5 ms·

A small point: did anybody notice how this reward mechanism prize the "idiocy" far more than the "knowledge"? I mean most followed YT channels, most upvotes on

• salvar 8y ago
  Who decides what is valuable content and what is brainless stupidity?
  • dogma1138 8y ago
    Im pretty sure that we can easily define metrics to measure that and we had. This cult of relativism really needs to stop.
    • salvar 8y ago
      Excellent, what are the metrics then? What makes a "how to do your nails" tutorial brainless stupidity?
      • xte 8y ago
        Perhaps my poor English make hard for me to clearly express concepts, sorry. How to do your nails it's simply far less valuable than how a banks or a car work in knowledge terms, however on YT&c it get far more financial reward than a video on banking systems, mechanics etc. Home that's more clear.
        • dogma1138 8y ago
          I don’t think it’s has less value on a case by case basis, but this is also not relevant. There is a big difference between education/enrichment and entertainment and while some content creators might walk the line between them there is a pretty big split. I would say pre-defining what is “valuable” is probably not the best approach because it too prone to selection bias, an instruction video on how to do nails to a beautician is far more useful than a video explaining correspondenant banking systems. That said the content as a whole can be measured in terms of its impact on cognitive and emotional state and well being especially on large sample sizes. We already know that social media voyeurism causes a lot emotional distress, we know that certain types of content can make you “dumber” at least in the short term. And on a larger scale we can check the social and individual benefits for specific cases, e.g. how many individuals who watched a specific subeset of content turned their life to the better in say a period of 5 years.
    • xte 8y ago
      The modern "need" (mania) of defining metrics have a deep root not in knowledge but in ignorance. Smart people can reason autonomously like Galilean scientific models, ignorant can only follow Aristotelian model. That's also the reason today we have substantial ZERO innovations and capacity to produce new things.
      • dogma1138 8y ago
        I think you have a poor understanding of what metrics mean, and in case it’s pretty ironic since Galileo essentially defined the modern scientific method of observation, experimentation, and mathematization which birthed quantitative assessment.
        • xte 8y ago
          I think not. I think I have a clear understating on how we trade Science for neoaristotelism because someone want brainless, managerial-driven, commercial-servant research instead of Science and culture.
          • dogma1138 8y ago
            You are really barking up the wrong tree, I think you took a wrong turn on your way to the rally comrade.
            • xte 8y ago
              A small example: take a young CAD/CAE/CAM engineer, ask he/she to design something for doing a certain job. Ask the same to an ancient engineer. Compare results. The young will give you a well simulated part/assembly ready for first prototype, the ancient normally gives you small note and a drawing. Prototype the two: the younger one is generally far more complex to being build, costly and far less effective than the ancient one. And it's not a matter of experience, it's a matter of different way of thinking. Today we spent enormous time in bureaucracy with ridiculous stuff from ITIL/Kanban to the last bit, we spent enormous time in detailed reasoning being on contrary incapable of see the big picture. That's why for instance in shipping company when a (rare) EU doctor (we have less reformed medicine studies than the USA) went in the USA local seafarers they put themselves in the queue for being visited by "real" doctors.
  • xte 8y ago
    You, me, any other. We all like to laugh but we know that life is beyond that. That's why we have schools that teach history, physics, chemistry, math, geography, ... instead of teaching nail arts, hair styling, parkour etc. Also, if you travel the world a bit, you'll easy see how most "mean acculturated" countries offer generally a better life quality, life expectancy etc.
    • corodra 8y ago
      Actually, I have to shoot you down on that one. There are "beauty schools" that teach nail arts, hair styling, makeup, etc. Want to know something really interesting? The people you're shitting on that go into those schools, have a better placement rate of finding jobs and are generally happier than those that go into the "classical" education routes. Plus, the beauticians can make pretty good money too. Have you seen how happy these people are with their lives? I'd give up all my tech skills from beginning to end just to be half that happy with life. Also, when you tell someone "if you travel the world a bit", it makes you seem like a stuck up cunt standing on a soap box that attended too many liberal arts classes and you're just regurgitating what your teachers told you since you don't have a single independent thought or experience of your own. Just sayin'.
      • xte 8y ago
        At nazi times in Germany if you have joined nazi's party earlier and you participate in many nazi's related activities you'll get rewarded far more than "traditional citizen", perhaps with a humanistic degree... In actual Russian federation if you have the "right friend" and you keep saying that Putin is a good man you'll certainly get better rewards respect of a journalist that say government is corrupted and actual president is a dictator. In my home-country (Italy) if you have some friends in Catholic church or you are in some catholic association you have better chances to get paid more, have more customers, have less bureaucratic problems than a well known atheist or agnostic etc. I do not say that nail art should not exists, only that reward you get from it should be proportionate to what you give to our society so I expect that a good plumber being rewarded more than a nail artist. Simple as that. On different countries comparison, I'm living in French, have lived in Italy, Sweden, a bit of stay in USA, UK, CZ and Rus. I compare plus and minus I see in all that countries and that's my conclusions. Never attended a "liberal art class".
