The video, shot on a cellphone from a first-person view, takes place in a bathroom. Embedded at the bottom are the words “what every teenager hides from their parents.” The person holding the phone takes a golf ball and briefly runs it under water from the sink. They then rub the golf ball against a roll of toilet paper, leaving a light impression of moisture. And that’s it; the video ends and starts over again, an infinite empty loop. If you’re wondering what exactly it is that “every teenager hides from their parents,” the answer is nothing. The video is nonsensical, not in some avant garde way but to fulfill its economic purpose. Leaving the viewer confused as to what exactly is being conveyed is a feature, not a bug - the more people are baffled by the video, the more they’ll comment on it to register their confusion, the more times they’ll send it to friends to try and figure out that which cannot be figured out. It is “content,” to use that wretched term, that is devoid of content, a human centipede of virality, monetizing fleeting interest. It’s the inevitable outcome of every bad incentive we’ve created online.
Agreed. And I note, this is why I came to Substack. Almost everywhere else, it is hard to follow creators rather than content. Most of the social apps want their algorithm to control and will feed you want they want to feed you regardless of whom you chose to follow. Publications will leverage the creator with a loyal or large following, and therefore, will not often give you the option of following a creator without subscribing to the rest of their offerings.
I feel somewhat frustrated when I read complaints about bad content polluting one's life. We do not have to pay attention. Often the platform will allow you to tailor your preferences. There is a responsibility here which is surely ours too.
My Reels are mostly delightful and - dare I say it - wholesome. They're snippets of dogs, musicians, street performers and things that remind me how the internet can reveal nice things in the world. To get there I just exercised the options available on each Reel to show me more or less of this kind of thing.
More ‘evidence’--if that were needed--of the shallow, superficial, sad, narcissistic world we inhabit in the first phase of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Everyone should get off all social media; world would be a much saner place.
Freddie, what's good content? I note a lot of your book recommendations. But I wonder what you think more broadly about "the classics," as palliative if not curative of the modern condition. I took a lot out of Romeo and Juliet, recently, for example. Juliet was so young and imaginative and brilliant. There was something quite moving about her character, and it took me out of "the internet," so to speak. I appreciated the book club as something that took us all out, but I stopped participating after The Cement Garden, so I, as a stand-in for your audience, am to blame! Apologies.
I listened to a Freakonomics podcast awhile ago and this particular episode was about how ineffective advertising actually may be and how there isn't any good data to determine its effectiveness. Most of the reasoning is that companies spend billions each year on advertising so it must be effective.
The big takeaway was that so much of what we consume is supported by advertising, if companies decided it wasn't effective and quit, it would have huge consequences.
"The internet is like a person you know who you think can’t possibly stoop any lower, and then manages to pull it off, over and over again."
The internet is a mansion with many rooms. Some of them, after a while, you just learn to not open the door any more. You know, 4chan and its progeny, and Zergnet, Cafemom, TMZ... no one is making you kick that football.
Thankfully, nothing will happen to your access to the largest treasure trove of information in human history. The Internet is worth it for Inter-library loan ordering alone.
As for the Worst of the Internet, the bonehead deadfall traps that most of us occasionally blunder into are nothing compared to some of what social media monitors get paid to review, in order to keep it offline before anyone else even sees it.
“I got detention for writing this in cursive class.” The letters being written spell out "ligma". "ligma" is commonly understood to be the setup to a joke where the punchline is "ligma balls".
For all the reasons you discuss here and more, I've always thought it both pretentious and pathetic when people refer to themselves as "content creators." "Content" is too generic a term to be of any real use.
I've followed Reardon's channel for a very long time. She used to be a regular food channel, designing and baking some really inventive cakes. I loved watching her process and seeing how much work went into her creations. Some years later she made a big announcement video about how YouTube changed its algorithm to favor "content farm" channels over everything else. It caused her channel to stop showing up under suggested videos. She couldn't reach new viewers and her numbers and ad revenue tanked.
I noticed it as a viewer, too. Instead of seeing suggestions for an 18 minute video on how to make a layer cake that looked like a giant Ferrero Rocher, complete with proper editing, high quality narration and camera work, YT would push generic stuff like "100 AMAZING cake decorations YOU'LL LOVE" from channels called I Love Cake, Happy Cake Love, or whatever. They were just low quality reels of cakes being frosted while a crappy song played over it.
I like her newer debunking videos because she puts the same amount of thought and effort into them since she's a quality YouTuber, but it does make me a little sad knowing she switched to them (in part) because her usual baking and food science stuff wasn't reaching anyone anymore.
"A good excuse to withdraw deeper into books, movies, albums, and art, stuff that was created for a deeper purpose than mining fleeting bits of attention for fractions of a penny."
Yes. Just consume normal things, normally. Read a book, listen to an entire album, go to a gallery (or buy a book of art). Get off 97% of the Internet (Substack excluded, ahem). If you engage with "content" on the web, make it extremely narrowly tailored: Your favorite chef on YouTube, say, who teaches you how to cook things of real value, or a Twitter account that provides actual engaging observations or reporting about important things. Subscribe to a message board of narrow focus regarding a worthwhile and meaningful topic. Beyond that, abandon the Internet. It's awful and it has essentially failed.
