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The Clickbaitification of Netflix

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Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#301

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The Clickbait remover chooses a random thumbnail instead. I rarely go to youtube, but when I do, this makes it more bearable. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

In case anyone else initially misinterpreted it like I did: it replaces the thumbnail with a random frame from the video.

Oh, wow, that sounds amazing.

(also, I'm kind of curious in a disgusted way about what content creators would do if they had to optimize for that metric)

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#302
post #168

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I was driving to work (a foreign experience) and Joe Walsh was singing about a Maserati. And it made me thing “man, if you grew up in middle America, hearing about a Maserati, you might not even know what it was, let alone that it existed”. Now you can hit Google and see millions of pictures, join the fan club, watch hours of videos and reviews, and become an arm chair Maserati expert. Which is cool, but if sort of t…

“man, if you grew up in middle America, hearing about a Maserati, you might not even know what it was, let alone that it existed” I assure you that even a rural kid like me knew what a Maserati was. We had movies, TV, and car magazines. People's assumptions about information delivery pre-internet are horribly warped.

Fair - I think my point is more along the lines of seeing one and getting a detailed look at the features. That was reserved for car shows, but now there are hundreds of YouTube videos that go into a lot of depth.

And immediacy - before you’d have to wait if you didn’t have car and driver handy or the movie with the Maserati in it wasn’t rewound. Now it’s 30 seconds and you’ve got more information about them than you could look at in a lifetime.

Growing up, I didn’t know what certain words in songs were (because I couldn’t hear them clearly or just hadn’t heard the word). It meant finding album notes, looking for the lyrics (if they were there), then trying to use context clues to put it together.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#303

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For un-skippable DVD previews try VLC. Or if you must rip them MakeMKV can help.

Thanks for the MakeMKV suggestion, I'll look into it. VLC isn't an option at the moment, because we've hooked up a 60€ player to her television. Something with a remote with physical buttons that boots up in two seconds flat, never updates, always works the same and needs zero network connections. A pretty high bar to beat.

You have described a Raspi media center with a remote and the wifi turned off. It may take a couple seconds longer to boot, but you get back VLC et al in exchange, and there are many good, free options to use it as an interface for your NAS.

What a time to be alive

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the MakeMKV suggestion, I'll look into it. VLC isn't an option at the moment, because we've hooked up a 60€ player to her television. Something with a remote with physical buttons that boots up in two seconds flat, never updates, always works the same and needs zero network connections. A pretty high bar to beat.

You have described a Raspi media center with a remote and the wifi turned off. It may take a couple seconds longer to boot, but you get back VLC et al in exchange, and there are many good, free options to use it as an interface for your NAS. What a time to be alive

I have one lying around anyway, so maybe that's another viable path. I'll take a look at how appliance-like I could make such a Raspi, in terms of UX.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#305

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>we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine But that's a normal breakfast? Maybe it's more like eating only rabbits: rabbits for breakfast, rabbits for lunch, rabbits for dinner until you starve

I dont't understand the analogy with rabbits, what with the staving and all.

Back in UK history there were paid rabbit hunters, who'd roam a farmer's land hunting rabbits. They ate a lot of rabbit. It turns out that rabbit meat is not nutritionally complete and some of them died.

https://fourtallpalms.com/why-rabbit-meat-is-not-the-best-su...

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#306
post #168
post #154

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Very well put! I have another related theory that goes: Over time, everything converges into mediocrity . By everything I mean products sold to us, entertainment, media, the Internet itself. Look at the car designs of the 1970s and now. Look at cinematography then and now. As soon as marketing steps in and start telling otherwise innovative companies or artists how to sell, things begin slowly converging into mediocr…

I was driving to work (a foreign experience) and Joe Walsh was singing about a Maserati. And it made me thing “man, if you grew up in middle America, hearing about a Maserati, you might not even know what it was, let alone that it existed”. Now you can hit Google and see millions of pictures, join the fan club, watch hours of videos and reviews, and become an arm chair Maserati expert. Which is cool, but if sort of t…

> I think peoples tastes have shifted to quality in more areas, because they can quickly google and see what the best looks like.

I've noticed that I do a lot more min/maxing. I'm always optimizing my purchases for the best available at the lowest cost. Which means hundreds of hours of research. Research which often makes no real difference in the end.

I'm reminded of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg

If you're into the mechanical keyboard community or subreddit you know the meme of an "end game" keyboard.

This borders on mental illness at times. Preparing to do the thing you want to do rather than actually doing the thing.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#307
post #152

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> But if Facebook was running our diets, their algorithm would long since have "optimized" its way to junk food for all of us. I really, really like this comparison. If we fed our bodies in the same way we let tech company algorithms feed our minds, we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine

When I read that, I kind of thought "hasn't that already happened"? The most enduring symbol of American capitalism is caffeinated sugar water. Our athletics competitions are sponsored by fast food conpanies. We live in an obesogenic environment. Yeah, people with reserves of health, wealth and wisdom can buck the trends by applying time and energy to fighting against the tide but if the average person is falling for…

'conpanies' is a great word. Perhaps a mis-type, but perfectly sums up today's corporates.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#308

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Here's how the OECD does it at a country-level. A couple decades ago this probably seemed too hard. Then, it turns out it's not that hard to operationalize wellbeing and measure it at scale with statistical confidence. It isn't perfect — the science advances — and that's good. https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ Companies already invest heavily in the assessment and optimization of employee wellbeing. This is a majo…

After reading up on it, there's nothing about this that builds confidence that it's anything more an indicator of wellbeing than the "MyPlate" USDA guidelines are for dietary requirements.

That's insulting.

Please read more: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001100001663350...

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#309

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zero complications for me. businesses are built to generate profit at the customers' expense. Decoupling your life from businesses will generally provide you with more agency. Smartphones are a business boom because it integrated commerce into your psyche.

> businesses are built to generate profit at the customers' expense. Absolutely agree, which is why I'm bearish on the roles of companies. Companies are made up of people, and significant change comes slowly to people over very long periods of time. Look how long things woman's suffrage, unemployment benefits, and civil rights took. The U.S. is still fighting over single-payer healthcare while 66% of all bankruptcies…

The point is that they will support user wellbeing if it makes them more money. If half of society is saying "don't use Facebook, it's bad for you" that's not ideal from a business perspective. It's why McDonald's offers salad.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#310
post #152
post #107

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Humans are instinctively drawn to a lot of things that are really bad for us in significant amounts, because we are designed to fit into an environment where those things are scarce. Sugar, fat, inactivity, "interesting news", outrage. These all steal our attention because that response helped our ancestors survive and pick out these rare but important treats. But in typical human fashion we've now crafted a world th…

> But if Facebook was running our diets, their algorithm would long since have "optimized" its way to junk food for all of us. I really, really like this comparison. If we fed our bodies in the same way we let tech company algorithms feed our minds, we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine

> three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine

That was essentially what Hunter S Thompson used to have for breakfast, just with cigarettes instead of McDonalds [1]

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons...

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