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Comment by sourcepluck | Hacker News Reader

Go back to the 1990s (even probably the 2000s?) and ask literally anyone what they think of the idea of people spending huge quantities of their time on this mortal plane watching videos of other people talking about how they do their make up and pick their outfits.

Are those videos "worth watching"? Are videos of people playing video games "worth watching"? Are videos of people opening products and saying out loud the information written on the box and also easily accessible on the public internet "worth watching"?

I'm not happy about these developments, but that isn't a factor of much concern to the people driving and following these trends, it turns out.

It's been a long time since "quality" and "success" have been decoupled. Which is to say - I hope you like the taste of hats.

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Bad TV is a lot older than that. It probably seems weird nowadays to watch “I Dream of Jeanie” and “Gilligan’s Island” reruns because that’s what was on TV. Or how about game shows and soap operas? Daytime TV was the worst. But people watched.

And pulp fiction is even older!

Every now and then I play the Gilligan's Island theme song because it's so catchy. Still no idea what the show is about

Ahh, it's about shipwrecked people that somehow don't endlessly screw each other and still adhere to all the same social norms when they are leaving the idea as they did when they arrived. I think they once made a phone out of a coconut - I watched it before school as a kid, great show! Unbelievably innocent and naive.

I'm pretty sure humans have been finding ways to unproductively waste time for millenium...

I'm not sure how watching lightweight videos on subjects you're curious about is any worse than how people wasted time in the past?

Personally I waste time watching videos on outdoor gear, coffee making equipment and PC hardware. I certainy don't regret it because I had no plans to do anything productive with that time either.

videos of other people talking about how they do their make up and pick their outfits.

Doesn't seem that much different from a fashion magazine interview about what X celebrity likes to wear. Those have been around for quite a long time.

At least in the past people were celebrities for a reason other than the number of followers they had on social. It'd be nice if we could return to a time when people were part of the public discourse because they were good at something (or their parents were rich, sadly).

That’s not true at all. Fame for no reason or dumb reasons is hardly a 21st century phenomenon.

No dog in this fight, I don't know what exactly you're doing, but I'd cautiously point out that it is, in fact, novel to the internet era to watch rando microcelebrities doing makeup step by step, no matter how long we delay acknowledging that with microquibbles.

I could throw in an example of how I'll watch boring videos of a couple playing with their birds for 90 minutes on Youtube. You can link me to the Wikipedia page on slow TV (via Norway), and it won't erase the simple, boring, straightforward, fact that it is a phenomenon.

I didn’t interpret the original comment to be about micro celebrities, but about people supposedly wasting time today in ways they didn’t beforehand. I agree that micro celebrities are a new phenomenon somewhat (although they are also sort of a return to more regional distribution of fame.) But that wasn’t the point being made.

The scale isn't even close, and it's become normalized now. I think it bears talking about as a 21st century phenomenon.

> At least in the past people were celebrities for a reason other than the number of followers they had on social.

“Other than”? Obviously, as social media didn't exist. “Better than” or “more relevant to the things for which there celebrity status was used to direct attention”? Not particularly.

Why does it matter if the celebrity was good at something or not if you are just discussing what they wear?

But you ignored why they have so many followers in the first place. It's because they're entertaining to watch/listen to, which for someone in the entertainment business it's as on the nose as you can possibly get. I think absurd to say they're not good at something because I for sure don't have what it takes to record/edit that many videos all day and be that charismatic all the time.

Ahh, you e touched on a big problem with our society rn - nothing is worth doing.

I've been really thinking about lawns lately and how much time men and women spend maintaining them, how much pride many of them have in such activity... lawns aren't real tho, it's just a personal park nobody ever uses that we all thought we wanted bc rich ppl had them. Front lawns especially, just for looks, nobody normal ever sits on them even.

Case in point is all the people that live in an apartment - they don't do lawns. They might think they want to and some might even enjoy up keeping a lawn but it's not an activity that's "worth it" in fact there are many reasons not have a lawn, it isn't an activity that justifies itself as so many pretend.

Everything is like that. Almost nothing any of us do adds to humanities' general progress or improves our own situations even.

Mowing a lawn and watching TV are incredibly similar activities if you have a nice lawnmower.

I actually think there are mental benefits to cutting the lawn. There is something zen about slowly reducing the grass in an ordered manner.

I've had very similar thoughts about lawn-cutting, but hadn't related it to technology-related trends!

I couldn't agree more. In a broad sense, it's like we've lost contact with our own lives, communities, and cultures. I don't think those things are "dead", but they mean things now which are totally different than what they meant even only a couple of decades ago, and the people living through it sort of know that and kind of say it out loud sometimes even, but can't really wrap their heads around it at the same time and continue to ape the old behaviours (no offence, anyone, I do it too).

"Traditions" live on in a sort of zombie state... we cut the grass, we present the gift cards. It's an odd and fun(ny) moment to be alive.

I'm not disputing that people waste inordinate amounts of time running out the clock before they shuffle off this mortal coil. (cough every X demograph reacts to Y video cough).

Agreement to eat said head apparel is predicated upon "infectious energy" (i.e. quality) - NOT success. I'll draft up a more officious document later.

Note: I am the sole arbiter of what constitutes quality.

You also seem to be the sole arbiter of what constitutes worthy activities.

> It's been a long time since "quality" and "success" have been decoupled.

I think so, too.

I guess quality was a property of interest in the old days, because the path e.g. for commercial music was: Maximize profit -> Maximize sales -> Maximize what the target audience likes -> Maximize quality.

For TikTok etc. they bypass the market sales stuff and replace it by an 'algorithm', that optimizes for retention, which is tightly coupled to ad revenue. I imagine the algorithm as a function of many arguments.

Just relying on quality is an inefficient approximation in contrast to that.

The Art of Zen and Motorcycle Repair will teach anyone all they ever need to know about quality.

We used to have some "radio station" in shoutcast during the 90s. It was very local and geeky, but had a couple of listeners. It was kind of a podcast

Good point. I absolutely abhorred reaction videos until I found a channel that works for me. A guy who reacts to videos about ultra luxury mansions. I find it interesting hearing an expert in the field point out things that most of us wouldn't think of. Plus he's got a great sense of humor.

What blew my mind was that there would be a market to watch other people play video games. You never know what catches on.

> Go back to the 1990s (even probably the 2000s?) and ask literally anyone what they think of the idea of people spending huge quantities of their time on this mortal plane watching videos of other people talking about how they do their make up and pick their outfits.

So like supermarket magazines in video form? I think people would get it.

To me, unboxing videos are documentation, not entertainment. When I need to know exactly what's in a box and how it's packaged, an unboxing video is the only source of that information.

What's in the box is almost always on the box, and how it's packaged seems to be very useless information.

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