Jason, I've been a fan of yours since before John Dies was published for the very first time, and I've loved everything you've written. Your insights into our bizarre modern digital world really gets me thinking. Keep doing what you're doing, sir, and I'll keep reading.
Cracked was never the same once you left... I've read all of your articles there and loved them. You really shaped my view on the world. Thanks from the bottom of my heart!
I unfortunately was born too late to witness the golden age of Cracked. By the time I had gotten a copy of JDATE, the great Firing Everyone had already happened. But now I can kind of understand why text articles used to get viral. Shame that doesn't seem to happen anymore. Engagement algorithms are absolutely horrifying.
I spend a lot of time on guitar guy YouTube, and videos started popping up of a woman playing, but unlike the male videos where there's a crafted thumbnail with clickbaity text ("$5,000 Custom Shop Guitar vs $100 Budget Guitar, is There REALLY A Difference?!?!?!?!?!" 30 times a day ) hers is just her playing with her guitar strap between her boobs, or playing in a position where a boob has to sit on the guitar. Tons of views. Tons of dirty comments. Nothing relating to her actual playing (which is great).
The algorithm is obviously pushing content creators into weird, bizarrely horny directions, but the algorithm wasn't created in a vacuum. It doesn't take a genius to see why a flash of cleavage or bare thigh might drive viewership, but surely forcing it into every video is surely not want viewers wanted, or the writers of the algorithm originally intended.
We are collectively in this bizarre feedback loop that feels similar to the current crisis we have with western diets: big companies identified customers preferred a certain type of content. For fast food it was high fat/high sugar content food that is easy to digest. Companies that pushed that sort of food pushed others out of the market, but also helped set the norm for consumers. 50+ years later they're serving the types of meals that company founders surely didn't envision, and early consumers wouldn't have been able to tolerate.
Youtube and social media took the easy (read: financially rational) method to driving traffic: they found the easiest methods to trigger the little hits of dopamine to keep us watching and trimmed away everything else. Now it's the lions share of the media diet we consume.
Yeah, somewhere along the line we forgot that technology was supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
The dystopian sci-fi notions of machines ruling over their pet-like humans may seem a bit far-fetched... But, aren't we seeing the beginnings of something that may very well lead us there? We're already letting computers make more and more decisions that impact the real world. And these are dumb computers, not the intelligent sort you often encounter in sci-fi settings. But already we're getting used to the notion that these machine learning algorithms are a black box that we can't scrutinise, but somehow seems to achieve good results most of the time. How long before that turns into "no need to understand; the machine knows best", while only the techies who build those systems have a vague notion of how they work? And assuming we ever achieve sentient AI, and those techies are no longer needed for technical progress (nor an efficient way of achieving it), what then?
I guess I knew, in the back of my mind, that this is how it worked, but thank you for laying it out to show just how disgusting the whole thing is. That the algorithms are training us -- including the most vulnerable -- to give into the base desires of the internet, is terrifying. So much money is exchanging hands that I'm sure there is no incentive to change the way it works. And, to your point, this lady's channel would still be obscure if she never "cracked the code," so it might be easy for people to argue that she's just tricking horny idiots into clicking on her videos. It's scary that children are growing up in a world that will shape them in this way, making them think their worth is based on whatever they have to do to get those like/view numbers up.
Jason, I've been a fan of yours since before John Dies was published for the very first time, and I've loved everything you've written. Your insights into our bizarre modern digital world really gets me thinking. Keep doing what you're doing, sir, and I'll keep reading.
Also, fuck youtube, and fuck algorithms.
Cracked was never the same once you left... I've read all of your articles there and loved them. You really shaped my view on the world. Thanks from the bottom of my heart!
I unfortunately was born too late to witness the golden age of Cracked. By the time I had gotten a copy of JDATE, the great Firing Everyone had already happened. But now I can kind of understand why text articles used to get viral. Shame that doesn't seem to happen anymore. Engagement algorithms are absolutely horrifying.
Fascinating, if completely unsurprising, revelation. Thank you, Jason.
i guess you know what that means . . .. jason . .. . ;)
I spend a lot of time on guitar guy YouTube, and videos started popping up of a woman playing, but unlike the male videos where there's a crafted thumbnail with clickbaity text ("$5,000 Custom Shop Guitar vs $100 Budget Guitar, is There REALLY A Difference?!?!?!?!?!" 30 times a day ) hers is just her playing with her guitar strap between her boobs, or playing in a position where a boob has to sit on the guitar. Tons of views. Tons of dirty comments. Nothing relating to her actual playing (which is great).
The algorithm is obviously pushing content creators into weird, bizarrely horny directions, but the algorithm wasn't created in a vacuum. It doesn't take a genius to see why a flash of cleavage or bare thigh might drive viewership, but surely forcing it into every video is surely not want viewers wanted, or the writers of the algorithm originally intended.
We are collectively in this bizarre feedback loop that feels similar to the current crisis we have with western diets: big companies identified customers preferred a certain type of content. For fast food it was high fat/high sugar content food that is easy to digest. Companies that pushed that sort of food pushed others out of the market, but also helped set the norm for consumers. 50+ years later they're serving the types of meals that company founders surely didn't envision, and early consumers wouldn't have been able to tolerate.
Youtube and social media took the easy (read: financially rational) method to driving traffic: they found the easiest methods to trigger the little hits of dopamine to keep us watching and trimmed away everything else. Now it's the lions share of the media diet we consume.
Yeah, somewhere along the line we forgot that technology was supposed to serve us, not the other way around.
The dystopian sci-fi notions of machines ruling over their pet-like humans may seem a bit far-fetched... But, aren't we seeing the beginnings of something that may very well lead us there? We're already letting computers make more and more decisions that impact the real world. And these are dumb computers, not the intelligent sort you often encounter in sci-fi settings. But already we're getting used to the notion that these machine learning algorithms are a black box that we can't scrutinise, but somehow seems to achieve good results most of the time. How long before that turns into "no need to understand; the machine knows best", while only the techies who build those systems have a vague notion of how they work? And assuming we ever achieve sentient AI, and those techies are no longer needed for technical progress (nor an efficient way of achieving it), what then?
I guess I knew, in the back of my mind, that this is how it worked, but thank you for laying it out to show just how disgusting the whole thing is. That the algorithms are training us -- including the most vulnerable -- to give into the base desires of the internet, is terrifying. So much money is exchanging hands that I'm sure there is no incentive to change the way it works. And, to your point, this lady's channel would still be obscure if she never "cracked the code," so it might be easy for people to argue that she's just tricking horny idiots into clicking on her videos. It's scary that children are growing up in a world that will shape them in this way, making them think their worth is based on whatever they have to do to get those like/view numbers up.