I like how the title of the article is "Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore" which is behind a paywall.
Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
331–340 of 537 posts
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#332A quarter of the US population didn’t watch the Moon landing. Monoculture has always been a myth.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#333For me trying to find out "what's happening online" has been like trying to drink the ocean -- always. "Online" was a big place, even in the 90s, and it's even bigger now. I go to a news site and there's an article about something that "went viral" and I missed it. I go into Target and there are toys based on Really Famous YouTuber that I've never heard of despite spending a lot of time on YouTube.
I don't know "what's going on online" and I probably never have. I only know what's happening in the little corners I visit. I think I like it better that way.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
> According to TikTok’s year-end report, the most popular videos in the U.S. Maybe better to wait for an independent actor to verify that (if thats even possible). It would not be in tiktoks best interests for instance to have in that list, people reading out Osama Bin Ladens letter and exclaiming him to be correct.
I'd mostly agree. But we can verify that particular instance's popularity by proxy through political content popularity. I would make the bet that it was not anywhere nearly as effective as Crunchy Cat Luna at getting views.
that comparison offers no insight whatsoever. statistic requires comprehensive sets of numbers and random selection, not two random aggregates from a single time period.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. I recently was on a plane with broken inflight entertainment, so all you could watch was a single movie in lock step with everyone else. When the movie ended, there was a weird sense of camaraderie; "we are all stuck in this tube and we all just sat through that mediocre movie".
I’m surprised people preferred watching the plane movie over whatever they had saved on Netflix on their phone.
Or read whatever books they have saved on their phones (which is what I would do since I don’t have any kind of videos saved).
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not an oxymoron. If before the top show was seen by 90% of all customers, and now each of 20 shows is watched by 5%, it will be comparatively very hard to find someone who has watched the most-viewed show of today despite it being the most watched. You panned someone for understanding basic math.
The most live viewers of a TV episode was the season finale of MASH in 1983[0] with 106 million. Unless the population rises to a trillion, it seems hard to imagine there will ever again be so much cultural consciousness directed towards a single show. I do not even know what is on broadcast TV any more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_televisio...
Less than half the population. So you could pick a random person and say they probably didn’t watch the most popular TV episode.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…
Who are the nebulous "elites" and are you suggesting that Musk and Trump don't belong in that number? It seems like the argument is that the sheep got one over on the _maybe_ wolves by... rallying behind a couple of _definitely_ wolves who threw on some crummy sheep costumes?
Trump genuinely isn't. Sure he has money in the bank, maybe, but he can't get invited to the cool parties. None of the newspapers support him. The man eats his steaks well done for crying out loud! I'm not saying this makes him better, much less that it means his presidency achieved something, but he was absolutely a different kind of person from who we usually see in power.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my early-40's, I've found that the massive gap between youth culture and adult culture has, thankfully, shrunk. While it's still the case that no 16-year-olds are going to want to hang out with us, their language and activities and perspectives don't feel as foreign as Boomers purported to feel about, well, everything. Because unlike previous generations, who fetishized leaving behind childish things and creating…
Are video games actually fun ? I used to spend a lot of time playing, until I had an epiphany and realized that it was more like working an unpaid part-time job. I was playing because I sort of felt obligated to reach the next level or finish the campaign or whatever, but I wasn't actually enjoying it and no one else cared about my achievements. So, I just quit and never looked back. Maybe I was just playing the wron…
Definitely playing the wrong games, imho. I've been an avid gamer in one form or another since the late 1980's and a game design trend that's really been put on steroids in the last 10-20 years is designers getting a lot more sophisticated about creating feedback loops that drive you to put in that one more hour (or ten more dollars) for that incremental hit of dopamine. There is a type of game that is very specifically engineered to get you to play as much as possible for increasingly incremental rewards. World of Warcraft was my own first exposure to this philosophy of game design and they had me hook, line and sinker.
On the other hand you have games which are designed almost like an art piece or a one-and-done thing where you experience what the designer intended and then you're done. For instance it's an old game but take Battle Chess for instance, you buy it, you play it for like an hour and it's chess with extra cool animation and art. Great, now when you want to play chess, you crack open Battle Chess, and when you don't want to play chess anymore you close it. A lot of indie games and adventure games still have this philosophy where it's more about delivering a high quality good experience that is finite, not stretching everything out to infinity.
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#339Recently I was thinking about how I am completely out of touch with the culture of younger generations, and was about to laugh it off cause that's how it is with every generation, but then I realized that I don't even know how I would know. In the past if you wanted to know what kids were listening to, you change the radio station to that new loud one you normally skip, or watch that new TV show that people are going…
Do what I do: have someone else spend their day surfing the web and then have them tell you about it. I subscribe the the "Garbage Day" substack by author Ryan Broadrick. Through this I recently discovered what many consider the first major Gen-Alpha meme: Skibidi toilet [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KrlkXOxlvCk [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skibidi_Toilet#Reception_and_i... [3]: https://garbageday.email/a…
Garbage Day is great, BTW
Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore
#340I like how the title of the article is "Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore" which is behind a paywall.
I like it when they put breaking news/ongoing dangers such as a shooting or a volcano eruption, behind a paywall. I’m earning a decent wage, but I can’t justify paying a dozen subscriptions to stay in the loop. So I disconnect and live in my own bubble. Ignorance is bliss.