You're right, but this internet thing, and the games, they have messed with people's brains so they don't have the attention span to read a book or watch a whole movie. You might think this is hyperbole but there are people out there like this. I know some of them, and I can feel it happening to me around the edges. The book "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari talks about this, and iMinds by Mari Swingle talks about it in more scientific detail. It's baaaaad out there.
There is a fair amount of researched evidence that even having your phone in the same room with you is inherently distracting, even if you're not looking at it. Yes, gone are the days when I could lay on my couch and read a book literally all day long (that was also a result of being 15 and truly not having anything else to do, though), but I can still focus on books and movies if I want to (and am still a voracious reader of books). I have found that for me, the trick is to literally remove my phone from site. At work, if I really need to focus on a project I'll put my phone in a desk drawer; otherwise I am constantly drawn to it. At home, sometimes I'll put it in another room if I'm watching a movie or something. We have to adapt. There is a part of me that wishes these stupid things had never been invented, as convenient as they often are, but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Incidentally, I am a therapist, and almost none of my patients under the age of 40 have an attention span worth a shit. Maybe mine are a self-selected group, I don't know, but at least they are generally aware of it, and on the surface, want to do something about it. It's hard to get that back though, or in the case of younger people, they never had it to begin with. It does worry me about what our society will look like in another 30 years when no one can read a chapter of a book anymore, or articles I assign in my classes are considered "long reads."
I always keep my phone in another room when I need to focus on work or a movie or a book! I completely believe that the mere sight of it is a problem. FWIW I'm in my early 30s and I think I once had a very good attention span and still have an okay one, but I am probably an outlier because even back in 2011 I was the only person I knew who refused to bring a laptop to my college classes because it was too distracting. I worry a lot about people who will never be able develop their attention in a world without smartphones though...
I teach doctoral students now, and almost all of them bring laptops to class, and it drives me bananas. I could theoretically put my foot down about it, but having them in class is a norm, and some students do genuinely take notes on them, so I just let it be. Also, I took a laptop to class when I was a doctoral student most of the time too, so I guess I can't complain about it too much. It definitely makes them less engaged in class though.
I know my attention span is way worse than it was 10 years ago but I can still watch a full movie or a couple episodes of TV while leaving my phone and laptop in another room. I have noticed that a lot of people cannot watch anything without also scrolling on one or more screens at the same time. It's a little scary, not to mention annoying if you're sitting next to them on the couch trying to focus on the movie. This is part of why I love movie theaters so much!
Freddy, don't you remember these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio
“The internet is like a person you know who you think can’t possibly stoop any lower, and then manages to pull it off, over and over again.”
I would replace “Internet” with “media” and put the big tech industry in the same jail cell.
The Internet is really just a bunch of wires, fibers and integrated circuits.
Agreed. And I note, this is why I came to Substack. Almost everywhere else, it is hard to follow creators rather than content. Most of the social apps want their algorithm to control and will feed you want they want to feed you regardless of whom you chose to follow. Publications will leverage the creator with a loyal or large following, and therefore, will not often give you the option of following a creator without subscribing to the rest of their offerings.
It’s frustrating, but worth it.
I feel somewhat frustrated when I read complaints about bad content polluting one's life. We do not have to pay attention. Often the platform will allow you to tailor your preferences. There is a responsibility here which is surely ours too.
My Reels are mostly delightful and - dare I say it - wholesome. They're snippets of dogs, musicians, street performers and things that remind me how the internet can reveal nice things in the world. To get there I just exercised the options available on each Reel to show me more or less of this kind of thing.
We do not have to be victims of content farms.
More ‘evidence’--if that were needed--of the shallow, superficial, sad, narcissistic world we inhabit in the first phase of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Everyone should get off all social media; world would be a much saner place.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Freddie, what's good content? I note a lot of your book recommendations. But I wonder what you think more broadly about "the classics," as palliative if not curative of the modern condition. I took a lot out of Romeo and Juliet, recently, for example. Juliet was so young and imaginative and brilliant. There was something quite moving about her character, and it took me out of "the internet," so to speak. I appreciated the book club as something that took us all out, but I stopped participating after The Cement Garden, so I, as a stand-in for your audience, am to blame! Apologies.
Amen 🙏
It's bad on purpose to make you click https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/its-bad-on-purpose-to-make-you-click
I listened to a Freakonomics podcast awhile ago and this particular episode was about how ineffective advertising actually may be and how there isn't any good data to determine its effectiveness. Most of the reasoning is that companies spend billions each year on advertising so it must be effective.
The big takeaway was that so much of what we consume is supported by advertising, if companies decided it wasn't effective and quit, it would have huge consequences.
"The internet is like a person you know who you think can’t possibly stoop any lower, and then manages to pull it off, over and over again."
The internet is a mansion with many rooms. Some of them, after a while, you just learn to not open the door any more. You know, 4chan and its progeny, and Zergnet, Cafemom, TMZ... no one is making you kick that football.
