Excellent piece, Eric. You answered so many questions I’ve asked myself over the last few years in particular about what I’ve been seeing online. The goofy faces on YouTube are killing my soul. And I can’t search for good memes anymore on major search engines without getting the same recycled garbage on repeat. We should all be reading more books, I agree.
Yes! You know it's bad when they've managed to kill MEMES and reaction gifs, one of the last unifying things we could all agree on. I have empathy for people whose livelihoods depend on these algorithms, but it just isn't healthy for anyone involved, and I wish people would be brave enough to go get a normal day job (I have one! 🙋🏻♂️) while they make art or work their side hustles instead of debasing themselves.
This is a little tangential, but I think similar forces have worked to radicalize and give internet brain worms to people like Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, etc. You hear about these people who used to be comedians or C-list celebrities, and all of a sudden they become weird conspiracy theory cranks who ALSO happen to hawk supplements or other junk, and it can all be traced back to the money and how it flows. Chasing cash and influence can be as addictive as a drug....
And of course, their views become their listeners views, and as these systems keep shoveling more of what they think you want, the content creators have to cater to ever more extreme tastes, and on and on and on it goes... It's a vicious feedback loop
Great article. I hadn't thought about YouTube face as a thing, but now I won't be able to unsee it. Thankfully, I hang out mostly in sewing YouTube. I suppose it has it's own version of clickbait titles, but those are usually far less helpful than the woman with 1000 followers showing me how to install an invisible zipper. I miss the early days of the internet when it felt like a vast ocean of information. Substack has given me a bit of that back (case in point, find this article), but most places feel like splashing in a puddle now...not very rewarding or deep.
Great essay. It feels like high school...the loud kids get the attention and take all the oxygen...meanwhile, those of us with expertise outside copy editing are trying to help some people out.
But somewhere, someone decided that people don't want education or edification or real information. They want entertainment.
Five stars for your essay. Social Media is like very powerful addictive narcotic and I'm begin inh to disentangle myself from it
Substack is my only point of contact and I'm steadily reducing my footprint. All I have to do when the addictive force resurges is to remind myself of 1967, the year I went off to college, snd how bright and deep and open the world was before the onslaught of the little screens.
This is very insightful and actionable, thank you. I was about to recommend that Ezra Klein podcast episode because I too listened to it, and your ideas here expand upon it quite well. I thing there is a long game in the sincere, long form writing that gets done on Substack…even if long form is 1,000 words!
Being a human, trusted node in a sea of crap will be important in the near future.
The majority of people’s minds are lost to the algorithms and social media narcissism, but like in terminator there is a resistance!
Totally agree! That was a great episode and it turned me on to The Verge. I’d seen it mentioned before but never checked out their work and I really dig their perspective. One of the first things I came across was their review of the new Amazon series Fallout, which is great so far. Funny how these things cascade 😄
Really enjoyed this piece Eric. (P.S. had no idea that’s why the recipe blog posts were so long!)
Thanks for encouraging us to take back control of what we consume. I wonder what would happen if we started a revolution where we retrained the algorithm, and stopped clicking on those faces or click bait titles etc? Might be like a few people going zero waste, while the there’s still huge amounts of waste by your next door neighbour doing a demolition - a drop in the bucket. (P.P.S my husband doesn’t have social media but watches a lot of YouTube and down votes anything that click baits)
It's a good idea! Getting back to some mindfulness in what signals we send to these algorithms to make them work better for us is important. To provide a banal example, I got frustrated that my Apple Music was not matching my preferences well and recycling the same songs too often, so I did some research on how the algorithm works and how to "train it" (spoiler alert, you have to make sure you actively "favorite" songs/albums/artists, rather than relying on plays/skips like Spotify). Since doing that, it performs much better.
The flip-side is that some of these platforms are moving away from ACTIVE signals (likes, comments, shares, etc) to PASSIVE ones. For example, TikTok measures exactly how long you even linger on a video and that is a data point. At that point, we really don't even have control on what they're learning about us, which is scary. Just one of many reasons I'm not on TikTok (and never was)!
Nice, great minds think alike, eh?! I fondly remember getting into political blogs like DailyKos in college and later Vox and others in grad school. There was definitely something freeing about the light footprint, low-to-no ad, anything-goes vibes of that era. I don't want to carry too much water for Substack, and I don't agree with all of their positions, but I *do* think direct subscriber models are going to be a big part of the future of the web
Yes, Substack really does have the potential to revive what was good about the original blogging days. Let’s just hope they don’t destroy the opportunity by tolerating so much bigotry…
Ha! As someone who takes CBD myself, it might be that, although with QC on human supplements already pretty sus, and likely worse for pet products, it is really hard to confidently recommend them. There are some reasonable joint supplements with chondroitin and some general omega fatty acid ones that are probably pretty harmless and may be beneficial. Canned pumpkin can be helpful for patients with both constipation, and paradoxically, diarrhea (some types, not all), but I doubt there is a lot of money in the Big Canned Vegetable market 😅
Totally agree, Substack is the only quasi-social media app I keep on my phone because (a) It is useful to keep up with messages and comments, and (b) a lot of how I engage with that app is reading long-form articles, rather than doom scrolling
Excellent piece, Eric. You answered so many questions I’ve asked myself over the last few years in particular about what I’ve been seeing online. The goofy faces on YouTube are killing my soul. And I can’t search for good memes anymore on major search engines without getting the same recycled garbage on repeat. We should all be reading more books, I agree.
