Octopus Overlords

Then the issue is likely that the algorithm sees you engaging with political clickbait videos and it just starts flooding your "Try this" feed with anything and everything that's trending popular. I listen to a lot of Youtube videos while I'm puttering about that cover board gaming or solo RPGs, so I get flooded with rando recommendations about both topics. And they're all over the place in terms of the types of games or RPGs and typically are being fed to me because they're being viewed/liked by so many other people.

In short, it's picking a general topic you're engaging with (politics) and feeding you more to see what you respond to so that it can continue to drill down and figure out what you (and others) like the most. It's a self-feeding loop.

The Trump videos are they’re for you to troll and comment — they want you to engage, not be happy. Anger is frankly more profitable because you’ll look for more content and see more ads.

Daehawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 12:56 pm I seem to start out watching all the anti trump videos because I hate that guy and end up having some sites sneak in that are for trump or something. I dont mean too. Im really looking for or at anti maga stuff. Makes me feel good to rant on them.

Like the others said - what you're clicking on isn't pro-Trump or anti-Trump, it's angry political rants. If you click on angry political rants, you'll just be fed more angry political rants. YouTube won't judge the content of those rants based on who they're angry about - they just give you more and more angry rants.

And, at the end of the day, these videos are designed, not to inform you, not to make you feel better, but to make you angry, and keep you angry. As long as you're angry, you're like an avalanche - you just keep going and getting more and more pissed. And the part that feels good? Expressing that anger to relieve it. But that isn't your anger - it's anger that the creators of those videos manipulated you into feeling. Why? Because if you're pissed, you're more likely to continue on and watch video after video.

Here's a truth: That kind of anger is really, really bad for you. As in, "It will shorten your life" bad for you. It maintains a level of stress that damages you, physically, and overflows from the videos into everyday life. You spend that much time angry, and you will find that you're angrier at other times, too.

And, not to sound Yodish, but maintaining anger at that level absolutely leads to that anger becoming hatred.

When you wonder why the hard-right went from being regular conservatives to being hateful, spiteful, violent extremists, then you have your answer: This is how it happens.

You're walking a dangerous and miserable road. Do yourself a big favor and find a different type of entertainment. Go look up The Charismatic Voice and learn something about music while hearing great bands. Look up something on some other hobby or skill that's entertaining and watch that (Tested fits in here!) Because you know what feels better than expressing your anger? Not being angry to begin with.

Blackhawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:04 pm Do yourself a big favor and find a different type of entertainment.

seriously great advise.

Go look up The Charismatic Voice and learn something about music while hearing great bands.

Ha Ive watched her for years. The faces that she makes while reacting and dissecting music is relaxing.

Daehawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:29 pm

Go look up The Charismatic Voice and learn something about music while hearing great bands.

Ha Ive watched her for years. The faces that she makes while reacting and dissecting music is relaxing.

You get my point then - there are areas of interest that aren't based on making you angry. Browse around and find something there.

And before anyone jumps on my recommending reaction videos, there's a big difference between two random people from Cincinnati reacting to Squid Game, and an expert reacting to something in their field of expertise. One is just clickbait, the other is analysis and commentary, and is often informative and educational.

Yeah FWIW I haven't watched any of Dae's anti-trump videos. Seeing that man's face and hearing his voice trigger me, so I avoid it as much as I can.

I do so enjoy watching anything that is anti tRump though. Really makes me feel good But Ill try and stick to legitimate sources like MSNBC and such. BBC and the like. Its awful these fake news sites are allowed to post this stuff.

Ill try to stay in the normal sites from on though hehe. Like this MSNBC report video. Its a good one I think. Do you guys see anything wrong with it? or anything. I dont wanna be duped again.

Kraken wrote:Yeah FWIW I haven't watched any of Dae's anti-trump videos. Seeing that man's face and hearing his voice trigger me, so I avoid it as much as I can.

I stopped listening to NPR after his election.

At least I'm not alone. I hate they idea that he triggers me but he triggers me, bad. I can't get two minutes and two minutes is generous. And he's sent me down a path of a certain sort of people I no longer have a tolerance for when they start down their own path. I hope some day I recover but I've yet to see how that's going to happen. I don't want to be that guy because of TFG. He's can't let that happen.

