I grew up with a huge interest in music. I started frequenting record stores at age 5 with my older brother. I used to know every album name, every song title, every band member and every lyric for hundreds of bands. A few years ago I realized that Spotify had ruined all that, I simply just put on a song I liked on a playlist and put it on shuffle. I lost my connection to music. Netflix did the same with movies and TV series. I cancelled all my subscriptions earlier this year and started buying CDs, vinyl, DVDs and video games in second hand shops and it has made me so much happier, and my interest for music, movies and art has returned.
I've also made websites for over 20 years now. Everything fro small niche forums to sites with hundreds of thousands monthly visitors. It used to be so much fun creating stuff on the internet. Now it just feels like a constant battle against big tech, as they all desperately want to keep users on their own platforms.
My brother does this – no albums, just a long playlist of songs he likes that's shuffled infinitely. It sounds infinitely boring, as I've told him many times. I guess in a way he's ignoring algos, so fair play, but he's still missing out on the discovery/exploration side of things.
AI generated slop might lead to no future incentive for art, and some researchers are already predicting the end of literacy as people outsource more writing and thinking to these (inadequate) machines.
Speaking of algorithms, Facebook's mastery of the attention economy has demonstrated the extremes of what is possible, including triggering hordes of people into a murderous rage.
I this week closed my Facebook page, which was meant to be for my books. It had been hobbling along for a few years, with some 140 followers - many of whom were friends that rarely saw my posts, and the rest of whom had begun to resemble weird fictional characters, so I'm guessing they're AI generated accounts (or whatever). FB had been strangling impressions for ages, and I like to think this is due to the fact that I kept my profile page private, had no friends, and set my birthday as Friedrich Nietzsche's (they must have struggled to find an advertising demographic for a 180 year old). Instagram is next to go - Twitter went a good while ago - but I'm hesitating because it does contain memories and friends. The bastards.
In the last decade, even before AI content creation started, writing on blogs and websites. Internet writing became full of warmed-over copy-pasted material lifted from other sites. Whether you were reading dating advice, political pieces or music articles, the content became bland, safe and repetitive. Bland, drab AI content isn't much different.
Yes! Everything is just the same, or a version of the same source. Every content creator is just copying the hot format, too many writers chase styles/topics that are hitting, too many musicians and shows doing the same tick box stuff to please the masses (who only want it because they are constantly fed it). Grim outlook
Recently discovered your writing. I’ve enjoyed reading through some pieces but let me question this piece…
I kind of agree yet also, exit the damn algorithm. It’s not just discipline, stop being lazy people. Go to the forums, visit guys who host their own sites, use RSS, or hunt out the weird people on the major platforms. This is no different than the real world. You want to find bonkers music, don’t scan billboard. You want to meet some locals while travelling, get outside the comfort areas and sniff it out, manually.
I spent time recently walking around Tokyo to discover new things. Yep, most of the time was total waste BUT finding a spot manually feels fucking awesome.
Algorithms serving us bland fare is no different than most of the commercials and shows on TV in the 90s sucked. If you submit to corporate taste makers, it does not matter when or where - it will be homogenous because those people are not interesting, they are only interested in a P&L.
Turned “us” into sheep or turned the general public? My dyslexic thinking self gets slammed for being a critical thinker like that would change me lol.
I grew up with a huge interest in music. I started frequenting record stores at age 5 with my older brother. I used to know every album name, every song title, every band member and every lyric for hundreds of bands. A few years ago I realized that Spotify had ruined all that, I simply just put on a song I liked on a playlist and put it on shuffle. I lost my connection to music. Netflix did the same with movies and TV series. I cancelled all my subscriptions earlier this year and started buying CDs, vinyl, DVDs and video games in second hand shops and it has made me so much happier, and my interest for music, movies and art has returned.
I've also made websites for over 20 years now. Everything fro small niche forums to sites with hundreds of thousands monthly visitors. It used to be so much fun creating stuff on the internet. Now it just feels like a constant battle against big tech, as they all desperately want to keep users on their own platforms.
My brother does this – no albums, just a long playlist of songs he likes that's shuffled infinitely. It sounds infinitely boring, as I've told him many times. I guess in a way he's ignoring algos, so fair play, but he's still missing out on the discovery/exploration side of things.
AI generated slop might lead to no future incentive for art, and some researchers are already predicting the end of literacy as people outsource more writing and thinking to these (inadequate) machines.
Speaking of algorithms, Facebook's mastery of the attention economy has demonstrated the extremes of what is possible, including triggering hordes of people into a murderous rage.
https://open.substack.com/pub/deeplywrong/p/meta-the-looksmaxxing-genocide-machine
Yeah, that's the worry right? If you learn to depend on AI to create, what happens to our ability to actually be creative?
Well, they can’t hide the broken glass in the ice cream.
I this week closed my Facebook page, which was meant to be for my books. It had been hobbling along for a few years, with some 140 followers - many of whom were friends that rarely saw my posts, and the rest of whom had begun to resemble weird fictional characters, so I'm guessing they're AI generated accounts (or whatever). FB had been strangling impressions for ages, and I like to think this is due to the fact that I kept my profile page private, had no friends, and set my birthday as Friedrich Nietzsche's (they must have struggled to find an advertising demographic for a 180 year old). Instagram is next to go - Twitter went a good while ago - but I'm hesitating because it does contain memories and friends. The bastards.
Yup, once they have you, they do everything to make it difficult to leave. You've done the right thing.
So even the algorithms have gotten lazy, serving us the same stuff as everyone else.
Not lazy – by design
In the last decade, even before AI content creation started, writing on blogs and websites. Internet writing became full of warmed-over copy-pasted material lifted from other sites. Whether you were reading dating advice, political pieces or music articles, the content became bland, safe and repetitive. Bland, drab AI content isn't much different.
Yes! Everything is just the same, or a version of the same source. Every content creator is just copying the hot format, too many writers chase styles/topics that are hitting, too many musicians and shows doing the same tick box stuff to please the masses (who only want it because they are constantly fed it). Grim outlook
Recently discovered your writing. I’ve enjoyed reading through some pieces but let me question this piece…
I kind of agree yet also, exit the damn algorithm. It’s not just discipline, stop being lazy people. Go to the forums, visit guys who host their own sites, use RSS, or hunt out the weird people on the major platforms. This is no different than the real world. You want to find bonkers music, don’t scan billboard. You want to meet some locals while travelling, get outside the comfort areas and sniff it out, manually.
I spent time recently walking around Tokyo to discover new things. Yep, most of the time was total waste BUT finding a spot manually feels fucking awesome.
Algorithms serving us bland fare is no different than most of the commercials and shows on TV in the 90s sucked. If you submit to corporate taste makers, it does not matter when or where - it will be homogenous because those people are not interesting, they are only interested in a P&L.
But that is the point of this - most people just take what the algo feeds them, resulting in a very vanilla internet experience.
If you have a vanilla internet experience, my guess you have a vanilla real world experience. That’s my point.
Turned “us” into sheep or turned the general public? My dyslexic thinking self gets slammed for being a critical thinker like that would change me lol.
Now, who will create what’s beyond algorithms?
Us as a general, of course there are outliers to everything!