The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy • Hacker News Board

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#331

Post by spacecadet » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 12:24 AM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #246

spacecadet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually infuriates me. All those people who spent the last 20 years building adtech and social media. Thanks! You created a world that is now skeptical of tech and makes the rest of our jobs harder. Frankly, Id be worried with social and ad tech companies on my resume. I basically throw these away now.

Some day it will be seen as a ridiculous thing like Tulip Mania, except in this case it requires much more smarts. Also we needed a ton of STEM smarts to prevent a climate disaster, oops.

Yes. Please stop making apps and help us solve some more pressing problems. We're living in a dark age of technology.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#332

Post by gigama » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 1:56 AM UTC

Here's a related Intercept article re: TwitX from today:

    https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/elon-musk-twitter-purchase/

This recent PBS Frontline episode was also quite good:

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/elon-musks-twitter-takeover/

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#333

Post by dllthomas » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 3:10 AM UTC

DrammBA wrote: post #154

narcraft wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that people use literally to mean figuratively now which is literally the opposite of literally, but I've literally never seen someone use literally to mean figuratively. I have often seen it used to hyperbolize the strength of analogies or generalizations, which means they apply literally somewhat figuratively, but that doesn't mean that they literally mean for literally to mean figuratively.

> I'm literally dead right now Is that figurative speech?

Of course.

Would you be less likely to interpret it as such if the speaker had omitted "literally"?

I would say that the sentence is an example of hyperbole. "I am so figuratively dead right now it's as if I am literally dead." The meaning of literally, there, remains intact.

In the same way, when someone complains that you left them waiting for "days" we don't say "sometimes days means ten minutes" but that sometimes people exaggerate.

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#334

Post by ak-47 » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 5:22 AM UTC

tensor wrote: post #123

fullshark wrote: post #45

People aren't authentic when they are talking to everyone on the planet at once, unless they are incredibly naive. They are authentic talking to their friends, or family, in private conversations. A lot of people were naive in the early days and it made for amusing conversation, not any longer and these platforms are just about brand management / advertising now.

People are not authentic talking to friends or family in private either. The entire authenticity cult is a creation of modern media and is as much manufactured as "fitting in" is. In fact, I'd say that it's GOOD that people craft their image, no one genuinely wants to hear your unfiltered thoughts. Usually people who do that are considered socially maladjusted.

> unfiltered thoughts

Is a passable but bad example of authenticity.

Truth is orthogonal to effort. Alice crafted a message. She distilled years of experience into a pithy tweet. Bob crafted a message to round out his brand.

I want to hear what others truly believe.

> The entire authenticity cult is a creation of modern media and is as much manufactured…

Where can I learn more about this? (serious)

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#335

Post by oakhaven » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 7:18 AM UTC

arnaudsm wrote: post #102

Same reason why Wikipedia contributors do not want to be paid, and why cryptocurrency-based wikis failed. Money is not always the best incentive. It is leaking in every part of our society, sometimes in a destructive way. It's great for innovation and infrastructure, but not for our social life and human rights.

What do you think is the best incentive?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#336

Post by akkad33 » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 8:04 AM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #26

>And yes, on the surface this incentivizes people to create better content. The better your content is, the more it gets seen, and the more money you make. And yet, my felt experience of this change is the exact opposite—as people seek more engagement, their content gets worse. What’s going on here? It always tickles me when terminally online people realize that human connection doesn't scale . It's valuable precisel…

Do people actually say meatspace?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#337

Post by anotheryou » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 8:43 AM UTC

Easy band-aid: hide all blue check-mark people. It filters out exactly those running twitter as a business.

It will also revive the comments (because checkmarks float to the top and now you quickly scroll past them)

I wrote a userscript that does this https://pastebin.com/hfw8eQcf

It highlights and optionally collapses "seen" (scrolled past) and "blue checkmark" tweets. If you don't want the seen thing I could patch that out for you.

looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/o68inWp.png

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#338

Post by jamaicahest » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 11:16 AM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #278

SkyMarshal wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So what you're saying is Twitter/X works the same way as every other human communication medium, i.e. provocative statements get more attention.

On the other hand, if zero people retweet your "substantive Tweet", maybe it's just not that interesting to anybody but you?

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#339

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 12:09 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #330

robertlagrant wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that sports are not profitable in America? That schools and colleges in America are not run for profit? That churches and charities are not formed primarily for financial/tax benefits? Or that people can't play non-profit basketball in their local park under socialism? Or that capitalism hasn't done a work on the 'local community' by replacing third-places with places that require you to spend money…

> " That's correct; I'm not saying those things. " Then your claim "Society in capitalism is generally separate to markets, e.g. your local community, or charirites, or churches, or sport, or schools." has fallen over. Those things are taken over by capitalism-slash-markets because there is profit to be made, above all other concerns (e.g. the health of football players / brain trauma, the constant advertising, the p…

[deleted]

Re: The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy

#340

Post by robertlagrant » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #330

robertlagrant wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that sports are not profitable in America? That schools and colleges in America are not run for profit? That churches and charities are not formed primarily for financial/tax benefits? Or that people can't play non-profit basketball in their local park under socialism? Or that capitalism hasn't done a work on the 'local community' by replacing third-places with places that require you to spend money…

> " That's correct; I'm not saying those things. " Then your claim "Society in capitalism is generally separate to markets, e.g. your local community, or charirites, or churches, or sport, or schools." has fallen over. Those things are taken over by capitalism-slash-markets because there is profit to be made, above all other concerns (e.g. the health of football players / brain trauma, the constant advertising, the p…

This seems highly incomplete. Millions of people play football amongst themselves. Only looking at professional footballers is just the apex fallacy. The fact that a few people are paid to play doesn't negate that cultural reality.

Even then they are voluntarily playing football as probably by far their best option in life. Paid for by hundreds of millions of people who want to watch the best football possible, and will pay for it.

Finally, people choosing to pay for things isn't capitalism taking over culture. Everything about football requires money: paying for a football to go for a kickaout isn't hideous commercialism.