5 ms·

I never saw Raval as much more than an internet personality. As such, the fundamental problem here is the world today values and rewards glossy content. Gobs a

I never saw Raval as much more than an internet personality. As such, the fundamental problem here is the world today values and rewards glossy content. Gobs and gobs of glossy content. Repackaged content. Aggregated content. Outright stolen content. If you can make it at scale, views, subscribes and subsequent ad impressions will make it worth it. And the good news: we're not discerning viewers. Someone stole something? We'll wag our finger, furrow our brow and click play anyway. There exists only incentive for producing.

Nasrudith 7y ago
That isn't new for better or worse. Even with new defined broadly as "times that a person who is alive today lived through". I am reminded amusingly about how moderation at scale pleasing everyone is impossible by complaining about how many pages lower mirrors were than original websites on Google.
- nkozyra 7y ago
  I disagree and I think it's intensifying. We used to find amusement and information from a single newspaper, a few ota television shows ... Even a decade ago the plethora of streaming options we have now we're absent or in infancy. Monetizing your videos as an average Joe was not reality. All that's changed. Influencers, content producers by the thousands are inventivized to create nonstop content to compete. That is new.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Putting aside the dispute about the novelty and intensity how is a decrease in gatekeepers both natural (the expense of distribution) and artificial relevant to the cited problem? They haven't made any positive difference and cannot. The incentives for "gloss" to sell are the same and the alternatives have their own evils.
    - nkozyra 7y ago
      Because the nature of increased competition is accelerationism. The fastest way to change a product is to introduce more viable competitors; metaphorically, it's a form of evolution.
epa 7y ago
Isnt that what newspapers and morning TV shows have been selling for 100 years?
- nkozyra 7y ago
  They've sold an entertainment/advertisement product, one that required almost no change in formula for hundreds of years. In journalism school you learn early on the history of newspapers in New York. The consequence was more competition lead to drastic price wars and a race to the bottom. By many accounts it culminated in yellow journalism. That all found a natural equilibrium and things remained mostly unchanged until television. With that, competition for short, snippet journalism increased and newspapers moved to longer, more in depth journalism and larger shelved the very long form because the audience was gone. Cable news had a similarly tectonic force on network news, which changed its drab, almost newspaper-y style to compete. Each of these forces fundamentally changed the nature of these long lived formulas. Twitter shoved another dagger in newspaper journalism by forcing them to compete on social media, eliminating journalist standards for interaction with the public. The gatekeepers react based on what audiences do. Audiences are not discerning. Each one of these events puts a dent in the integrity of its former self. It's all a race to the bottom for advertisement, something a lack of competition previously kept slow enough to seem at bay.

Nasrudith 7y ago

That isn't new for better or worse. Even with new defined broadly as "times that a person who is alive today lived through". I am reminded amusingly about how moderation at scale pleasing everyone is impossible by complaining about how many pages lower mirrors were than original websites on Google.

nkozyra 7y ago
I disagree and I think it's intensifying. We used to find amusement and information from a single newspaper, a few ota television shows ... Even a decade ago the plethora of streaming options we have now we're absent or in infancy. Monetizing your videos as an average Joe was not reality. All that's changed. Influencers, content producers by the thousands are inventivized to create nonstop content to compete. That is new.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Putting aside the dispute about the novelty and intensity how is a decrease in gatekeepers both natural (the expense of distribution) and artificial relevant to the cited problem? They haven't made any positive difference and cannot. The incentives for "gloss" to sell are the same and the alternatives have their own evils.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    Because the nature of increased competition is accelerationism. The fastest way to change a product is to introduce more viable competitors; metaphorically, it's a form of evolution.

epa 7y ago

Isnt that what newspapers and morning TV shows have been selling for 100 years?

nkozyra 7y ago
They've sold an entertainment/advertisement product, one that required almost no change in formula for hundreds of years. In journalism school you learn early on the history of newspapers in New York. The consequence was more competition lead to drastic price wars and a race to the bottom. By many accounts it culminated in yellow journalism. That all found a natural equilibrium and things remained mostly unchanged until television. With that, competition for short, snippet journalism increased and newspapers moved to longer, more in depth journalism and larger shelved the very long form because the audience was gone. Cable news had a similarly tectonic force on network news, which changed its drab, almost newspaper-y style to compete. Each of these forces fundamentally changed the nature of these long lived formulas. Twitter shoved another dagger in newspaper journalism by forcing them to compete on social media, eliminating journalist standards for interaction with the public. The gatekeepers react based on what audiences do. Audiences are not discerning. Each one of these events puts a dent in the integrity of its former self. It's all a race to the bottom for advertisement, something a lack of competition previously kept slow enough to seem at bay.