• krelian 8y ago
  Like you say, it's natural, just like in the past(?) when stupid reality shows and drama was gathering all the ratings. And I'll be honest (I'm not sure I'm one of many who feel this way), when you see guys like the Paul brothers in this list I can't help but think that the bad guys won.
  • xte 8y ago
    Well it's natural in the sense that "mother or idiots is always pregnant" (ancient Italian proverb), but that's also not a thing we should prize. I mean, in my poor English, that it's normal we have a bigger audience for a video of people doing parkour that for a video about Bayesian's filter but we must develop a way to prize more the latter than the former. In physical world we have something like a doctor, lawyer, ... get paid more than a clown, so they can afford a better life, get prize by the society, inspire other's to take their path etc. Clowns have their role of course, we also need them, only they receive a proper reward. We start to invert this trend with professional sportsmen's, movie/entertainment industry and now with social platform we bring that trend to the sky.
    • soundwave106 8y ago
      Generally speaking, in the entertainment industry, you have a few individuals that are pulling in a lot of money... and a huge bunch of people doing very similar things that pull in nothing. My assumption is that the Youtube world here is similar to the pop music industry... where often the difference is not necessarily raw talent. Luck plays a huge role in this field, and how you handle marketing your "personality" and "brand" likewise is a big factor. These are things to keep in mind if you "aspire" to be an entertainer or social media star. (In music, there are areas, eg session / orchestra / Broadway players, where raw technical talent matters more, but that's a different subject...) It is very untypical for an entertainer in popular fields like this to remain very big for over a decade. I think Jeffree Star is one of the few entertainers who has actually maintained top status since the Myspace days. In music, it's easily possible to think of a few Myspace-era music acts that are going strong (think Arctic Monkeys). But it's also easily possible to think of top Myspace-era acts that are now operating at much lower levels (think Owl City). The modeling / fashion world seems even worse than music at first glance for career length. Currently, if you are an average programmer (you don't even have to know much about Bayesian filters) or other more technical career (including doctors and lawyers), you probably will have a pretty good paying career that could last decades. If you are a stellar entrepreneurial type, you also could earn millions (more than entertainers even). But if you don't have the knack for that or don't get the right breaks, you'll still probably come out fine, much better than the average entertainer.
• Nasrudith 8y ago
  It rewards popularity in itself. It just happens that most people are at or below average and average isn't anything to write home about. It rewards lower effort for higher returns as well. That also isn't remotely new. Gossip rags sell more than even accessible science magazines let alone journals. It isn't stupidity in itself that pays. Make a channel of hitting yourself in the groin every day and you won't even break $10k/year.
• mywittyname 8y ago
  Not many people are interested in practical learning as entertainment. It's always been the case, for books, for movies, for games, etc.
• conanthe 8y ago
  I think it is socialism that makes human kind diverge into two sub species - intelligent people and brainless leechers. First the former dies and then the latter due to no one to live off. Just an observation...
• bliblah 8y ago
  Same thing with TV, Music, Film...If you want mass appeal you need to hit the lowest common denominator. It doesn't bother me because I find that if you just let go of your pretensions there are some genuinely good channels that could be describe as "Idiotic". Heck Pewdiepie is actually a pretty interesting channel from time to time. You got to hand it to the guy for putting in the work to not only reach the top, but to stay on the top but hasn't completely sold out to advertisers to make bland family friendly content.
• JangoSteve 8y ago
  It may just be the difference between how many people a video is relevant to and how deeply it impacts them. Things like tech, history, physics, and DIY channels each have fewer people who connect with the content than something like how to decorate nails. One explanation could be the amount of investment one has to make to fully appreciate, and thus get value from, these different topics. For example, appreciating a "just for laugh" video generally takes less effort and specific experience than appreciating a technical video. This is related I think to the Law of Triviality [1]. At the end of the day though, I think there's somewhat of an inverse relationship between how many people you can impact with a given message (or video) and how deeply you can impact them. To impact someone more deeply requires deeper insight and shared context gained through experience on the viewer's part to interpret and appreciate the video, which necessarily narrows the target audience. The system that disproportionately incentivizes the less deep content is probably the fact that the incentives are built around numbers of views, which doesn't discriminate between deep versus cursory impact on the viewer. If overall value of a video were calculated as number of people impacted multiplied by the depth of the impact, there would be more incentives to create impactful videos. However, most incentives currently reward only the number of people impacted irrespective of the depth of impact, and so it's much easier to produce videos that impact a lot of people with little depth. Of course, this trivializes how difficult it is to actually build a large audience, which is difficult to begin with. Personally, I think they all have their place. Sometimes I want something stimulating to watch, sometimes I want something brainless. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality