Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

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Viral content has gotten so weird alongside the rise of the algorithms. A funny cat video is no longer interesting enough to get shared around by millions of people. The trick I've noticed now is to make the viewer seem smart and/or above the person in the video. People doing bizarre, baffling things that you couldn't come up with an explanation for so that people will see it and go "wow this person is an idiot!" and share it around.

There's an entire genre of videos that feature a woman in a (expensive-looking) kitchen, saying she's gonna show you a super easy and convenient recipe, and as it goes on it turns out to be the dumbest thing you've ever seen. There will always be a man, assumedly her husband, behind the camera narrating along and agreeing that whatever she's making looks delicious. Then they eat the weird concoction at the end and pretend like it's amazing. Again, this is the same kind of content I described above, where it's designed to make the viewer think the people in the video are stupid, when really the viewer is the one being gamed when they share it around to their friends and give those "idiots" more ad revenue.

Another popular trend is videos where they ask people on the street easy questions. Things like "can you name any country on the world map?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRh1zXFKC_o). The video creators then cherry pick the dumbest responses. The person watching the video on youtube is thinking "damn, I might not know much, but I'm better than these people!" providing that subtle ego boost. Meanwhile in the comments there's a debate raging about how dumb Americans are, and the Americans are talking about the educational system and what not.

No, it was just a cherry-picked video. Don't overthink it.

A quarter century ago Leno and Letterman were asking people on the street who was buried in Grant’s Tomb. It’s not a trend.

It says something that there are people who appear to be able to talk but can't recognize their own country on the map (any number greater than zero is remarkable).

I saw a woodworker on TikTok say he intentionally does something in every video that is against standard practice and appears unsafe, because that drives comments which then drive his revenue.

I saw this technique in a cooking video, someone called pomegranate seeds “strawberries”. There were a lot of comments, half of them were about the mistake, while the other half were saying that the mistake was intentional. I guess it’s a modern version of a flame bait?

ElectroBOOM on youtube has 5.2M subscribers and that's exactly what he does: Every video he zaps himself, but while also trying to be educational.

I prefer EEVBlog as a result: No nonsense, no clickbaity titles (mostly). He's discussed the merits of "selling out" and had a frank discussion online with ElctroBOOM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UStV3zyhgnQ

I've watched him for years, and I think what he does is different from what we're talking about with this new form of viral content. Electroboom zaps himself because people think it's funny to see a guy hurt himself, and it's also impressive in some respect that he's good enough at what he does that he can do controlled, but safe stunts like that.

I think what the previous poster is talking about with this woodworker guy is he tries to make himself look incompetent so people will go to the comments and point out his "mistake." Electroboom would never expect people to go "hey, you shouldn't do that, it's dangerous." Whereas it's normal to bait people into engaging in that way on tiktok.

I think the parent comment is really onto something here. Isn’t this just weaponizing Cunningham’s Law?

Few people can resist the pull of being a smart-ass and telling others they are doing things wrong. It’s kind of brilliant.

> more ad revenue

Yes all of this exists because of advertising. uBlock Origin maybe isn't just a way to stay sane while browsing the web; it's the best tool we have to save the world.

All forms of advertising should simply become illegal. There goes Facebook, Twitter, all of "social media", and the worst behaviors of Google. I think most people would pay for a good search engine (I would); the "content" that people won't pay for out of their own pocket, should probably not be made in the first place.

Who will continue making content once all their advertising revenue is deemed illegal?

Nobody should be making content for ad revenue, that's my point. If people are willing to pay for it, just sell content. Books, movies, songs work that way. Even blog posts can be sold, that's the entire Substack business model.

If nobody's willing to pay for it, then they can either offer it for free, or not make it at all.

I think we would all be better off that way.

I agree. Let's ban all content creators who don't already have financial stability or who don't already have an audience. We don't need new content creators, just like we don't need new musicians. Everything that's already out there is good enough.

Content creators who "don't already have an audience" don't make any money with advertising today. It would not change anything for them.

Paywalling the web isn’t the answer.

I certainly agree it’s not “the” answer but maybe it’s one solution

Friend works in mobile gaming and mentioned that their most successful ads are showing someone playing the game slightly wrong. People feel enticed to play correctly. Pretty fascinating!

Reminds me of Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

One time, in University, a girl wearing a sorority shirt with their sorority's cryptic slogan printed on the back sat in front of a middle-aged going-back-to-uni-type mom. When the girl sat down, the mom asked, in a friendly tone, "What does your shirt mean?"

The sorority girl, turned around, and bitchily responded to her elder, "That's none of your business."

The mom looked offended but remained quiet. I was a couple seats away and remarked to the mother that the slogan means she likes having sex with strangers.

The sorority girl immediately turned around to deny the claim, then explaining the actual meaning of the slogan.

I want to add that stupid people have a natural advantage in doing these videos which is alarming.

The truly stupid people, rather than people only acting stupid, rarely make anything off of youtube. The term is "lol cow". Other youtubers take the idiot's content and "comment" about it on their channels. The original idiot gets nearly nothing, serving only as a source of content for the comment channels.

It is worse than “stupid”; we are rewarding mediocre (but good-looking) people..

Similar phenomenon in any scaled-up industry. Take the example of academia. Plenty of people without substance “making it” by purely aping the style of French philosophers, Wittgenstein, Feynman, and so on…

There was a chance, if they kept their soul and at what they were doing to make it big as authentic artists and scientists, but they would have to starve for a long time.

As for me, that’s why I am commenting on Hacker News instead of struggling on in grad school :)

Sounds like reality TV has made its way to the TikToks.

Also, makes me wonder how viral the feeling of condescension is.

Exactly! This is explicitly described in TFA. The jarring of context or surrealism somehow creates additional attention span. Totally intentional and well planned hack of our cognitive system to get us to watch more ads!

That's not particularly new - fail videos have been around for decades.

It's not in the same spirit as a classic internet fail video. People liked the fail videos because it was someone obviously hurting themselves or screwing something up.

The key here is that the people will act like the failure is something they haven't noticed, so people will be baited into engaging -- either posting a comment, thinking they're the first person to point out the "mistake" or "failure," and/or share it with their friends. The entire thing is staged to fish for a very specific type of engagement.

I've seen those videos you are talking about but I think they're all made by the same group. I don't think it's necessarily a "trend."

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