: TikTok has turned culture into a feedback loop of impulse and machine learning

#130

Post by testdelacc1 »

keiferski wrote: post #12

Too simple of a narrative. At the same time, YouTube videos are getting longer, and people are watching more YouTube videos on TVs than on mobile devices: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2025/02/12/launched-... So I think we're seeing more of a bifurcation: in-depth longform videos are becoming 30, 40, 60, even 90 minutes long, whereas anything shorter than 10 minutes is being compressed to 30-60 seconds. The…

I’m addicted to RealLifeLore on YouTube. Each video is 30-40 minutes long. There’s really a quality you can get only with length.
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