Surely this must be a consequence of those AI generated Elsa Spiderman videos
Using AI loosely here. I think there's some that were made by humans but the sheer scale means they were automating production of them
they were humans attempting to chase an ever changing and obfuscated algorithm, which might as well be AI at that point
I hope I'm just a miserable old codger when it comes to how much I worry about kids growing up on hyperspeed social media and what it does to their brains.
God I wanna be wrong about this, please god let me be worrying about nothing here
as somebody in Gen Z: people have been doing stupid shit for as long as people have existed and we have quotes from the older generation complaining about the younger generation and how they are doomed since literally the time of the Romans.
the real enemy is the invention of the camera to capture all this stupid shit
that being said, the internet is definitely a unique phenomenon which does have genuinely negative effects on young people that can't be dismissed, and regulation of some kind or another is absolutely required; the exact way to do that is still kinda up in the air and we should be careful that such regulation isn't just used to further isolate/shame "weird" people who do "weird" things, however that is defined in any particular country.
also, any changes to the internet definitely shouldn't be based on any profit motive but unfortunately they likely will, so incomprehensible horrors await for the next few years and decades
I'm not really worried about individual people doing stuff and filming it to post online. The older I get, the more I realize that a lot of (maybe even most) people's hobbies, interests and fantasies can be just plain weird, but as long as they aren't hurting other people, the environment or themselves I think it's a beautiful thing and worth being shared.
I'm worried about the kids sitting in front of the endless stimulation machine.
tbh, and this may be the old codger talking here, even if we lived in some far flung future where the AI pink sludge machine could churn out endless media with the visual quality of Disney Renaissance films and with the content of the most refined edutainment material out there, I'd still say hey, the kids should be spending most of their time playing with other kids or doing arts and crafts or reading at their own pace.
But we live in a would where there's only the hyper algorithm shitstream and a lot of kids are not spending most of their time playing with other kids or doing arts and crafts or reading at their own pace, because we are in hell.
That's my take: teenagers in ancient Greece were knocking off the dicks of Hermes statues, but they didn't have an internet powered distraction amplifier.
Okay I'm gonna get real old for a second.
I was diagnosed with adhd because I like, lose my car in parking lots and dropped out of high-school. Yesterday, a gen Z kid told me his adhd was so bad that sometimes when he checks for oncoming cars he forgets if there was a car or not.
Our brains are not working the same way. I don't think Gen Z understands how slow the internet used to be. Like, back in the bulletin board days, every website was like chapo.chat on a very slow day. There were no upvotes and posts would stay at the top for days or years on end.
YouTube was basically other people's home videos in the early days.
I cannot stress how weird, fast moving, and endless tiktok is and what that's doing to people's brains. Like, most people used to be able to sit down and read books. Now they're a minority.
It's not just the camera.
I wasn't alive 30+ years ago to experience it myself, but it does really feel like you're right. I think I might know more people my age who are barely functional due to mental health issues than not... and from working in a high school a bit recently I don't think gen Z is much better off. Maybe it's self-selecting but I don't know a lot of people who struggle that much to cope from older generations.
Like, most people used to be able to sit down and read books.
I'd like to see the numbers on this, because I don't get the impression that most people really read books even then
omg you really are young if you don't realize how popular books used to be.
I am yeah, and evidently I was wrong, but mostly as an underestimation of how many people read even now, since everything I can find with a quick search indicates most Americans actually still read
I want to be wrong about so many things at this point. The Cassandra curse is real.
I feel like I'm watching my health bar drain while trying to figure out how to counterattack or even duck.
Zoomer here, how Tiktok lives are supposed to work and who watches them continues to elude me. Like I guess they're supposed to be attention grabbing because they show in your feed like normal videos so the stream should be equally interesting at any given moment for whoever might scroll by, but idk who actually clicks on them except accidentally. I think I've voluntarily clicked on a live once and that was some people going around covering the protests in France live. But for the most part yeah lives are the weirdest shit and I see people even on the app comment on that a fair amount. It's been some time but I know at least there seemed to be a Tiktok live trend of just like, being in a bed and "trying to sleep", but when people send some things (idk what they are or how they work), it might play a particular loud noise, violently shake the bed, or whatever. It's just really really weird all round.
People are getting cheap laughs by paying this performer to do stupid shit.
It looks like this because, rather than a corporation paying a performer humiliate themselves in whatever way some manager thinks is most effective, some algorithm designed to boost engagement is choosing the performer who best figured out how to exploit herself.
I assume that the audience is largely the same people who would've enjoyed Jackass when it was relevant.
I think the point being made is that they do the same thing. Receive money to completely and totally humiliate and debase themselves with stupid shit.
Cyberpunk underestimated how weird and dehumanizing the future would be.
So many people living that weird dehumanization will actively and viciously fight to defend it against criticism too.
i kind of just think it's a typical response to the inherent driving points of the tiktok algorithm. it's not like this is the only kind of content on the platform, there's a wide range from good theory posting to niche shitposting. but if the tippity top of the algo is driven by engagement, then doing this shit i suppose games that in some way. but like, i guess i don't think this is any worse for someone's brain than reading pulp fiction used to be or whatever.
source: i am bound to stand astride the zoomer/millennial cultural divide
kind of, but if i'm thinking of like, Neil Postman's argument about literacy vs electronic media, and he makes this exact same argument in one of his books with regards to literacy in america and film and television. and i don't think i necessarily agree with this kind of argument because the data is stuff like the willingness of a crowd of people to listen to and process the inherently literary rhetoric of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, and i would argue that american literacy has never really made americans themselves anymore revolutionary or any more able to reason about the conflicts of their day.
