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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 27 Oct 2023 \ on: The Slow Death of Authenticity in an Attention Economy tech
I love Mr Beast as a person, but I cringe a little every time I hear him in an interview where he talks about making the "best" videos when it's all about engagement in a low attention span economy.
Too easy to get audience captured by the algorithms unfortunately, and who even knows what growing percentage of your engagement is bots.
That's interesting because I don't hear it that way when he says it. I hear it as, "I figured this out ... after not getting it for a long time." I think I maybe trust the algorithm more than I deserve to, but I also try to account for video internet demographics being skewed young.
His videos are entertaining even if I'd agree they aren't worth measuring in terms of good or bad too. Most of them are kind of compressed hero's journeys. They're basically youtube's version of a game-prize show. Is CBS's Survivor, the "best" tv show? Nah, but people enjoy watching it so much It's had nearly 50 seasons.
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I actually watch most of his stuff to support him because he seems like a good person who spends most of his profits towards good causes.
But a lot of it his strategy seems to optimize towards not having a single second of downtime where a viewer might lose interest, including immediately starting the video at 100 mph to maximize retention. But I guess that's what you have to do to compete with tiktok attention spans.
TLDR (getting old lol)
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