About videos that make you angry. Sometime you want to be angry or upset, right? For example if there is someone or some organization doing a very bad thing. You probably want to be angry and against that? Or are you supposed to just ignore them? Not reading or watching the news about them because the news can make you angry?

Like for example when some Republicans support child marriage, you want to be against or oppose that right? Or if someone make a law that ban abortion, that ban LGBT, etc? Or when a supreme court justice accepted million US dollars of "gift". Are you supposed to just ignore any news about that because they can make you angry and that can be bad for your health?

Daehawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 4:45 pm I do so enjoy watching anything that is anti tRump though. Really makes me feel good But Ill try and stick to legitimate sources like MSNBC and such. BBC and the like. Its awful these fake news sites are allowed to post this stuff.

Ill try to stay in the normal sites from on though hehe. Like this MSNBC report video. Its a good one I think. Do you guys see anything wrong with it? or anything. I dont wanna be duped again.

Spoiler:

Just be careful of MSNBC. They're not quite Fox News for the left, but they're close.

In other words, they're deeply biased, and anything you read there is likely to be 'tweaked' to better fit their goals - which is close enough to lying to count.

Victoria Raverna wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:55 pm About videos that make you angry. Sometime you want to be angry or upset, right? For example if there is someone or some organization doing a very bad thing. You probably want to be angry and against that? Or are you supposed to just ignore them? Not reading or watching the news about them because the news can make you angry?

Like for example when some Republicans support child marriage, you want to be against or oppose that right? Or if someone make a law that ban abortion, that ban LGBT, etc? Or when a supreme court justice accepted million US dollars of "gift". Are you supposed to just ignore any news about that because they can make you angry and that can be bad for your health?

That's not even remotely what this discussion was about. Being angry about current events isn't the same as immersing yourself in sources that exaggerate the truth to build outrage, fear, anger, and hatred. Being angry about actual events is important, even vital. It's where change comes from.

Letting yourself be manipulated by dishonest people in order to better pad their pocketbook by feeding your emotions isn't the same.

Being angry about a real thing, and using the anger as motivation is good. Living in a constant state of anger over imagined or misrepresented things is terrible for you, for your family and friends, and for everyone else. It also rewards the manipulators who profit from the anger and hate.

Blackhawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 7:52 pm in other words, they're deeply biased, and anything you read there is likely to be 'tweaked' to better fit their goals - which is close enough to lying to count.

Here's how I look at it. Pretty much all the news is entertainment at this point; some much worse than others. They're trying to get eyeballs so at a minimum they're picking visually attractive news presenters. Then, they're going to add flashy graphics or language designed to tickle emotions. They need eyeballs so whatever they can do to get them, they will.

Print journalism isn't the answer, but I find reading it can be better - it removes a few layers of potential manipulation. I'm not saying to read the paper, but reading articles online vs watching infotainment to learn about a politically charged issue. However, I get it - it's not "fun" to read articles. It's not "sexy" to read a link versus watching a 3 or 5 minute video on Youtube.

To borrow from McLuhan:

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.

I get pretty much all of my news from news sites, not videos. I normally only go looking for news videos when I'm wanting to see the original event that a written story is about.

I watch a lot of heavily politicized videos, some of them clickbait, but as long as you know going in to take everything with a grain of salt they can be good entertainment.

Daehawk wrote:

Go look up The Charismatic Voice and learn something about music while hearing great bands.

Ha Ive watched her for years. The faces that she makes while reacting and dissecting music is relaxing.

I'm not at all a fan of "reaction videos," but I think what she does is different from the norm and often very interesting to hear her first impressions of so many bands and songs that I've loved for years. I was just watching one last night of her hearing Geoff Tate/Queensryche for the first time and she was appropriately blown away.

Blackhawk wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 8:12 pm I get pretty much all of my news from news sites, not videos. I normally only go looking for news videos when I'm wanting to see the original event that a written story is about.

+1. I start every morning with an honest-to-gods newsprint copy of The Boston Globe, whose slant is certainly liberal/Democratic but whose news reporting and in-depth features (remember "Spotlight"?) are trustworthy. And it's hardly my only source of news, just the first one of the day. But I default to reading, not watching. When I click on a news item, the first thing I do is close the inevitable autoplay video so that I can read the story.

