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Half a million people watch me study on TikTok
- Frummy 4y agoI posted a bunch of minute long math solution videos to tiktok while improving an old admission test score. Some of them caught on and the most popular has 16k views. Slightly tempted to continue, but I find myself pouring my energy elsewhere.
- throwaway4good 4y agoMaybe we can do a similar one for programmers working at home?
- dewey 4y agoYouTube is FULL of "study with me", "program with me" videos with background music for a long time already.
- kingkongjaffa 4y agoI would love to but I can’t exactly live stream my companies codebase!
- 867-5309 4y agoit's more a big brother voyeurism thing than a collaborative screencast
- joshspankit 4y agoIf you have not found it, you might be a part of an untapped market. If that’s the case: start the stream yourself (you’d be surprised how helpful it can be to be the streamer)
- M4v3R 4y agoI'm occasionally doing literally this on Twitch.tv, while working on some side projects that otherwise I wouldn't time for to work on them. So far it's working pretty well, even if I don't have half a million of audience.
- pingeroo 4y agoI love occassionaly putting on George Hotz's streams while programming. Here's an 11 hour stream of him implementing SLAM from a closet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hlb8YX2-W8&t=10316s&ab_channel=georgehotzarchive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hlb8YX2-W8&t=10316s&ab_chan... The guy's a certified legend. Sadly he 'quit' streaming but the hundreds of hours in the archive should suffice.
- anyfactor 4y agoI did it for a while. But I am super bad at narrating what I do in real time. I couldn't stream myself doing my job so I thought I should do puzzles and stuff, which is also something I am horrible at. So, I thought let's try learning and exploring new programming stuff (vim, jupyter notebook, de/da, stats, github projects) and stream that but guess what I am bad demoing stuff too. But I do enjoy filming myself on a webcam and seeing the emotional ride I go through on a routinely basis in my attempts to solve problems.
- noisy_boy 4y agoIn "The Truman Show", it was so easy to despise Ed Harris' character; little did we know that we will be practically vying to become the same show monkeys - no deceptive confinement by villainous scheming director required.
- oefrha 4y ago> we will be practically vying to become the same show monkeys - no deceptive confinement by villainous scheming director required. Unlike in The Truman Show, you can make a fortune being “show monkeys” here, so hardly surprising.
- 0des 4y agoYeah this is a weird side effect of streaming. I've been streaming a live cam on dlive of a project thing im working on, and the amount of people who sign in, donate, and disappear is very odd. what could the possible motivation for this be?
- ohgodplsno 4y agoWatch for a few minutes, figure out it looks cool, 5 bucks isn't much, donate before you leave. There's no particular motivation, just a "huh, that looks cool".
- corobo 4y agoAlso unlike in the show, consent
- password54321 4y agoI swear the Truman Show has become the new thing for the internet to shoehorn into everything.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zahma 4y agoClever way to motivate himself to study, though I wonder if it worked more by physically separating himself from his phone more than it psychologically encouraged him to do what he said the stream was for. For others, I’m kind of mystified. Maybe it also works to separate one’s eyes from the feed. But some of the quotes mention people checking in because they wanted to study with another person. How lonely we must be as a society if that’s true in aggregate? In uni, we all would show up in conference rooms even if we weren’t actively talking through concepts or problems. That gave us a sense of collective struggle through finals week. This seems to me like another example of social media induced detachment.
- lupire 4y agoWe are only lonely when we aren't social. Joining a stream is the opposite of loneliness. This is social media induced attachment. Would you say people at bars and cafes and libraries and churches are lonely? Only as much as people at a restaurant are hungry.
- smrq 4y agoLots of people in those places are lonely, yes. Have you never been lonely while surrounded by people before?
- dunefox 4y agoAt my university we didn't have study rooms, only regular lecture halls and rooms that were either locked or in use. We had to study at the cafeteria which worked as well as you'd expect. So we studied in a small group of 3-4 people at someone's place if possible or via discord.
- teruakohatu 4y agoIs studying at university and public libraries not a thing elsewhere? At the universities here you have to get up early to grab a good seat on one of the better floors (higher/better view and smaller/less noisy) around the end of semester. The public libraries are usually full of university and non-university students on Saturday mornings. Charging points are highly prized.
