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[parent] [thread] 36 comments
1. gergov+(OP)[view] [source] 2022-09-22 15:31:06
Right, engagement at all cost it is, but there is a fundamental difference. Television required professionals where even wrestling and reality TV is scripted: it requires some sort of willful ignorance from the viewer to engage with it.

Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we are norm conforming herd animals.

Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different ball game!

replies(6): >>otikik+eb >>pjc50+5c >>giantg+ci >>PuppyT+lj >>mawise+tn >>kennen+oV
2. otikik+eb[view] [source] 2022-09-22 16:14:40
>>gergov+(OP)
> some sort of willful ignorance

Not "some sort of willful ignorance". It just requires "ignorance". I think most of us know someone who thinks that reality TV is ... well, reality. "It says it in the name".

> Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake

Perhaps you have very bright kids. My kid will ask me to buy two of whatever that person is pushing. He's simply not equipped to handle marketing at any level, yet.

replies(2): >>mattne+7B >>Mandie+X71
3. pjc50+5c[view] [source] 2022-09-22 16:18:53
>>gergov+(OP)
> it requires some sort of willful ignorance from the viewer to engage with it.

> Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake

This does not explain the Alex Jones show.

4. giantg+ci[view] [source] 2022-09-22 16:47:16
>>gergov+(OP)
"Right, engagement at all cost it is"

Ha I actually read this as enragement, which I don't think is even a real word.

replies(1): >>classi+4D
5. PuppyT+lj[view] [source] 2022-09-22 16:53:00
>>gergov+(OP)
I don't really agree with this. Rush Limbaugh successfully ran a platform on mostly entirely television that deeply poisoned the cultural landscape of the USA at the time (he was defending Reagan's neglect of HIV/AIDS and playing "another one bites the dust" when Freddie Mercury died), and laid the foundation on current polarized rhetoric strategies. He spread lies that Obama wasn't a natural born citizen. He blamed volcano eruptions on the Affordable Care Act. So on and so forth. It's spurious to claim that outrage bait on television hasn't messed up people's brains just because the internet is doing a better job at it. They're just modeling what television was already successfully doing.
replies(2): >>advant+0P >>deltar+Y21
6. mawise+tn[view] [source] 2022-09-22 17:10:30
>>gergov+(OP)
Facebook brought us in with the promise of keeping in touch with friends, but the incentives are to "engagement at all costs". I'm hoping that if we can offer an alternative that lets people keep up with their friends without the engagememt incentive then we could greatly improve societal mental health. Thats why I build Haven[1] as open source and self hosted, along with several 3rd party hosting providers. No central entity means no "engagement at all costs".

[1] https://havenweb.org

replies(2): >>nkings+Xs >>dylan6+gu
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7. nkings+Xs[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 17:36:10
>>mawise+tn
This is a tragedy of the commons situation because people cannot help themselves.

What we are actually seeing is users going to TikTok because it is even more engaging.

People may say they want to keep up with their friends, but they will choose the more engaging activity.

There is no regulating or out-competing it.

Governments should provide identification, communication, community, payments, etc platforms for their citizens, but entertainment is always going to look like this unless stoicism is somehow engrained into our culture.

Entertainment itself is measured by engagement, so it will end with unlimited personalized ai generated content that will be almost impossible to put down.

replies(1): >>dylan6+wu
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8. dylan6+gu[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 17:40:58
>>mawise+tn
I never used Friendster, and thought that everyone spending so much time on MySpace was just wasting time. However, I'd love for socials to be back to just MySpace levels of people engaging with each other, sharing music, etc vs the ad engagement driven by ads instead of common interests.
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9. dylan6+wu[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 17:42:28
>>nkings+Xs
>This is a tragedy of the commons situation because people cannot help themselves.

SOME people cannot help themselves. I spend 0 minutes on social platforms. I can help myself just fine. Some people have much more addictive personality traits than others. Please, don't paint everyone with the same broad brush. It doesn't help the conversation in a meaningful manner

replies(2): >>nkings+ww >>classi+NC
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10. nkings+ww[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 17:51:18
>>dylan6+wu
First off you’re on hn, which is social media and absolutely optimized for your specific engagement.

