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First, make me care

gwern.net

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Re: First, make me care

#201

Post by cpt_sobel »

tombert wrote: post #16
simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

This is part of why I hate TikTok so much. I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I do this is actually specifically because it gives me less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music. A lot of time when I do the autoplay of YouTube Music, if I don't like the song in the first 15-20 seconds, I skip it to something else. I eventually realized that a lot of songs that I end up really liking…

> less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music

For the same reason (plus curiosity of what people are listening to in weird places) I recently switched to Radio Garden [0], highly recommend it (not affiliated)

[0] https://radio.garden

Re: First, make me care

#202

Post by mvc »

weitendorf wrote: post #128
mmooss wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gwern's point stands on its own merits regardless of what you think of the rest of their blog. And the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way: Lots of people, and especially lots on HN, are very engaged with Gwern's writing, so Gwern seems to be onto something about how to engage readers. What do you think that is? That would be valuable analysis. Or provide constructive feedback. The complaints aren't constructive…

I think I know the answer, but people don’t want to hear it. Gwern has a kind of formula/structure really effectively markets his blog to the HN audience, which is Not Bad Actually, just effective messaging + giving people what they want. You can’t really separate the content from its medium, its contex, and its audience if you’re thinking about “why is this successful” (why does the medium express the content n a pa…

> each me something but make me feel like “Finally someone who gets it” rather than challenged or threatened.

Ironically, AI has been making me feel like this lately. But it taught me all of this (i.e. your exact point about the psycological levers employed by people/organizations who understand why stuff goes viral).

So is that real or am I just being successfully marketed to, now by AI.

Re: First, make me care

#203

Post by noduerme »

andai wrote: post #42
simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

>TikTok [is] a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology Security researcher once told me that he sees social media as a distributed hacking attempt on the human mind. I think it's a genetic algorithm. You try random stuff and when something works you clone and mutate and crossbreed it.

Attention-seeking is indeed the original genetic algorithm.

Re: First, make me care

#205

Post by weitendorf »

mvc wrote: post #202
weitendorf wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I know the answer, but people don’t want to hear it. Gwern has a kind of formula/structure really effectively markets his blog to the HN audience, which is Not Bad Actually, just effective messaging + giving people what they want. You can’t really separate the content from its medium, its contex, and its audience if you’re thinking about “why is this successful” (why does the medium express the content n a pa…

> each me something but make me feel like “Finally someone who gets it” rather than challenged or threatened. Ironically, AI has been making me feel like this lately. But it taught me all of this (i.e. your exact point about the psycological levers employed by people/organizations who understand why stuff goes viral). So is that real or am I just being successfully marketed to, now by AI.

I guess my meta-point is that "marketing" shouldn't be such a dirty word, because done well enough, it's effective communication that gives people what they want/helps them AND makes them feel good. My own comment basically does the same thing I said he did, lol.

The point of calling it marketing is that this blog post is explaining hooks, basic content marketing (ie be entertaining or interesting), progressive disclosure, and understanding your target audience: standard marketing concepts. You can find a lot of info if you research them by those terms.

Gwern's audience, in an ironic twist of fate, think that being marketed to = being tricked or manipulated by an evil person, so here he is explaining basic content marketing concepts to the people his blog is marketed towards, who hate marketing and believe themselves immune to it.

AI does the same thing to you because 1. most of the web is marketing 2. why shouldn't it be nice to you AND help you? 3. you keep coming back for more, right? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

I highly recommend a deep dive into signalling theory if you're interested in learning more, it's completely changed how I think about communication and behavior, even my own.

Re: First, make me care

#206

Post by Nextgrid »

sevenseacat wrote: post #198
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is leaking to loads of other media too - movie trailers have started with some quick action shots, then BIG text saying "trailer starts now". Like a trailer to a trailer. Which is released after a teaser for a trailer. They even have recurring sound effects (vine boom sounds, but movie trailer edition where every action event (explosion, punch, scene change) is accentuated with a distinct drum boom sound effect,…

How I hate the trend of videos like YouTube shorts to almost show the punchline of the video at the start before the full video.

It's not limited to Shorts, even normal longform videos have had this crap for years now. I hate it too - fortunately SponsorBlock can take care of this, they have optional categories you can enable beyond just sponsors, including the "hook".

I was looking into making an automatic detector for this kind of thing (basically detect if anything in the first ~30 seconds repeats itself later in the video, and if so mark it) but my DSP skills aren't up to the task (and turns out LLMs are useless for these kinds of novel tasks).

Re: First, make me care

#207

Post by alexdobrenko »

klustregrif wrote: post #70
simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

> You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever That seems to be exactly what succesfull acounts are doing. They go a year or two creating content in a theme and then find that one hook that makes people stay a second to see what heir content is and then their entire personality and content becomes that one hook repeated until naseum and no matter what they do to try to escape it it's impossible since…

yes except all of this stuff...fundementally sucks, right? its why influencers generally don't become actors. there's very little depth to it. Versus for example Hank and John Green who sure, they have good hooks, but they also have depth?

idk can't tell if this is me hoping or coping

Re: First, make me care

#208

Post by alexdobrenko »

tolerance wrote: post #30

You know I’ve never read an article by Gwern that made me feel like he was sensitive to this idea, one that in my head essentially breaks down to the use of narrative and the leverage of “stakes” that inform the reader of kinds of conflict that make a narrative special. I’m reminded of a remark made by David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writ…

> Maciej Cegłowski

Where do you recommend one starts with his writing?

And who else do you love to read?

Re: First, make me care

#209

Post by smeej »

I found it really ironic that the author started with something attention-grabbing about a topic completely unrelated to his point, but then made a series of such mundane statements to begin his own writing that I didn't care enough to go past his first screen. He didn't make me care about why I should make people care.

Re: First, make me care

#210

Post by duxup »

simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

> You can't just find one hook that works

Is that true?

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