To what you said about being "revolutionary" though, Communism in America was far more popular before electronic media. Not saying there is a causal relationship there, and in that period literacy was likely lower. But the way that electronic media has alienated us from each other definitely doesn't help, and I can't help but feel like the kinds of social interactions produce in situations like this video aren't great for anyone involved.
As a side note, political debates have gotten a lot dumber in the last hundred years though. The way mainstream politics has effectively become directed at electronic media, and that it's only purpose seems to be to go on TV and generate shareable clips isn't great. That goes way back though.
I agree with this analysis in particular, and your response as a whole as well. I think what's reactionary is the tendency some have to write off a deeper analysis in favor of assigning a pseudoscientific hypothesis like "the screens are making the kids dumber and this anecdotally weird thing I saw is proof" which isn't really analysis. I think technology has been a tool for creating dumber americans and diluting people's rhetoric about political ideology, but as we see from even well-read liberals, that doesn't necessarily mean that people are smarter for knowing how to dress up reactionary ideology. I would also argue though that technology didn't defund the public education system and materially obliterate their sense of political ownership. Neoliberalism's impact runs much deeper than our latest form of media consumption.
I don't really like Behaviorists/Behaviorism...but I guess I have to admit they may have a point
I love how the further removed I become from youth culture, the less grasp I have on how mainstream something is. Is this what all the kids are doing these days? Or is it incredibly niche? No idea.
the mainstream has been slowly disappearing for years and culture has become stratified into millions of micro-niches
This may be abit too old of a reference, but have you ever gone back in time and watched old MTV videos back to back, the key part of any entertainment economy is not relevance, rationality to the internal idea or even good art. The point is always based on the external rationality of engagement and what is 'engaging' is generally a dialectical process between entertainers, audience, ownership of the medium, the physical nature of the medium itself, and the surrounding economic climate of the medium.
What the physical medium of TikTok allows for is fast loading, rapidly regurgitated content. The audience for this content is the people with the most time to dominate the algorithms, people who are the most susceptible to advertising, and people with disposable income. In general, this means young kids with a smattering of aging boomer, xers, and millennials who are susceptible to social media addiction. Young kids these days have been engaged in non-stop MTV like content since they were born, which causes them to scroll through things quickly as they are generally better at receiving digital information (I disagree on their advantage at processing that information, but that is a digression), which means the best way to get them to stop and listen to something is to present it in an audio/visually confusing way that makes them have to stop and process what they are seeing, or just watch something else and listen to what is going on.
On the other end of the spectrum, people like us gravitate towards long form content videos and podcast because they appeal to our general sense of loneliness and attempt to waste time in the day. Also waves cranky old man stick it is generally better to get an overview of the subject, though Joe Rogan and his ilk certainly prove that that isn't always the case.
Basically, this kind of stuff is the equivalent of online Saturday morning cartoons, and it's only going to get weirder from here.
On the other end of the spectrum, people like us gravitate towards long form content videos and podcast because they appeal to our general sense of loneliness and attempt to waste time in the day. Also waves cranky old man stick it is generally better to get an overview of the subject, though Joe Rogan and his ilk certainly prove that that isn't always the case.
I used to feel this way, and I guess I still kinda do but I think the way the average person engages with video essays and podcasts is like, barely better than tiktok in terms of learning. I know people who consume lots of the stuff but its just entertainment at the end of the day. If you were actively paying attention maybe you remember the basic topic and some fun facts, if you weren't super engaged you'll probably barely remember you even watched the video tomorrow. anything that passive is just not a good way to learn. reading and taking notes is the gold standard IMO, if for no other reason than because you can't completely zone out and just be like "welp I finished it" at the end, and taking notes requires you to comprehend the subject enough to paraphrase, and the act of writing aids in recall.
Not to say other things don't work but they require more conscious effort not to zone out or get overwhelmed and have details go over your head. Especially written word that is being read aloud verbatim I find can be exhausting because written language is dense in a way that speech very rarely is, and with reading you can just read slower or shift your eyes to reread a sentence in an instant, rather than constantly pausing and rewinding, or simply letting the details wash over you without comprehension
I generally find it is a good overview before reading about something. It forms a general structure from which written details can then seep into later. To be an even more cranky old man and paraphrase Socrates (or technically Plato through the character of Socrates), the gold standard imo, isn't even written paraphrase, but reading and going over the book with a trusted colleague to see if there are any alternative explanations, and if there are, why they are there. Leaving someone alone in the ocean of reason is a sure way to drown.
TikTok, on the other hand, is a barrage and because it jumps topics so often, it doesn't even give you a chance to zone out and gloss over the details, the details just simply aren't there to begin with. That doesn't mean it can't be a learning tool, on the contrary, I'd say more kids these days know more about the JFK assassination conspiracy theories than anyone in my generation at that age, but that being said, there is generally very little in the way of them putting that into context, and they are equally likely to rattle off Chinese COVID conspiracy theories with equal confidence.
true, the social element of book clubs is good too. I am guilty of neglecting it haha
Backs away slowly. I'm sorry to bother you. I'll be leaving now. Just please, don't hurt me. :huh:
