Elon Musk

when I go onto youtube to look at Deep Purple videos or whatever, it's interesting to see what's 'trending': 'OMG, watch what happen when the bridegroom finally opens to the pantry door!' or whatever.. who watches this shit? And it'll have like 750 million views

or whatever

I want to add that the good dancing videos are so good that they fill me with relief.

when I go onto youtube to look at Deep Purple videos or whatever, it's interesting to see what's 'trending': 'OMG, watch what happen when the bridegroom finally opens to the pantry door!' or whatever.. who watches this shit? And it'll have like 750 million views

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, October 25, 2022 1:43 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

One of the things that the internet has made certain: most people are incredibly simple, passive creatures.

the worst part about the youtube algo is how it feeds you conspiracy versions of your interests like hey noticed you watched an archaeology video on gobekli tepe would you perhaps like to watch this one about how atlantis was real

totally - I was looking for info about my old .22 rifle (xmas present when I was 12) and started getting survivalist suggestions, for when the Coming Storm arrives

i wonder if it's because the algorithm gives bonus points for having some sort of business angle or a product for sale, biased not necessarily toward "grift" itself but toward "commerce", which is a ton of grift and conspiracy

if you start a new account it really is astonishing how fast it leads you down the Joe Rogan/Ben Shapiro rabbit hole

as in, search for art and you'll find artists and galleries, search for music and you'll get pushed toward the things they're selling, celebrities have a tv show or a movie or whatever. but search for something that doesn't have a clear commercial connection, like "i am always lonely", and it still searches for some sort of commercial connection

i have my finger on the pulse of the nation - they're all searching "i am always lonely" on tiktok

if you start a new account it really is astonishing how fast it leads you down the Joe Rogan/Ben Shapiro rabbit hole

― frogbs, Tuesday, October 25, 2022 4:55 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it still tries to serve me joe rogan videos occasionally even tho ive done nothing to deserve it except maybe watching boxing documentaries

i wonder if it's because the algorithm gives bonus points for having some sort of business angle or a product for sale, biased not necessarily toward "grift" itself but toward "commerce", which is a ton of grift and conspiracy

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, October 25, 2022 4:54 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe who knows whats going on in there, but i think they also just consider conspiracy videos to be videos that belong to whatever category that legit ones do, its all just videos to them

yeah plus I would bet consp videos have really strong time-on-site numbers compared to less nuts content

you'll get pushed toward the things they're selling

Isn't this just Google in a nutshell?

It's all content

Matt Levine a few days ago pointing out that the funniest outcome here is that Musk doesn't come up with an angle and buys Twitter at $54.20 and at 5.01 Joe Biden rings him and says we've decided you are too close to China and Russia and he has to sell it at $10.00.

I mean, the best option is this destroys Musk and Twitter, and I'm still holding out hope.

oh i know that matt

https://www.garbageday.email/p/websites-are-just-places-to-talk

In fact, according to Know Your Meme, about 60% of the memes we’ve seen in 2022 were created by Twitter or TikTok. And the three biggest apps behind those two —YouTube, Reddit, and Instagram — all trail far behind, contributing around 10% each. And if these current trends continue, it’s likely that by next year TikTok will outpace Twitter. In fact, we’ve entered a new interesting moment where it’s usually unclear whether people on Twitter are talking about something because it’s on TikTok or if people on TikTok are talking about something because it’s on Twitter. Soon it won’t be. Very shortly, every platform on the internet will be completely downstream of TikTok.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:best,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1c8b5e5-0386-40b6-a1a8-e8209d6f3e91_680x375.png

But for people who do not closely follow TikTok — of which there are still many — culture will continue to feel more and more random and confusing. You can see this in the way TikTok “algospeak” has spread to other platforms, with words like “Unalive” becoming a now very common thing to see within particularly twee pockets of the internet. And readers ask me about inscrutable TikTok trends all the time. Most recently, a reader named George sent me an email last week about a weird and confusing TikTok trend where people were posting videos of “fastest workers”. Here’s a supercut from 2020. I also suspect this is contributing to the death of the influencer, as recently noted by Embedded, and the rise of the influencer-worker. It’s not particularly interesting to just be an influencer on TikTok, but it is interesting to follow someone who does something. Perhaps this is also connected to the “faster workers” trend.

But this creeping feeling that to not “be on TikTok” is to somehow not understand what’s going on anymore is spreading. In fact, I came across a Tumblr post that I thought articulated this idea pretty perfectly.

“Frequently, I’ll see a post here that’s like ‘as a society, we all need to stop engaging in the very common [activity/ behavior/ perspective that I have never once heard about in my life]’ and I’ll feel confused at first because this post will be treating this extremely niche unheard-of topic like it’s universal,” Tumblr user keplercryptids wrote. “And then I remember that I am not on TikTok. So many takes on this site are direct responses to what’s popular on TikTok and I am so happy to live in ignorance tbh.”

The question is, how long will you be able to live in ignorance as more and more of the machinery of our culture becomes branches for TikTok to analyze and optimize around?

memes as culture. i don't know what to do with that. memes are an episode of america's funniest home videos. but maybe it's true. maybe that's what our culture is

"Vine" lol

how long will you be able to live in ignorance as more and more of the machinery of our culture becomes branches for TikTok to analyze and optimize around?

Ehh - 'the machinery of our culture'? this is depressing

I’d rather be an old fartsack with my musty old books than have anything to do with TikTok. I did a deepdive the other week on skinny shaming and fatphobia on the platform, and both sides were completely unhinged and without a shred of nuance or understanding

the ultimate meme is the project to convince us memes are important

I still think the dancing baby on Ally McBeal is the ultimate meme

ha that baby could really get down!

hey it seems they're creating jobs in meme counting XXP

Not all rich dudes are arrogant. Elon Musk has never struck me as anything close to that.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Monday, August 12, 2013 6:13 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lmao some of the posts up thread are crazy

i defended elon musk for a long time because i thought it would be a good thing for humanity, overall, to move to electric vehicles

good lord though, at what cost, AT WHAT COST

I think it's dumb that he's throwing around numbers when he doesn't even have a working prototype. It just seems like he's hoping to derail the other project.

― wk, Tuesday, August 13, 2013 12:15 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

re hyperloop derailing sf > la high speed rail, he did years later admit to this

https://media.tenor.com/911FW6bHvHEAAAAM/80s-commercials-80s-mtv.gif

https://media.tenor.com/911FW6bHvHEAAAAM/80s-commercials-80s-mtv.gif

tiktok is fine if you want to laugh _at_ people, but other than that it's either vile or extremely stupid.

i like twitter and will be sad when the guy in the thread title destroys it.

i do think it would be kind of funny if he destroyed it not by turning it into a right wing hell hole or gutting its workforce but by trying to turn it into x, the everything app

kinda think hes not going to do all that much, tho just letting trump back on would be bad for the world

I like my part of twitter and Elon Musk can fuck off and die in a hole full of raw sewage.

he will change it like 3%, not noticeable to norms, annoying to some journos but THE EXPOSURE. dems will flap their arms without impact. 60% of any remaining left presence that even still plays with it will go someplace else, and GOP/authoritarian majority will become permanent.

jk jk, i feel better now. (gets out tracking sheet for future accuracy evals).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ff9bDQqXEAE8rdH?format=png&name=small

The question is, how long will you be able to live in ignorance as more and more of the machinery of our culture becomes branches for TikTok

A real culture doesn't shift at the speed at which TikTok memes emerge and are replaced.

Wont kids get bored with TikTok in 5 years and move onto something else like they did with Myspace and Facebook and Livejournal all of which were huge at their peaks? Let em all rot.

Yep, that think piece just panders to FOMO.

I saw an interesting article (on Twitter, lol) claiming that no social media site has yet been able to pull themselves out once they start declining. So good luck Facebook, Twitter, etc.

ive seen some big journalist accounts saying twitter got too aggressive for them, wonder if that was due to the maga influx, not the best people to have around

Kids do use groups chats in regular text messaging a lot I think

the ultimate private social media I suppose

One of these days some rebellious kids are going to want to actually meet irl and hang out

My 14 yo daughter and her friends almost exclusively use Snapchat for messaging.

my daughter (12) uses gchat

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/11/snapchat-layoffs-apple-tiktok/

Snapchat’s active user base surged to 350 million people per day, more than Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit. By 2022 it was the fifth-largest U.S.-based social media platform by active users, behind only Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and Google’s YouTube. An April survey by Pew Research found that 59 percent of American teens use Snapchat, while 15 percent said they use it “almost constantly.”

thats crazy considering snapchats stock is down more than anyones

i guess the problem is teens are poor and they grow up into tiktok users.