An almost 38 minute video about one man’s opinion about how the curated algorithmic experiences on the modern Internet have an effect on people and how it has shaped how it is being used.
Edit: Name of channel is Technology Connections
Most surprising thing to me was how few people use the “subscriptions” feed on Youtube. It’s been the default way I’ve been using it for as long as I’ve been on the platform.
I also remember when Facebook introduced the algorithmic feed and thought the concept was utterly ridiculous.
I’ve found myself transition from subscriptions to the feed over the years. My subscriptions became such a long list of past interests while the feed somehow almost always seems to know what I want. It’s exactly the poisonous quick dopamine hack that every other social media is also abusing. I hate it, but at the same time I don’t quite have the energy to fight it. After I arrive at home tired from work and grocery shopping I just need some quick entertainment, and the feed usually knows wat better what I want than my own subscriptions.
You can just say “Technology Connections” - we’ll watch it!
I was served the channel by the algorithm and was concerned with the length so I attempted to share in a neutral manner unsure on reception.
I found it interesting and wanted to share the opinion
38 minutes is too long? What a world we have when folks cannot pay attention longer than a tiktok vid. Perhaps that isn’t you, but I cringe that we have to think about that. No offense intended.
TC is a treasure, btw. Go back and view some of his other content. Not too long ago I watched his dishwasher video as I had just installed a new one. I learned quite a lot and I assumed I knew most things about them. He also explains things so thoroughly that my mother was able to follow along and appreciate the information. His demeanor helps as well. Love the guy. Thanks for the post!
“38 minutes is too long? What a world we have when folks cannot pay attention longer than a tiktok vid.”
Short attention spans is an overly simplistic explanation. Of those who may find a 38 minute video to be too long, I think only a small fraction of those have that preference due to becoming accustomed to Tik-Tok and other short form content. I’m going to give a few examples of alternative explanations, and perhaps that will help you to cringe less.
I have a friend who has the unfortunate combination of being hard of hearing, and dyslexia, so lip reading is more useful than subtitles. They can cope with videos where it’s mainly a person talking to a camera (so TC would actually be better for them than most video essays), but a lot of long-form videos have fancier editing or visual effects than that. Even when it is a relatively accessible video style, it takes more mental effort to be parsing spoken information.
I know someone else who is dreadful at processing auditory info, likely related to them being neurodivergent. Definitely no problem with attention span though, because they’ll digest huge essays and books with zeal. They’re young, so the majority of their peers are big fans of the short form videos like TikTok. We sometimes laugh at how sometimes they sound like more of a grumpy old person (with their “kids these days” rants) than I do (and I do my fair share of ranting too)
I know someone who can only effectively focus on auditory input when they’re able to focus on something else visually, such as going for a run, or doing crochet. They prefer podcasts and audiobooks to videos, because it’s easy to get lost if a video is expecting viewers to be at least half watching things.
I hope my comment doesn’t come across like I’m telling you off or anything. A large part of why I wrote this is because I know that there are quite a lot of people who just can’t jibe with long videos (for a variety of reasons), which makes me appreciate how OP was clear in their title. it’s a little gesture of being considerate of other people’s needs always brightens my day, especially on places like Lemmy, where it bolsters the wider sense of community
To cap off my comment, I’m going to end it on a positive by actually materially replying to the meat of your comment and adding to that discussion rather than just lecturing you: I have been a long time fan of TechnologyConnections because he’s so enthusiastic that it’s like he’s casting a spell; when I first stumbled across one of his videos, I laughed at the absurdity of a 40 minute video on some boring and niche topic I didn’t care about, but I ended up sticking around to watch the whole thing, and I came away from it with stronger opinions on appliances than I ever expected to have. I do love weird nerds who are so excited about their hobbies that they make learning about it fun. His vocal delivery makes it easy to follow along semi-passively without tuning him out.
I’m sorry, do you have a TLDR for your comment? ;)
Am kidding of course. I appreciate your examples and I do understand some have legitimate issues with long format media. However I was speaking in quite broad brushstrokes and still feel the general tenor of attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter. TikTok is but one example. Twitter is another. There are certainly more examples, but I won’t belabor the point. We’ve come a long way from the bards having to memorize entire stories. I do appreciate your comment.
Different people specialize in different contents. Most things need to be consumed bite sized. The things you are really good at, you’ll spend time watching half an hour video.
We don’t need a one size fits all, this was the mentality of the industrial age where scale was the main driver of being cheap and competitive. Now we have the possibility of content and physical manufacturing for niche segments, and that is great.