I also figured the “some” was implied because the world is a complicated place. I do believe we all have our weaknesses, though mindless consumption is more attractive to some than others.

replies(1): >>dylan6+IQ
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11. mattne+7B[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 18:15:29
>>otikik+eb
I’m not sure we’re equipped as a society, otherwise why would marketing budgets be so high?

I know adults who voted for Trump because they believed the apprentice gave them an unvarnished view of his character and decision making prowess in the real world. My own grandmother would cite episodes of the show.

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12. classi+NC[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 18:24:22
>>dylan6+wu
> I spend 0 minutes on social platforms.

You're spending time on HN.

replies(1): >>eimrin+fR
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13. classi+4D[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 18:26:07
>>giantg+ci
It has become a real word by now. Culture changes, language adapts.
replies(1): >>wizofa+V22
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14. advant+0P[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 19:22:27
>>PuppyT+lj
I believe Rush did become famous on television, but after the mid-90s it was really all about his radio program. So it might be to your point, fundamentally it isn't the internet, or TV, maybe it was radio.

I do believe that the Rush style radio talk show lays the foundation for Tucker Carlson and all of the conservative pundit TV programming. Which is the basis for the problems we see with Facebook / Fake News etc.

replies(1): >>derac+1Q
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15. derac+1Q[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 19:27:42
>>advant+0P
One can trace that lineage in conservative thought back to the John Birch Society.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

replies(1): >>pyuser+se1
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16. dylan6+IQ[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 19:31:01
>>nkings+ww
If you equate HN to actual social platforms then okay.

The HN "algo" is user driven by fellow readers up-voting/down-voting which is much more common interests. There are no "friend" relations on HN. The other platforms are all advertising based algo driven with intentional doping to make people addicted to the platform. This isn't even apples-to-oranges comparison.

After the dust from Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers settles and everything gets evaluated, I sincerly hope that Meta/Zuck,et.al gets investigated in the same line as Purdue.

replies(1): >>cma+S31
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17. eimrin+fR[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 19:34:16
>>classi+NC
But he is not spending time on social platform.
replies(1): >>smsm42+S21
18. kennen+oV[view] [source] 2022-09-22 19:56:37
>>gergov+(OP)
> Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake.

No, they cant.

How many kids believe the photoshop pics they see?

Not to single her out, but Kim K is now selling headphones and her pic in her ad makes her look like a character from the sims. This is NOT how a normal human being looks without hours of photoshop work.

There is a reason we use to have laws around advertising to children.. they are too young to understand things.. this is also why you cant legally enter into a contract with a minor.

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19. smsm42+S21[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 20:40:41
>>eimrin+fR
And he can't wait to tell the Internet how proud he is about that.
replies(1): >>dylan6+G71
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20. deltar+Y21[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 20:40:59
>>PuppyT+lj
This is a really weird comment, because Limbaugh was almost entirely radio. His TV show was short-lived and not really popular, as he wasn't comfortable in the medium and it showed. He got his start in radio as a DJ, and went on to basically remake the AM band from farm reports and local sports talk to talk radio as we now know it.

This is really basic bio stuff about Limbaugh, and it doesn't speak well of your other assertions if you got this part so wrong.

What's really funny is that during the 90s the "Greatest Threat To Democracy Ever" WAS talk radio, more or less solely because the Limbaugh program was so popular. The targets may change, but the talking points never seem to.

replies(1): >>PuppyT+x41
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21. cma+S31[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 20:44:34
>>dylan6+IQ
Reddit is vote based so would you include that too? HN also has advertising (it has hiring ads for ycombinator companies put in as mostly organic-looking posts with no [ad] tag).
replies(1): >>dylan6+ja1
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22. PuppyT+x41[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 20:49:05
>>deltar+Y21
Hey, thanks for correcting me. You're right that the issue was Limbaugh's radio program, not his TV. I apologize for getting my example wrong, but I think my overall point is still a valid one (that just because social media is more effective at spewing bad rhetoric doesn't mean bad rhetoric is ineffective in other media).
replies(1): >>dr_dsh+qi1
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23. dylan6+G71[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 21:06:40
>>smsm42+S21
Only in relation to a thread about how much time people are spending on the socials. It's part of the conversation. That's kind of how the work.
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24. Mandie+X71[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 21:08:07
>>otikik+eb
Up to now, I have vigorously shielded my toddler from marketing - as far as he knows, the TV occasionally shows holiday church services and election results, and "his" laptop shows fairly non-violent excerpts from BBC animal documentaries and bird-watching videos (he's taken to asking to watch by making the slurping sounds the desert rain frog in his favorite video makes as it's eating termites, then exclaiming "froggy!").

I know he needs to be exposed to some marketing while I'm watching along to talk about it so he isn't completely defenseless against it later, but I don't think that time is quite yet. So far, I'm going with his being able to separate "real" from "pretend" as a minimum.

replies(1): >>jdouga+8o1
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25. dylan6+ja1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 21:23:09
>>cma+S31
I don't want to get into an argument about what an ad is, but I think we all understand what the difference of ad driven algos on the social platforms vs hiring blogs, Who's Hiring, etc on this platform.

Also, I just never have liked Reddit.

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26. pyuser+se1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 21:49:08
>>derac+1Q
Why stop there? Why not Fr. Coughlin or William Jennings Bryan?
replies(1): >>ch4s3+yg1
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27. ch4s3+yg1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 22:00:54
>>pyuser+se1
Why stop there Girolamo Savonarola was doing it in the 15th century, or Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.
replies(2): >>dr_dsh+Pi1 >>Tainno+2f2
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28. dr_dsh+qi1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 22:12:52
>>PuppyT+x41
Your point was valid but your example was creepily wrong.
replies(1): >>oyashi+nH1
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29. dr_dsh+Pi1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 22:15:15
>>ch4s3+yg1
> Savonarola

Love that the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for being too conservative. Really! Go Renaissance Popery!!

replies(1): >>ch4s3+yk1
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30. ch4s3+yk1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 22:26:46
>>dr_dsh+Pi1
Well, heresy and schism officially. But he was more of a populist than conservative and also weirdly sided with the invading French king which kind of pissed off the pope.
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31. jdouga+8o1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-22 22:52:52
>>Mandie+X71
Start with advertising from the past and work your way forward? It looks lame now, but that stuff used to consistently work.
replies(1): >>person+d02
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32. oyashi+nH1[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-23 01:21:13
>>dr_dsh+qi1
People remember him for his TV program but get the effects from his radio program, not exactly a creepy mistake just association mistake which happens to anyone.
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33. person+d02[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-23 04:20:19
>>jdouga+8o1
Talk about how media is produced. Every second is because someone made it so. None of it just happened.

Show them how it is done. How one can cut, edit and change the sound.

Ask who did it, for what reason, for which audience, to what end?

Equip them with the tools to question the things they see. Then they have the means to engage with marketing.

It’s a long road. There will be glitter and cheap plastic toys along the way.

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34. wizofa+V22[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-23 04:50:17
>>classi+4D
Since about 1840 it seems: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Enragement&yea...
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35. Tainno+2f2[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-23 07:18:40
>>ch4s3+yg1
How do the Gracchi fit in here? They were certainly populist, but decidedly not socially conservative.
replies(1): >>ch4s3+8r6
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36. ch4s3+8r6[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-24 17:57:21
>>Tainno+2f2
The comparison is that they're all fire breathing populists that stoked resentment, dabbled in conspiracy theories, and encouraged violence. My point is that these figures have always existed and aren't confined to the contemporary left/right binary. There's just something about people that makes these figures inevitable.
replies(1): >>Tainno+p4e
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37. Tainno+p4e[view] [source] [discussion] 2022-09-27 12:18:49
>>ch4s3+8r6
I mean the Gracchi were undoubtedly populist, and were interested in their own benefit most of all but it's not like the resentment against a corrupt oligarchy that deprived most citizens of land came from nothing.
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