Harlan Ellison taught me that the idiom ought to be “you can’t eat your cake and have it too” which is definitely objectively true and I still say it that way now. Thanks Harlan
As a professional writer, I will never not think of “pay the fucking writer” in regards to Harlan, and the story about him getting kicked out of Ohio State.
This is how I’ve always remembered it and I don’t think I ever consciously think of it as otherwise. As a child I was very, very confused as to why that idiom meant what it did.
is it possible to imagine a version of YouTube that incentivises quieter, more in-depth commentary, or does that just go against every principle of mass entertainment and “engagement”? obviously the site itself has been doing things for a while to discourage more considered, infrequent content in favour of “DID U SEE THIS??!?” daily flashbangs, but i still struggle to see there being a viable alternative model without, you know, deeper cultural change.
It’s possible to me, as what you’re describing is what I seek out.
It’s there, it just isn’t what The Algorithm deems to be popular or worthy of mainstream promotion.
Not while it’s ad-supported.
At least yt isn’t hostile to this kind of content, it just does nothing to support it; so as long as you can find people willing to make it for free, yt will host it. So that’s something… I guess…
considering that youtube supposedly helped killing ie6, see conspiracy blog entry here
you have to wonder whether a change in the Algorithms™ couldn’t be made that would prefer content over style?
… until you ask yourself how a machine should be able to determine if it isn’t just asshat 765223 that does the 1000000+1 unboxing video -
wait a second, i have to watch James May’s Toyota Yaris unboxing vid parody
… yeah, i guess you see the problem:
How shall a machine deterministically discern a rambling nerd from someone that actually has to say something important™ if we can’t figure that out easily ourselves in the massive flood of content that is created?
The easy answer would be recommendations or curated content, but then that’s what the algorithms should do in the first place, so either you try to actively moderate “bad” content (and we instantly go down a deeeep Rabbit hole here) or you subscribe to some channel that does the work for you, and… someone else has to do that work for you.
idk what the answer could be, honestly… because if someone would, he’d instantly be very, very rich or either very, very dead (think about the ramifications if you suddenly developed tech that could easily extract crucial yet abstract Information (interesting game-making deep thoughts!) from any given vid independent from length, format, duration, presentation, metadata etc… and above all, classify it in a non-trivial manner (interesting for people who like to know how AI has been programmed for title X on the PS2 hardware that has already been quite stressed by punching above its weight graphically) - and just think what you could do with that. Pre-crime! BlumeOS! TheNextBigThing!..)
in other tech news
Can “female-presenting nipples” get whiplash?
oh definitely. so many of the times I’ve stumbled into a channel where i found myself learning things, or just chilling out in a way i don’t get from most content, I’d glance down and see a view count somewhere in the 2-4 digit range.
it’s just that i end up wondering, are those less popular purely because they’re not promoted, or are they not promoted because they can’t be trusted to make the site money? as far as i can see it’s primarily in their interest to promote channels whose output is frequent, consistent and vehement, all of which are qualities antithetical to what i tend to enjoy.
yeah these are pretty much my thoughts. and I’m aware that in this financial model I’m basically a freeloader; i doubt my usage has contributed a cent toward YouTube’s upkeep, so catering to my particular tastes are probably not its highest priority.
“quality” may be extremely subjective and hard to define, but even just taking those attributes i listed and inverting them (if you could somehow make it solvent) would be something I’d be interested in seeing. presumably after a point you’d still end up with a sea of indistinguishable garbage trying to game the algorithm, but at least maybe it’d be slower, more chilled out garbage? like an endless rabbit hole of lo-fi hip hop mixes
What feels really tragic to me is that we’ve preserved the tools to produce the old web; it’s not more difficult to make oddball youtube videos, or host a blog, or run a diary (or even a webforum). But the audience has been snatched away into large and replicable forms; by intelligences directed towards organizing and shaping traffic, and the evolutionary struggle to respond to those pressures.
Largely, it’s the same as any category that opens up; small, creative forms fill the space until behemoth sponges learn to move in and absorb everything.
bring back ziggurat ;__;
no u
(they presumably would if you worked with them!)
All of us are just searching for the media platform with the right combo of horny + contemplative
come home tumblr
you can tho, with a little work:
I might still have an ipod touch somewhere in my coffers that has ziggurat on it. My best was somewhere in the 300s.
My best was 674 kills.
I still have a phone with Ziggurat.