38 minutes is a normal length TV. I do like the long rants though, about Christmas lights
35-45 year olds just sitting here with our bookmarks, subscriptions and 100s of tabs open. We also are the last gen that builds and repairs our own devices. It’s a generation thing, if there is a lazy way the youth will find it and embrace it.
I’m in that age bracket and one of my best friends, about a month ago, started using chatgpt instead of a search engine.
We went to dinner after work and the place was closed. I went back to my car to grab something and when I got back he was fiddling with his phone and frustrated. He said ‘i’m trying to figure out (using chatgpt) if this other place is open.’. I just opened Google maps, it had the opening hours and I clicked directions and we were on our way.
Known this guy forever and I found it weird he would think that was better.
I’ve never used any LLM, so I can’t comment on their quality, but at least around here the hours listed on Google (or any other large search engine) are frequently … Shall we say, not based on reality.
You can submit corrections. Help the next person out
Fuck Google, support OpenStreetMaps instead.
I’m flabbergasted how people are not seeing the OpenAI stuff not just as not-that-useful, but very dangerous for privacy and open internet. And Google is trying to catch up, and they are still the biggest threat to privacy and open web.
Don’t use either, every corporation will betray you.
Support open solutions.
agreed. but most people use gmaps.
Especially in regards to shop opening hours.
source: I actively update osm data, and regularly remove years old data from the system
I refuse to help corporations for free so they can reap the benefits.
They should pay people to update the hours. And people should look elsewhere for maps.
Indeed, and so I should.
Unfortunately, I don’t usually discover the hours are incorrect until I get to the location, at which point I often am too annoyed to remember to do my civic duty.
I will try to do better in the future.
Understandable. I usually take a photo of the opening hours sign and submit later
If you’re not submitting corrections often, sending the photo along as proof also helps to get it accepted
It’s a temporary thing. People try out ChatGPT and it’s amusing enough to try some more until you realize it’s absolute dogshit.
deleted by creator
I call ahead now.
Everything old is new again.
Are you the Neighbor of the Beast?
Has he returned your mower yet?
I am.
He hasn’t.
You’re the first Internet stranger to notice! Here’s a celebration emoji: 🎉
I love that he points out there is nuance to all of this at the end
Yeah, there is a lot of evolving information, yet for now one can still have some measure of control over the content one can engage with
I thought this video was going to be “old man yells at cloud”, but it made me think about some posts I’ve seen on Lemmy. You know the ones I mean, people who are new and asking about how to tailor the experience to their own tastes, usually political tastes.
I always thought it was silly to expect the internet to put bespoke content in front of you with minimal effort. But maybe I’m just behind the times. Why wouldn’t you expect the platform to track your behavior and promote what it recons will keep you scrolling? That’s what’s normal I guess.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Way back, I found it hard to discover new people to follow on Mastodon, and I found myself wishing for a little bit of algorithmic feed, as a treat. I found it a shame that people were increasingly becoming anti-algorithm, full stop, because I think that algorithmic recommendation engines could be so powerful if they were leveraged for good (which, for many people, isn’t the endless scrolling or maximal engagement that the current system optimises for).
I need to get round to setting up an RSS reader. I’ve heard that a few of those have an option to give some level of algorithmic recommendations, whilst still prioritising the stuff you’ve already opted into seeing.
I think this is where the nuance is and where the things can go off the rails. Your example is that you want to more easily be connected with people that you enjoy engaging with but find it hard to find - which you did attempt to find a work around for, which I do commend.
I think because of the volume of scale of the internet it has been fine-tuned and engineered towards benefiting the major players more as they have taken convenience features and frankenstein’d it into a tool of “increased engagement”.
It is like a market square and everyone is shouting out their wares at the same time and the major players (and others) have done their research on how to be the “loudest and most attention-grabbing hawker at the square”
Here the algorithm approach is useful to help “silence the sea of voices” and find “hawkers” that sell “products” that are of interest to you. It does require some discipline on the users part to curate their “hawkers”, but overall the experience is improved as one deals with “products” that is aligned with one’s interests.
I feel, in general, however that the intent has been twisted into something that has become a slippery slope that slides down towards “how can I get eyes on my thing and keep people coming back” for as long as possible. One’s attention gets bombarded with as many ideas as possible and, from this, one’s scope starts to bloat and becomes muddy as one processes too many different ideas and viewpoints in a short time frame and as a result one spends less time forming a individual opinion. I believe this does contribute to shorter attention spans as we attempt to “offload” our thinking onto something else as we try to make sense of all the information we take in.
The easiest thing I can think of is TikTok and how quickly the short video format was incorporated into the big platforms.
It is a human shortcoming I feel that gets taken advantage of (and I feel like it is being cultivated) and as humans we do have a side to us that tries to optimise the shit out of a things - often to our detriment.