- HidyBush 4y agoWhen half a million people follow something you are doing I think it should be time to ask yourself what the effects of your actions are. Do most people just waste their time watching you? Does what you do actually help people study or concentrate? Does your livestream just give young people a parasocial experience to feel coddled while being lonely? I don't think I could keep doing such things with a clear conscience if I had even the slightest concern about my livestreams being a time waster for so many people: and knowing social media mechanics it's not just a slight concern but a certainty.
- macintux 4y agoIt sounds like some/many are using it as a way to gain focus for their own studies. No, I don't think he has any responsibility to protect his viewers from themselves.
- criddell 4y agoThat’s a healthy perspective. It made me wonder who has the opposite take? There have to be more than a few people seeing this and wondering how it can be monetized…
- seydor 4y agoWhat if he was a virtual teacher or 'life coach'
- lupire 4y agoAnd the same question should be asked of classroom teachers and employers and governments.
- paulcole 4y agoRegardless of the number of people involved we should all be thinking about the effects of our actions. And honestly, wasting somebody’s time is the least of the problems caused by our everyday actions and choices. I’ll admit it’s more fun to judge others than look in the mirror though.
- SemanticStrengh 4y agoBody doubling is very underrated and is the main non pharmacological way to bring focus for most https://bodydoubling.com/ https://bodydoubling.com/
- lr4444lr 4y agoWhy do you think this works? I think it has to do with a mental and/or physiological response to loneliness increasing our stress.
- queuebert 4y agoMirror neurons
- daedalus_f 4y agoTo quote wikipedia: To date, no widely accepted neural or computational models have been put forward to describe how mirror neuron activity supports cognitive functions. There’s lots of guff in the media and lots of speculation in the discussion section of papers about what they might be important for in broad hand-wavy terms, but really we don’t have a good understanding of them.
- zackees 4y agoWikipedia is not a good source. All the editor had to do was a google search to know this is misinformation: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mirror+neurons+&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mir...
- seydor 4y agoMemetism, apes like apeing each other, it's why we have classes of all kinds
- omarfarooq 4y agoShame minimization.
- phantomathkg 4y agoThe only problem is, it is TikTok.
- wirthjason 4y agoFor some reason this article stirs a lot of internal conflict in me. A part of me wants to view it without any judgement but another part, the old man part, feels there’s something deeply wrong with this. The problem is that I cannot think of a substantive reason it’s wrong other than “half a million people don’t have something better to do than watch someone study?” Or “do kids have such a weak will that they cannot study by themselves?” Or, “are we so lonely/needy that we have to broadcast ourselves/watch others doing mundane things rather than something more important?” Neither of these are really true and in fact it’s a positive that others are accomplishing they study goals by watching him. I’m just in my 40’s but it feels like the old Simpsons joke “old man yells at cloud”. This is a bit unsettling.
- nightski 4y agoI'm in my upper 30s and I can relate to the post. Am by no means lonely or alone (I have a wife, family, and friends all around). But for me some times it is nice just to know someone out there is doing the same thing as you. Whether it is studying a book or any solo activity I find it inspiring/motivating. It's not a matter of having a weak will either as I have learned plenty of things on my own (in fact I tend to learn the best through self study). But all I can explain it with is that it is motivating and comforting.
- staindk 4y agoAs I mentioned in my own reply to the top-level commenter, this[1] notion of 'body doubling' is interesting to read about. I can definitely relate to it. Every time I studied "with" a classmate at e.g. the university library I would end up still just studying by myself, though just knowing there are others around doing the same/similar thing had a positive effect on me. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31303234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31303234
- wirthjason 4y agoI’m a firm believer in many of the things mentioned. When I study with someone there’s a real life component. We take breaks together, chat, ask each other questions. Also, studying in common places can remove environmental distractions. For some reason during finals time I had the urge to clean the apartment. I can relate to the physical in-person-ness of the experience. I cannot relate to the non-interactive, passive watching of it.
