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The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

coryzue.com

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Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#271

Post by shadowgovt »

There's two ways to look at this problem.

One is that you're sacrificing something when you're not your authentic self.

The other is that communication is a two-way street, and people who invest the resources in finding their audience closer to where they are are making their audiences' lives easier, and the attention economy rewards them for that.

I note that most of the YouTube science educators I watch wear makeup, for example (unless they don't show their face at all). And they space their updates to make for a regular-ish pulse of content.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#273

Post by jonahx »

kortex wrote: post #267

Maybe this is my own neurospice speaking but...What even is authenticity? Do we even see authenticity in public? Any awareness that we are being observed introduces some amount of Hawthorne effect. Probably the most genuine folks are the introverts and socially averse. Regional burns are espoused to celebrate "radical self-expression" , and unlike the Big Burn, their smaller size seems to promote authenticity to a gr…

It may be hard to define, and sometimes you'll get tricked, but it doesn't make it less real.

You know it when you see it. Everyone does.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#274

Post by Root_Denied »

photonthug wrote: post #190
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly this is the exact opposite of the usual argument as to why Shakespeare is still popular, i.e. that his work speaks of a deep universal truth about the human condition.

> Conversely, when real artists struck chords with large groups of people, it was because they stumbled upon something unique that many people shared. Shakespeare has exactly this going on too, though. He contributed like a thousand neologisms to English that actually stuck. That probably doesn't happen unless your art is a bit like science, almost "discovering" something in the collective unconcious rather than an a…

There's an argument that Shakespeare didn't coin (all or some of) those phrases or words, that they were in common everyday use at the time but never written down because the type of people who used them couldn't write.

That would still be valuable in disseminating those neologisms further and giving them staying power, but it's less discovery and more documenting.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#275

Post by verisimi »

fhduksbegd wrote: post #266
stolenmerch wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may have a lot to do with the Twitter subcultures and communities you are following. I made a new Twitter account last month and feel extremely welcomed with conversation and followers. I'm not using it as a generalized social media account where I post random things, only interesting topics within a tighter community.

What communities and subcultures are you following for example?

Pirate bay, software downloads, that sort of thing I reckon. Given the username.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#276

Post by EGreg »

bnralt wrote: post #68

One thing I’ve noticed is that the culture on Twitter now is quite different than it was a decade ago, and the platform has calcified. A decade ago the common adivce for how to connect with people - Tweet often, comment often, follow accounts - connected you with a lot of people, and you would often end up following each other. I started a new account recently (hadn’t used my old one in years), and doing so now got m…

Same has happened on HN. Organic submissions don’t necessarily get the attention they did 10 years ago, based on just content.

Also keep in mind that the more informative the submission, the longer people spend on the site, the less upvotes it gets because by the time they return it would have likely scrolled off the screen. Short, punchy things dominate

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#278

Post by bnralt »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #216
bnralt wrote: post #68

One thing I’ve noticed is that the culture on Twitter now is quite different than it was a decade ago, and the platform has calcified. A decade ago the common adivce for how to connect with people - Tweet often, comment often, follow accounts - connected you with a lot of people, and you would often end up following each other. I started a new account recently (hadn’t used my old one in years), and doing so now got m…

The comment quality standards required for people to reply and/or follow you are higher now. Tweeting often is useless if you have nothing really substantial to say. There are millions of accounts that do that, and they’re mostly noise disguised as signal, but most of the Twitter community has caught on and now auto-filters it out. You’ve gotta get through that auto-filter now with information or insights of substanc…

I’ve found the opposite to be the case myself. When I was only posting substantive Tweets with new info, they wouldn’t be seen 99% of the time. But every so often a Tweet would get seen, gain some traction, be retweeted, people would say it was amazing. And I’d get zero new followers. Like I said, I did find ways to get new followers - but it was through gaming the system.

And this is something I see a lot. There are a ton of accounts that have less than 100 followers that only do substantive Tweets. And the people who keep rehashing the same clickbait have huge followings. Even most of the relatively substantive large accounts spend a ton of time rephrasing Tweets they’ve made before. A high volume mediocre account that games the system somewhat is going to be a lot bigger than an account that only Tweets/comments when they have something substantive to say, at least in my experience.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#279

Post by high_5 »

mrtksn wrote: post #46

Previously I objected to Musk's "Town Square" idea: >The whole feed based "internet town square" concept is flawed, if anyone have seen an actual European town square you would have noticed that it's nothing like Twitter or similar. In a good town square, you have people minding their own business and the public activities are actually curated(a few agendas that fit in the physical location) and people visit those if…

> However, maybe it is a town square but a bad one. Bad town squares are places where everyone tries to sell you something or make you do something and there are plenty of crazy people trying to grab attention and do things you would rather not see.

This reminds me of La Rambla in Barcelona, basically a tourist trap.

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