Smoove_B wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 1:07 pm Then the issue is likely that the algorithm sees you engaging with political clickbait videos and it just starts flooding your "Try this" feed with anything and everything that's trending popular. I listen to a lot of Youtube videos while I'm puttering about that cover board gaming or solo RPGs, so I get flooded with rando recommendations about both topics. And they're all over the place in terms of the types of games or RPGs and typically are being fed to me because they're being viewed/liked by so many other people.

In short, it's picking a general topic you're engaging with (politics) and feeding you more to see what you respond to so that it can continue to drill down and figure out what you (and others) like the most. It's a self-feeding loop.

Yes it’s been proven by Australian researchers in this space.
https://au.reset.tech/news/youth-radica ... xperiment/

At the start of the conference, we set up a YouTube account for a 17 year old Australian. We then primed this account by ‘liking’ approximately 50 pieces of misogynistic content on YouTube Shorts. Over the next 30 minutes, we watched 100 videos on YouTube Shorts to see how rapidly the account fell into a ‘manosphere’ rabbit hole. The answer was quickly. Of the final 10 videos before we stopped, 9 were overtly misogynistic or even defended white supremacy. After just half an hour, the account was well and truly in a deep rabbit hole.

Further research in Ireland has indicated that once the algorithm identifies you as a man however you will be continually be bombarded with far right content.

https://antibullyingcentre.ie/wp-conten ... Report.pdf

YellowKing wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 8:22 pm I watch a lot of heavily politicized videos, some of them clickbait, but as long as you know going in to take everything with a grain of salt they can be good entertainment.

My one concern with this is the all-seeing algorithm turning my feed into a sea of political garbage. Yes, I too like to watch the occasional rant or counter-rant, but that just results in more rants and counter-rants.

Related (to the algorithm), I often focus on videos of certain topics, which result in my feed being filled with these videos. That's great because I'm very interested in the topic. Until I'm finished with the topic. Then there is nothing of interest no matter how far or long I scroll. It's just the same videos I skipped at the beginning, being fed me to over and over. It is almost shocking when something new (often the same videos being fed to Dae, because the algorithm is feeding it to everyone) and interesting shows up, and after I click on it, my feed completely changes and all the old videos I've seen or skipped get thrown out and the feed fills with new content.

It's so obvious that it's a little insulting.

edit: Just a heads up, if you let the video play on your phone without clicking on it (as a preview in your feed) it gets added weight to the algorithm, despite never clicking on it or hearing the audio. This idea has additional evidence when the app adds it to your history, despite never clicking or listening to it.

edit2: Oh, I recent said to my family "My feed is becoming entirely about boobs. I need to do something about that"

disarm wrote: Sat Jun 08, 2024 9:23 pm

Daehawk wrote:

Go look up The Charismatic Voice and learn something about music while hearing great bands.

Ha Ive watched her for years. The faces that she makes while reacting and dissecting music is relaxing.

I'm not at all a fan of "reaction videos," but I think what she does is different from the norm and often very interesting to hear her first impressions of so many bands and songs that I've loved for years. I was just watching one last night of her hearing Geoff Tate/Queensryche for the first time and she was appropriately blown away.

She does a couple with Metallica that I really enjoyed, as well.

Yeah, it's too bad that she (along with others) get lumped into the over-generalized category of 'reaction videos.' Too many people see the popular "Woman from Vermont reacts to this week's popular cat videos" and assume that those represent the whole of the category. Watching professionals analyze and dig into what's going on with (whatever) can be really interesting and informative. Another example is historians, or experts in a particular historical discipline, analyzing films and videos related to their field. Skallagrim, for instance.

And yet another variant is people watching something that's normal for us, but for which they have a unique perspective. There are a couple of channels that focus on people who live in less developed small communities (like rural Pakistani villagers) responding to popular western music, films, and so on. Yeah, it's just people reacting to a film, but their complete unfamiliarity with modern technology and western culture leads to observations that can be eye-opening as to our own assumptions. They often latch on to some minor detail that we so take for granted that we don't even notice it, and come away with completely different meanings. What they think is important and what we think is important are completely different, and it leads you to question how you view the world around you. That kind of perspective is like holding a mirror up to your own culture and seeing both the good and bad. That's got value.

