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This seems very negative and pessimistic to me. My tech utopia fantasies are alive and well. One key mistake the author makes is misjudging the average person

This seems very negative and pessimistic to me. My tech utopia fantasies are alive and well. One key mistake the author makes is misjudging the average person >They are people who need to game the attention economy by increasingly disrespectful and shocking content, gore, rage bait, dehumanizing pranks17, extreme consumerism like huge shopping hauls, sloppy large mukbangs, shredding lamborghinis18, gambling streams and websites19, game shows20 and more If your tastes are more sophisticated, you may see the profusion of relatively puerile content on the internet as "gaming the attention economy" - but how do you know the average person doesn't just like watching mukbangs? And why shouldn't they? In my view - you should get comfortable with the fact that people have different preferences to yours and judge based on outcomes rather than aesthetics. The author complains about racism. Maybe it's easier to be racist nowadays. On the other hand, in the decades before the internet we had more race related shootings, bombings, etc. Maybe, net net, it's a good thing if the people who would've been forming a militia in the woods 30 years ago are instead posting racist memes on X. Likewise it's harder to make a blog or your own website today. But, much easier to blow up on X, TikTok, YouTube etc. I just don't see the issue here. We have far more content creators and similar now than in the past. None of the complaints seem that meaningful to me. Technology improves. Things aren't perfect (yet) - but they might be in the future. We have greater access to information, communication, and intelligence every year. If these trends persist we will use the improvements to enhance all other aspects of life (as we are already doing). The future where power comes from solar, nuclear, or fusion, physical labor comes from machines, cognitive labor comes from AI, material comes from space travel, advances in biology/physics/chemistry radically extend our life and health spans is not only possible, it is visibly approaching.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
I hope the stuff you talk about at the end of your comment come to fruition, but I think you’re very wrong about the attention economy. The issue is simply that these platforms are companies that need to optimize their user retention, so their algorithms have learned to prioritize the most gutturally stimulating material, whether mukbangs or drama, implicitly at the expense of everything else.
- ALittleLight 2y ago
  I think it's simply evolution - things that get attention will have the most attention, by definition. People copy and vary the things that get attention and hit upon new and better attention getting strategies. Mukbangs and prank videos are the natural state of social media - in other words. Social media companies could do work to suppress intellectually unstimulating content - and then they would be replaced by social media companies that did not. I just don't see what the issue is. If you turn off mukbangs it's not like the viewers are going to read Dostoevsky or invent a cure for cancer or something. They are going to do their next most preferred activity - watch reality TV until you turn that off, gossip with their friends, etc. Some people like to do the class of activity that mukbangs are a member of. Rather than try to "cure" them we should make sure they have access to an unlimited stream of mukbangs - cause why not? In the short term they'll be satisfied, we'll be rich, and technological advancement will continue - until we're all in a VR heaven on a server in the Dyson Sphere in the sky.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    Look I would love for that to be true, but that’s not how it works. The “natural state” of social media would be that observed without any interference, but things on social media get attention because they get recommended by algorithms. This constitutes interference in that “natural evolution,” interference which selects the thing being optimized for by the process of evolution. It’s not just attention grabbing, it’s attention holding, engagement maximizing, etc. That’s why tiktok slop is both highly stimulating and not highly stimulating enough to drive users off the platform. It has evolved to maximize what the company wants. There’s nothing natural about this process.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

I hope the stuff you talk about at the end of your comment come to fruition, but I think you’re very wrong about the attention economy. The issue is simply that these platforms are companies that need to optimize their user retention, so their algorithms have learned to prioritize the most gutturally stimulating material, whether mukbangs or drama, implicitly at the expense of everything else.

ALittleLight 2y ago
I think it's simply evolution - things that get attention will have the most attention, by definition. People copy and vary the things that get attention and hit upon new and better attention getting strategies. Mukbangs and prank videos are the natural state of social media - in other words. Social media companies could do work to suppress intellectually unstimulating content - and then they would be replaced by social media companies that did not. I just don't see what the issue is. If you turn off mukbangs it's not like the viewers are going to read Dostoevsky or invent a cure for cancer or something. They are going to do their next most preferred activity - watch reality TV until you turn that off, gossip with their friends, etc. Some people like to do the class of activity that mukbangs are a member of. Rather than try to "cure" them we should make sure they have access to an unlimited stream of mukbangs - cause why not? In the short term they'll be satisfied, we'll be rich, and technological advancement will continue - until we're all in a VR heaven on a server in the Dyson Sphere in the sky.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Look I would love for that to be true, but that’s not how it works. The “natural state” of social media would be that observed without any interference, but things on social media get attention because they get recommended by algorithms. This constitutes interference in that “natural evolution,” interference which selects the thing being optimized for by the process of evolution. It’s not just attention grabbing, it’s attention holding, engagement maximizing, etc. That’s why tiktok slop is both highly stimulating and not highly stimulating enough to drive users off the platform. It has evolved to maximize what the company wants. There’s nothing natural about this process.