Audience capture as one of the most powerful forces in the universe \ stacker news ~meta

Audience capture as one of the most powerful forces in the universe

1553 sats \ 11 comments \ @elvismercury 9 Oct 2023 meta

Probably most people have heard of audience capture, but if you haven't, or even if you have, this is the best article I've seen to illustrate how the dynamics play out in the modern environment.

Audience capture has been a thing for at least 2500 years (thinking back to Greek and Roman orators / statesmen who turn into monsters once the crowd had locked them into the feedback loop) but I think the dynamics of right now are an order of magnitude worse and more consequential. The feedback is faster, the incentives are higher, the reach is wider, it operates 24/7/365.

I bet we'll have a whole new laboratory to watch this unfold, in real time, as a result of Hamas attacks.

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350 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 9 Mar

I think I saw this post recently (and not last year) since I still remember how I wanted to reply but then I didn't finish my reply and then I forgot. Fortunately I bookmarked it. I wanted to reply with something along the following lines:

I think why audience capture is so powerful is because we want to belong to a group (or should I say tribe?) so if we do something that a lot of people (seem to) like, we're kind of hardwired to keep doing it.

I saw this a lot in my life I think, especially in school. All these cliques that are formed, the people in them all influence each other. Your friends are your audience and you are the one who wants to stay friends with them. The longer you are friends with them, the more it hurts to breakup, especially in a "formal way".

The best example is when people act in groups very different to how they would react alone. Maybe there is one "group leader" who wouldn't but then they probably have the most influence because who does not want to be like the cool kids and fit in?

A lot of people act tough but when they're alone, you can actually be friends with them.

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Mar

A lot of people act tough but when they're alone, you can actually be friends with them.

This is an under-rated point -- also serves (for me) as a practical target for personal growth, e.g. there are times when I have sensed that some problematic interaction could succeed in a non-public way; but I wasn't willing to 'retreat'. And why not? Apparently there was something in the conflict that I wasn't willing to lose. In other words, I'm playing my own game. It's just a different game.

Sometimes you can be your own audience. It's no better.

224 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 10 Mar

there are times when I have sensed that some problematic interaction could succeed in a non-public way; but I wasn't willing to 'retreat'.

So you mean you felt like you were wrong but didn't want to show it since people depended on you being right against the person you were ~~arguing~~ interacting with?

In other words, I'm playing my own game. It's just a different game.

Also good point. A lot of people play games but don't even know which game or what the goals, rules, opportunity costs etc. are

I think actually we are all playing some game and only when we're about to see the end screen we realize what game we played and which game we wished we would have played.

Kind of want to ask you now which game you are playing 👀

1031 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 10 Mar

So you mean you felt like you were wrong but didn't want to show it since people depended on you being right against the person you were arguing with?

That would be the best case, because then it's clear that there is an audience that I'm putting on a show for. More often, it's some idea of myself that I'm holding onto, a role I want to have. A harsher and bitterer audience to contend with.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 10 Mar

Oof yes, that's the hardest pill to swallow, I guess. To know deep down that you shouldn't be like this but you want to be for some reason. So essentially, you don't want to want to be that person.

Reminds me of that line in a very old song:

I would like to want to go to the cinema with you, but I don't.

110 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 9 Oct 2023

Fascinating article. I guess we all can relate to having experienced audience capture. I'm sure I don't even realize how it's affected me and to what extent, but I have noticed it on occasion. It's usually when I write a thoughtless, automatic post or reply, relying on groupthink rather than my own beliefs. Thanks for posting.

143 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 9 Oct 2023

Yeah, anyone who thinks they're immune is instead demonstrating some combo of naivete and willful ignorance. It's interesting to think about how it plays out, personally, on SN. What do you say that you might not otherwise? What don't you say that you otherwise would?

It's not at all hard to see how it has played out in the larger btc space. Or the larger political space.

But these are just more emphatic places. It's everywhere, always.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 9 Oct 2023

It is everywhere, but it really has me thinking about SN. I'll know I've totally lost my sense of self when just about everyone agrees with everything I say.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 9 Oct 2023

I was going to suggest people wouldn't pay other people directly for mukbang but apparently they already do.

My wife and I watched TikTok Boom this weekend after it was shared here. They interview a beatboxer who captured an audience on tiktok rather than the inverse. If he's the hero, his foils are women showing more skin than they'd like or tiktokers exaggerating identity driven oppression for positioning purposes. One woman is a nearly white-passing Afghani who headlines with being bullied as a minority ... and when they cut to her high school graduation, it's much more colorful than most in the united states ... truly urban.¹

It's nice to have a name for this phenomena! These kinds of things remind me of one of my favorite classes in college - tech/media/culture studies ... Tech is giving us lived experiments.

My wife was disturbed by advertisers rather than audiences being the financial patrons of tiktok creators ... they capture (or become captured) to resell their audience to brands. This is less of a point and more of just another strange dynamic.

as an older persian guy who went to a mostly white rural high school, this struck me as odd ↩

226 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 9 Oct 2023

The only thing that shocks me about this reply is the first half of your first sentence. Well, and your "return from footnote" link, which is amazing :)

I can't think of a conceptual tag that has done more work in my brain than "audience capture". It's like half of modernity snaps into focus.

Combine that with whatever you would call the fracture where we can inhabit separate self-soothing realities by curating our assorted feeds, and you have the last 7 years or so, and probably the next however-many years before humans extinguish themselves.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @2bithits 10 Oct 2023

Interesting article

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