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There are so many reasons why this is happening and I personally think it's only tangentially related to AI. The internet has now become the home of "hustle cul

There are so many reasons why this is happening and I personally think it's only tangentially related to AI. The internet has now become the home of "hustle culture" and is no longer serving the purpose of why it was first created. Covid only accelerated this trend as people began to look for other ways to generate income online. Just look at the Gamestop and AMC amateur stock trading craze or the explosion of flipping sneakers or Pokemon cards for income. A huge percentage of the internet consists solely of people looking to make a quick buck and/or establish some channel of passive income. The internet itself has been redefined as this weird vehicle for capitalism because we're careening towards a weird transitionary period in history as the rise of AI takes hold. The only thing that can solve this is UBI or some kind of shared equity system where huge megacorps primarily operated by AI generate trillions and trillions of dollars in wealth that needs to be distributed to the populace somehow. Godspeed as we enter this new age.

argiopetech 3y ago
If I'm the kinda guy who's into the hustle, and I can hustle $800/mo (or similar) out of the government with no effort, a) why wouldn't I also keep up my other hustles, and, b) why do you expect that the cost of living won't rise to meet there new level of basic income?
- riley333 3y ago
  That's a completely fair point and it's why I don't really think UBI is the answer. But, what is the answer? I don't think anyone has this figured out yet. Capitalism is by far the best system we've come up with but I just don't know what happens when/if AGI happens. And maybe it won't ever happen but I'd rather be brainstorming about what to do if it does happen now than wait until it's too late.
herval 3y ago
idk why you're getting downvoted, but I kinda feel the same too. I've been gradually abandoning all social media sites bc it's all hustlers and fake antics (fake news, fake tiktok 'hidden cameras', fake articles, fake everything!), vying for a second of fame to sell you on something. The fact that it's 99% video also compounds it, I feel like
- riley333 3y ago
  Not sure. I'm kind of surprised at the reaction myself haha HN still feels like the old internet for the most part, at least. :)
- nonbirithm 3y ago
  And this time it's not only driven by larger media organizations, but also by random people who now have a chance to propagate their views from decreased barriers to entry. I believe it wasn't only journalistic gatekeeping that prevented this for so long, but simply a lack of affordance for willing parties to do those things. High-speed Internet has made everything so much easier. My feelings about the rise of streaming video are also conflicted. It has given us high-quality longform content on topics that hadn't been covered before, but all those other people's passions and hobbies take up way too much time if you as a consumer become deeply invested in them (not even counting the conspiracy genre and its implications). It's easy to do partially because YouTube facilitates that, but I think in the end people want to consume all this information in the end, for some definition of "want". And dozens of 6-hour streams of the latest game or another will keep being uploaded every day. And there's this other thing that I keep coming back to. Someone I know was really into this engineer creating fake Apple product boxes that recorded thieves stealing them and being glitterbombed. They found it hilarious, but I was sort of confounded. It was the conversion of a few people's bad choices into entertainment and ad revenue, coated over with the intellectual sheen of detailed makerspace engineering diagrams and wit mixed with a moral high ground. Though what the thieves did was not right, there was something smug and passive aggressive about the entire thing that rubbed me the wrong way. And this was presented as just a humble guy with engineering experience creating his content and getting people interested in STEM. Anyone has the capability to do this sort of thing now, not just a media machine with questionable motives. It's just regular, driven people with questionable motives now.
  - herval 3y ago
    I think what you're describing ("the long tail") has been a phenomenon for a decade or so - tons of youtubers, tons of bloggers, tons of twitter personalities, etc. I see it as a good thing, people definitely want to consume it. What's been bothering is the layers of skimmers that are dominating all those mediums - the top youtube channels now are repeaters, the top tiktok channels are fake accounts copying the content, there's layers of "reactors" (they call themselves that) that add absolutely no value, but polute the whole timeline, and so on. This is mostly a newer phenomenon - as if the internet is quickly turning into a multimedia version of the mail system - it'll snuff out actual creativity/usefulness and slowly decay into spam spam spam spam.

argiopetech 3y ago

If I'm the kinda guy who's into the hustle, and I can hustle $800/mo (or similar) out of the government with no effort, a) why wouldn't I also keep up my other hustles, and, b) why do you expect that the cost of living won't rise to meet there new level of basic income?

riley333 3y ago
That's a completely fair point and it's why I don't really think UBI is the answer. But, what is the answer? I don't think anyone has this figured out yet. Capitalism is by far the best system we've come up with but I just don't know what happens when/if AGI happens. And maybe it won't ever happen but I'd rather be brainstorming about what to do if it does happen now than wait until it's too late.

herval 3y ago

idk why you're getting downvoted, but I kinda feel the same too. I've been gradually abandoning all social media sites bc it's all hustlers and fake antics (fake news, fake tiktok 'hidden cameras', fake articles, fake everything!), vying for a second of fame to sell you on something. The fact that it's 99% video also compounds it, I feel like

riley333 3y ago
Not sure. I'm kind of surprised at the reaction myself haha HN still feels like the old internet for the most part, at least. :)
nonbirithm 3y ago
And this time it's not only driven by larger media organizations, but also by random people who now have a chance to propagate their views from decreased barriers to entry. I believe it wasn't only journalistic gatekeeping that prevented this for so long, but simply a lack of affordance for willing parties to do those things. High-speed Internet has made everything so much easier. My feelings about the rise of streaming video are also conflicted. It has given us high-quality longform content on topics that hadn't been covered before, but all those other people's passions and hobbies take up way too much time if you as a consumer become deeply invested in them (not even counting the conspiracy genre and its implications). It's easy to do partially because YouTube facilitates that, but I think in the end people want to consume all this information in the end, for some definition of "want". And dozens of 6-hour streams of the latest game or another will keep being uploaded every day. And there's this other thing that I keep coming back to. Someone I know was really into this engineer creating fake Apple product boxes that recorded thieves stealing them and being glitterbombed. They found it hilarious, but I was sort of confounded. It was the conversion of a few people's bad choices into entertainment and ad revenue, coated over with the intellectual sheen of detailed makerspace engineering diagrams and wit mixed with a moral high ground. Though what the thieves did was not right, there was something smug and passive aggressive about the entire thing that rubbed me the wrong way. And this was presented as just a humble guy with engineering experience creating his content and getting people interested in STEM. Anyone has the capability to do this sort of thing now, not just a media machine with questionable motives. It's just regular, driven people with questionable motives now.
- herval 3y ago
  I think what you're describing ("the long tail") has been a phenomenon for a decade or so - tons of youtubers, tons of bloggers, tons of twitter personalities, etc. I see it as a good thing, people definitely want to consume it. What's been bothering is the layers of skimmers that are dominating all those mediums - the top youtube channels now are repeaters, the top tiktok channels are fake accounts copying the content, there's layers of "reactors" (they call themselves that) that add absolutely no value, but polute the whole timeline, and so on. This is mostly a newer phenomenon - as if the internet is quickly turning into a multimedia version of the mail system - it'll snuff out actual creativity/usefulness and slowly decay into spam spam spam spam.