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Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

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Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#151

Post by deckard1 »

gammarator wrote: post #105
strogonoff wrote: post #15

> That’s because the company correctly intuited a significant gap between its users stated preference — no News Feed — and their revealed preference, which was that they liked News Feed quite a bit. The next fifteen years would prove the company right. Stop right there. What you mean is that their corporate wallets like it. These companies delude themselves if they consider “spend more time in the app” as an indicato…

Most of the theorizing about this episode gets the history wrong. The user outcry was because News Feed on rollout suddenly broadcast widely communication that had been previously been reasonably private. Suddenly pokes and wall posts between two friends were pushed to your entire network. Users weren’t wrong to dislike this! Facebook violated their assumptions, just as if you learned someone was live-streaming your…

Looking at Facebook is like looking at the rings of a tree. You can see the time where they worried about Twitter. Then they feared Snapchat. Now you can see how TikTok is making them panic.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#152

Post by allenu »

ZantaWB wrote: post #58
skyyler wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this sentiment before, could you explain what you mean?

He touches on this idea a lot, but most deeply in Infinite Jest where the parallels between between addiction to media and addiction to drugs is a major theme. In that story people have developed 'Entertainments,' basically video segments. Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably good that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied and has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment over and over. Th…

> Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably good that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied and has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment over and over. This Entertainment becomes a potent terrorist weapon since it can essentially take out anyone to whom it's broadcast.

There's a Monty Python sketch where someone comes up with the funniest joke in the world and dies laughing after penning it. It's eventually learned that anyone who reads or hears the joke immediately laughs themselves to death. Of course, eventually the army gets a hold of it to use as a weapon.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#153

Post by mike00632 »

radlad wrote: post #139
hammock wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able to fit in between other activities easily The same was said of video vs. reading. “I’m never going to want a video experience, it doesn’t fit in between other activities as well as reading a page of something.”

To be honest, I still feel this way. I can't stand when content is only available in video format. Give me text!

I feel this way when I click on a news article and it's actually a video with a headline.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#154

Post by drekipus »

HappySweeney wrote: post #142
jonny_eh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a rationalization they tell themselves.

It's more than that. In a game like roulette, probability has no memory. In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that. There are slots players just waiting for others to go bust so they can swoop in. Also, one would hope that those that are so addicted that they are fine to just haul-off and piss themselves would be able to think ahead and simply wear a diaper.

> In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that.

Riiiigggghhhhttttt

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#155

Post by austinjp »

scottmcdot wrote: post #145
slowmovintarget wrote: post #32

The Three Trends (according to the article): 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers o…

Can I coin the term "recommedia"?

"Recommercial"

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#156

Post by mike00632 »

jjeaff wrote: post #46
slowmovintarget wrote: post #32

The Three Trends (according to the article): 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers o…

Hmm, so basically you just sink into an overstuffed recliner and stare into a huge screen while it feeds you content interspersed with commercials?

How much is this recliner you speak of? Can I pay to skip ads?

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#157

Post by drekipus »

benreesman wrote: post #134
slowmovintarget wrote: post #32

The Three Trends (according to the article): 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers o…

You might enjoy The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1]. It addresses these themes quite directly. The thing is, we're sort of talking (still somewhat hypothetically) about the Internet becoming more like hard drugs here in terms of entertainment/pleasure/addiction potential, which puts pretty much everyone except for (by HN standards) serious conservatives in a bind on slamming social media: liberals like me and th…

> if those societies have high mobility in real-word achievement. So, not our society right now.

Our society isn't high mobility? Who has a higher mobility?

(* I realise this is the internet but I'm assuming you're talking about one of the five-eyes nations)

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#158

Post by beckingz »

ryandrake wrote: post #146
thelock85 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the evolution of the slot machine (as read in Matthew Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head ). A rough analog would be: 1. Medium: Mechanical reel > Digital reel 2. Gameplay: Fixed odds > Adjustable odds > Programmatic adaptive odds 3. Experience: Pull the lever and win or lose > Pull the lever and win even if you lose (e.g. get back change) > Swipe a card and win even if you lose > Swipe a card an…

Reminds me a little of Star Trek TNG's The Game [1], where the crew becomes addicted to an automated AR/VR game that just sits there autoplaying, directly manipulating the brain's pleasure sensors. Something like this, but one that also slowly transfers the contents of the user's bank account to a corporation, could be the ultimate end-result of our current capitalist-technologist trajectory. 1: https://en.wikipedia.…

"To unlock more Dopamine Crystals, please do this Mechanical Turk task and complete a side quest for Pepsi flavored Vat Fluid"

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#159

Post by ru552 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #32

The Three Trends (according to the article): 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers o…

What you describe as the "end of the line totally passive consumption of endorphins" we already have. It comes in various forms of drugs and you can pick the type of world blotting experience you desire.

Re: Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends

#160

Post by Kiro »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #32

The Three Trends (according to the article): 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers o…

> a wire into the pleasure centers of the brain

Sounds like the dream. I hope I live to experience it.

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