Thankfully, nothing will happen to your access to the largest treasure trove of information in human history. The Internet is worth it for Inter-library loan ordering alone.
As for the Worst of the Internet, the bonehead deadfall traps that most of us occasionally blunder into are nothing compared to some of what social media monitors get paid to review, in order to keep it offline before anyone else even sees it.
The joke, it is ancient:
"How do you keep a moron in suspense?"
Warhol was way ahead of the curve here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(1965_film)
i.e., "it's been filmed, therefore it must be more interesting than real life somehow"
“I got detention for writing this in cursive class.” The letters being written spell out "ligma". "ligma" is commonly understood to be the setup to a joke where the punchline is "ligma balls".
For all the reasons you discuss here and more, I've always thought it both pretentious and pathetic when people refer to themselves as "content creators." "Content" is too generic a term to be of any real use.
I've followed Reardon's channel for a very long time. She used to be a regular food channel, designing and baking some really inventive cakes. I loved watching her process and seeing how much work went into her creations. Some years later she made a big announcement video about how YouTube changed its algorithm to favor "content farm" channels over everything else. It caused her channel to stop showing up under suggested videos. She couldn't reach new viewers and her numbers and ad revenue tanked.
I noticed it as a viewer, too. Instead of seeing suggestions for an 18 minute video on how to make a layer cake that looked like a giant Ferrero Rocher, complete with proper editing, high quality narration and camera work, YT would push generic stuff like "100 AMAZING cake decorations YOU'LL LOVE" from channels called I Love Cake, Happy Cake Love, or whatever. They were just low quality reels of cakes being frosted while a crappy song played over it.
I like her newer debunking videos because she puts the same amount of thought and effort into them since she's a quality YouTuber, but it does make me a little sad knowing she switched to them (in part) because her usual baking and food science stuff wasn't reaching anyone anymore.
"A good excuse to withdraw deeper into books, movies, albums, and art, stuff that was created for a deeper purpose than mining fleeting bits of attention for fractions of a penny."
Yes. Just consume normal things, normally. Read a book, listen to an entire album, go to a gallery (or buy a book of art). Get off 97% of the Internet (Substack excluded, ahem). If you engage with "content" on the web, make it extremely narrowly tailored: Your favorite chef on YouTube, say, who teaches you how to cook things of real value, or a Twitter account that provides actual engaging observations or reporting about important things. Subscribe to a message board of narrow focus regarding a worthwhile and meaningful topic. Beyond that, abandon the Internet. It's awful and it has essentially failed.
You're right, but this internet thing, and the games, they have messed with people's brains so they don't have the attention span to read a book or watch a whole movie. You might think this is hyperbole but there are people out there like this. I know some of them, and I can feel it happening to me around the edges. The book "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari talks about this, and iMinds by Mari Swingle talks about it in more scientific detail. It's baaaaad out there.
There is a fair amount of researched evidence that even having your phone in the same room with you is inherently distracting, even if you're not looking at it. Yes, gone are the days when I could lay on my couch and read a book literally all day long (that was also a result of being 15 and truly not having anything else to do, though), but I can still focus on books and movies if I want to (and am still a voracious reader of books). I have found that for me, the trick is to literally remove my phone from site. At work, if I really need to focus on a project I'll put my phone in a desk drawer; otherwise I am constantly drawn to it. At home, sometimes I'll put it in another room if I'm watching a movie or something. We have to adapt. There is a part of me that wishes these stupid things had never been invented, as convenient as they often are, but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Incidentally, I am a therapist, and almost none of my patients under the age of 40 have an attention span worth a shit. Maybe mine are a self-selected group, I don't know, but at least they are generally aware of it, and on the surface, want to do something about it. It's hard to get that back though, or in the case of younger people, they never had it to begin with. It does worry me about what our society will look like in another 30 years when no one can read a chapter of a book anymore, or articles I assign in my classes are considered "long reads."
I always keep my phone in another room when I need to focus on work or a movie or a book! I completely believe that the mere sight of it is a problem. FWIW I'm in my early 30s and I think I once had a very good attention span and still have an okay one, but I am probably an outlier because even back in 2011 I was the only person I knew who refused to bring a laptop to my college classes because it was too distracting. I worry a lot about people who will never be able develop their attention in a world without smartphones though...
I teach doctoral students now, and almost all of them bring laptops to class, and it drives me bananas. I could theoretically put my foot down about it, but having them in class is a norm, and some students do genuinely take notes on them, so I just let it be. Also, I took a laptop to class when I was a doctoral student most of the time too, so I guess I can't complain about it too much. It definitely makes them less engaged in class though.
I know my attention span is way worse than it was 10 years ago but I can still watch a full movie or a couple episodes of TV while leaving my phone and laptop in another room. I have noticed that a lot of people cannot watch anything without also scrolling on one or more screens at the same time. It's a little scary, not to mention annoying if you're sitting next to them on the couch trying to focus on the movie. This is part of why I love movie theaters so much!
This is very true.
My Reels is dog memes, "that's what she said" type jokes and girls doing PG level naughty things. I giggled.