- lettergram 4y agoWasn’t it TikTok that posts fake engagements and views? Well, high likelihood anyway: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-number-of-views-in-TikTok-videos-fake/answers/238465624?ch=15&oid=238465624&share=e9211e4e&target_type=answer https://www.quora.com/Is-the-number-of-views-in-TikTok-video... Personally, any app that serves people what to watch; is going to be subject to a lot of bias counts anyway.
- ceva 4y ago
- kirykl 4y agoI wonder if theres any auditing of these engagement numbers. I’d think advertisers would require it as due diligence but I’ve never seen any independent analysis
- status200 4y agoAds are not featured in the "Live" section of their app. TikTok makes more money from their gift economy (TT takes a cut when a user buys "coins" to send to another user) and then taking 50% from the content creators when they attempt to withdraw those gifted coins and turn them into cash.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway1777 4y agoAll these comments about enjoying being around other people doing the same thing, getting more motivated, etc. All I can think is that this must have some relation to wfh.
- slkdk32 4y ago
- WalterBright 4y agoI sometimes watch cab rides on youtube as a sort of "moving wallpaper". Well, I don't actually watch them, it's just a decoration like a picture on a wall.
- rightbyte 4y agoI have train dash cams going when I work sometimes on the 2nd screen. Nice when you look away from the code. I guess a loot of the views of those kind of videos are as ambient videos.
- sha-3 4y agoWhere can I get train dash cam feeds?
- WalterBright 4y agoSearch "cab ride" on youtube.
- rightbyte 4y agoI have just made a playlist on Youtube (and I am using uBLock ...). So not live feeds. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkgIWGM60z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkgIWGM60z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuX8Ew3OyJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuX8Ew3OyJk There are plenty. The bridge in the 2nd one is my favorite.
- steve76 4y ago
- sys_64738 4y agoTik Tok is just the latest in an endless waste of time social media networks. The real utility for something like this is where you are working and leave a Zoom room with camera running so folks can drop in and ask you questions then leave. Sort of like in a non-remote setting at an office. Quite effective.
- Fnoord 4y agoCounter of viewers does not equal amount of people who watch. Bots, people who only listen, people who forgot to disable video, autoplay (that time you find out your YouTube has been playing for days and you ended up in that video), attention span diversification, etc. Pageviews does not equal amount of people who read a page either. Its annoying when such gets extrapolated.
- jVinc 4y agoI feel like a lot of what's in the category of "you wont believe this is getting popular" on tiktok is a result of them faking views and follower numbers to rope in creators who then go on to think tens of thousands of people are watching them do some random videos, which makes them double down and focus and then eventually gain a real but still much lower real following. I don't have any evidence to back up the claim that they are faking views, but I know for a fact that the hundreds of followers I have gained making almost no content are not real. And it seems extremely suspicious that they've engineered their whole "creator fund" around trying to not pay creators based just on views/likes and subs, if they where real that would be the most accurate measure to target. But feels like they've decided to completely ignore them and to "sort" creators, likely because they know there's some creators with majorly fake followers that they don't want to pay, but still want to keep on the platform so they keep their fake engagement metrics high, and then there's the "real" popular names that they know they need to pay, but still underpay compared to other platforms. But creators still stick to tiktok because "they have a much larger following". It smells.
- radar1310 4y agoI’ve watched Louis Rossmann repair Macbooks for hours on YouTube before. Like watching paint dry in a kind of way.
- smoldesu 4y agoHe readily admits that he's not the most sociable person (which is corroborated from watching pretty much any of his self-described "rant videos"), but the flow he gets into when doing board repair is remarkable. I'm not sure if he owes it to a really impressive knowledge of EE or the fact that he exclusively repairs Macbooks, but it's crazy how every single feasible repair looks like it's second nature to him.
- telesilla 4y agoWhen writing my thesis I met with a group of strangers online who were also studying or other computer-based activities. We had a pomodoro bell go every 25 minutes or so, when we'd chat for a few minutes during the break. Just having people around, really made a huge difference and helped me get through months of hard work. I've seen some startups come up with this idea - seems a bit sad to make a business out of people keeping each other company but I suppose some prefer to have that curated for them.
- rsanek 4y agoI've only used it a handful of times, but https://www.focusmate.com/ https://www.focusmate.com/ has a pretty good set-up.