Those last channels tend to go downhill after a couple of years, as the people reach a point where they've seen enough of our culture that it isn't a fresh perspective anymore, but the early videos can be both entertaining and enriching.

So, yeah - I get annoyed when people are dismissive of the entire genre. It's like our generation(s) enjoying comic books or more mature animation, only to have family members be collectively dismissive of them because "those are only for kids - act your age." There were plenty of adults when I was young who would have been absolutely dismissive of shows like Arcane because they're animated.

I watch a bunch of different chans like her. A few other vocal coaches, a couple opera singers, a bass singer and then others that react or watch these singers and break down their talent and what they are doing and so on. Its a fun way to relax.

There's so much amazing stuff on Youtube - live music, people sharing unique perspectives or experiences, and detailed examinations of weird or interesting things.

The problem is that overwhelmingly those things don't hit the algorithm right so instead Youtube is flooded with ONE TRICK TO MAKE LAUNDRY EASIER or HAS HASBRO GONE WOKE videos that are clearly gaming the system for eyeballs - and it's working.

Last week I listened to a ~60 minute video on solo RPGs and Carl Jung - it was absolutely fascinating. I love that there's videos of how rats can navigate a toilet - so much better as a visual than trying to explain it to someone. Being able to see random concerts or songs from the last 25+ years? It's unreal.

But all the political and socially manipulative nonsense? It's so frustrating.

Yes. Yes it is.

Perhaps we just need better seed material. More OOers need to post content from worthwhile (not just funny) channels in the YT thread.

And people need to learn to encourage this by not actively discouraging people when they post stuff that isn't too their personal taste (we do have a few people here who like to be dismissive of other peoples' forms of enjoyment when they don't consider them 'good enough'.)

Nebula is a pretty good alternative for interesting content without any of the spammy scaminess. It's subscription based, but they almost always have sales going on. Two of my favorite YT channels, CityBeautiful and CityNerd, are on there.

all I know, is you all are ruining the algorithm for this thread.

If an algorithm can be ruined by our threads, it deserves to be ruined by our threads.

Here I will try to combine multiple thread and forum topics at once in an effort to land a kill shot.



It's from August of 2019 and still 100% appropriate as we head towards November of 2024.

Love that song!

They even put out a Trump-era sequel:

Oh wow, I had no idea. As someone that just discovered them back in January or so, I've had their stuff in steady rotation now for 6 months. Its all so good.

Impromptu protest Saturday by masked group with swastika symbol ends without incident at State Capitol building in PIerre

In a Twitter/X post, Governor Kristi Noem said, “Today, Nazis attempted to rally at the SD Capitol without a permit and were escorted away by Highway Patrol officers. Nazis are not welcome here in South Dakota. We stand on the shoulders of generations of Americans who have fought for the freedom of all- here and abroad. We stand for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We reject all hatred and Nazis. Full stop.”

Still a victory for them, that photo is plastered everywhere and probably ends up as their screensavers, too.

Asking Nazis politely to disperse isn't how you deal with Nazis.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Mon Jun 10, 2024 4:55 pm Asking Nazis politely to disperse isn't how you deal with Nazis.

Yet another opportunity for a few quick rounds of mortar fire. Problem solved.

This is a great video. Its Jon Stewart..the guy is a national treasure so you know its a safe video to watch.

tRump aint right in the head and even his own supporters are seeing it.

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday rallied voters in Las Vegas during a campaign stop where his teleprompter appeared to not be working. During the stop, Trump veered into talking about a shark attack and boats. Joe Scarborough discusses Trump's rants, a new column from Eugene Robinson wondering 'Is Donald Trump Okay?' and why Biden's public appearances seem more heavily scrutinized than Trump's appearances.

The Republicans are just spouting lies left and right now. And the Wall Street Journal went with a front page lie and everyone knew it.

Remember when Trump railed against politicians who used teleprompters?

I look forward to watching them debate. It will be plain as day which one is lucid and which is demented. Wrapping trump's content in domineering bluster works among the faithful at his rallies, but it ain't gonna fly on live TV.

I like that you think TFG isn't going to bail in the final days before this first debate is scheduled. He has nothing to gain and so much more to lose if he does this before being nominated.