Yes! You know it's bad when they've managed to kill MEMES and reaction gifs, one of the last unifying things we could all agree on. I have empathy for people whose livelihoods depend on these algorithms, but it just isn't healthy for anyone involved, and I wish people would be brave enough to go get a normal day job (I have one! 🙋🏻♂️) while they make art or work their side hustles instead of debasing themselves.
This is a little tangential, but I think similar forces have worked to radicalize and give internet brain worms to people like Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, etc. You hear about these people who used to be comedians or C-list celebrities, and all of a sudden they become weird conspiracy theory cranks who ALSO happen to hawk supplements or other junk, and it can all be traced back to the money and how it flows. Chasing cash and influence can be as addictive as a drug....
And of course, their views become their listeners views, and as these systems keep shoveling more of what they think you want, the content creators have to cater to ever more extreme tastes, and on and on and on it goes... It's a vicious feedback loop
Great article. I hadn't thought about YouTube face as a thing, but now I won't be able to unsee it. Thankfully, I hang out mostly in sewing YouTube. I suppose it has it's own version of clickbait titles, but those are usually far less helpful than the woman with 1000 followers showing me how to install an invisible zipper. I miss the early days of the internet when it felt like a vast ocean of information. Substack has given me a bit of that back (case in point, find this article), but most places feel like splashing in a puddle now...not very rewarding or deep.
Great essay. It feels like high school...the loud kids get the attention and take all the oxygen...meanwhile, those of us with expertise outside copy editing are trying to help some people out.
But somewhere, someone decided that people don't want education or edification or real information. They want entertainment.
Are we not entertained?
Yup, reminds me of "panem et circenses." Same as it ever was :/
Five stars for your essay. Social Media is like very powerful addictive narcotic and I'm begin inh to disentangle myself from it
Substack is my only point of contact and I'm steadily reducing my footprint. All I have to do when the addictive force resurges is to remind myself of 1967, the year I went off to college, snd how bright and deep and open the world was before the onslaught of the little screens.
This is very insightful and actionable, thank you. I was about to recommend that Ezra Klein podcast episode because I too listened to it, and your ideas here expand upon it quite well. I thing there is a long game in the sincere, long form writing that gets done on Substack…even if long form is 1,000 words!
Being a human, trusted node in a sea of crap will be important in the near future.
The majority of people’s minds are lost to the algorithms and social media narcissism, but like in terminator there is a resistance!
Totally agree! That was a great episode and it turned me on to The Verge. I’d seen it mentioned before but never checked out their work and I really dig their perspective. One of the first things I came across was their review of the new Amazon series Fallout, which is great so far. Funny how these things cascade 😄
Really enjoyed this piece Eric. (P.S. had no idea that’s why the recipe blog posts were so long!)
Thanks for encouraging us to take back control of what we consume. I wonder what would happen if we started a revolution where we retrained the algorithm, and stopped clicking on those faces or click bait titles etc? Might be like a few people going zero waste, while the there’s still huge amounts of waste by your next door neighbour doing a demolition - a drop in the bucket. (P.P.S my husband doesn’t have social media but watches a lot of YouTube and down votes anything that click baits)
It's a good idea! Getting back to some mindfulness in what signals we send to these algorithms to make them work better for us is important. To provide a banal example, I got frustrated that my Apple Music was not matching my preferences well and recycling the same songs too often, so I did some research on how the algorithm works and how to "train it" (spoiler alert, you have to make sure you actively "favorite" songs/albums/artists, rather than relying on plays/skips like Spotify). Since doing that, it performs much better.
The flip-side is that some of these platforms are moving away from ACTIVE signals (likes, comments, shares, etc) to PASSIVE ones. For example, TikTok measures exactly how long you even linger on a video and that is a data point. At that point, we really don't even have control on what they're learning about us, which is scary. Just one of many reasons I'm not on TikTok (and never was)!
It's unnerving to think that people are employed to figure out how to keep us on their platforms longer.
Indeed; it's a huge multi-billion dollar industry 🤪
Really strong on-point piece similar to one I did recently where I too did the “algorithm giveth” line - https://open.substack.com/pub/godofthedesert/p/cackling-at-the-death-of-clickbait?r=14q4c&utm_medium=ios I write about seeing these changes as they happened over the last 25 years.
Nice, great minds think alike, eh?! I fondly remember getting into political blogs like DailyKos in college and later Vox and others in grad school. There was definitely something freeing about the light footprint, low-to-no ad, anything-goes vibes of that era. I don't want to carry too much water for Substack, and I don't agree with all of their positions, but I *do* think direct subscriber models are going to be a big part of the future of the web
Yes, Substack really does have the potential to revive what was good about the original blogging days. Let’s just hope they don’t destroy the opportunity by tolerating so much bigotry…
But if you were going to sell snake oil, which one would it be? Gotta pick something with CBD oil, right?!? 😛
Ha! As someone who takes CBD myself, it might be that, although with QC on human supplements already pretty sus, and likely worse for pet products, it is really hard to confidently recommend them. There are some reasonable joint supplements with chondroitin and some general omega fatty acid ones that are probably pretty harmless and may be beneficial. Canned pumpkin can be helpful for patients with both constipation, and paradoxically, diarrhea (some types, not all), but I doubt there is a lot of money in the Big Canned Vegetable market 😅
Totally agree, Substack is the only quasi-social media app I keep on my phone because (a) It is useful to keep up with messages and comments, and (b) a lot of how I engage with that app is reading long-form articles, rather than doom scrolling