<story><title>Reality is just a game now</title><url>https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bombcar</author><text>The &amp;quot;customized feed for you&amp;quot; is not as unique as you&amp;#x27;d expect. It basically is the algorithm fitting you into some number of buckets and then serving you that content.&lt;p&gt;And speaking of shared experiences, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=XqZsoesa55w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=XqZsoesa55w&lt;/a&gt; has been watched 11 &lt;i&gt;billion&lt;/i&gt; times.&lt;p&gt;However, I suspect 10 billion of those may be my kids ...</text></item><item><author>alexpotato</author><text>Back in the mid 90&amp;#x27;s as the Internet was starting to become more accessible to the general public, I remember reading an article that made the following point:&lt;p&gt;The telegraph effectively killed many newspapers as everyone moved to newspapers to printed national and global news. That was bad b&amp;#x2F;c it lowered the options people had for consuming news and dramatically reduced the diversity of ideas and opinions. The Internet was going to do the same to the point that we all read the same big websites and therefore had the same thoughts, opinions etc. &amp;lt;end of the point&amp;gt;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading this and thinking &amp;quot;that kind of makes sense&amp;quot;. Revisiting the idea recently, Pandora, YouTube, TikTok etc have all made a business out of building a customized feed for YOU. It&amp;#x27;s become the exact opposite of what the original article predicted. It&amp;#x27;s not surprising that we&amp;#x27;ve become so divided when you can &amp;quot;build&amp;quot; your own reality by choosing the information streams that you want to consume.&lt;p&gt;PS In terms of mass media shared experiences, 120 MILLION people watched the series finale of the TV show MASH. Hard to imagine a similar event today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>basch</author><text>In fact, the &amp;quot;customized feed for you&amp;quot; does one thing really well.  It treats you exactly like it learned to treat someone &amp;quot;like you&amp;quot; from the past.  So what it really does is regurgitate an old, stale, pattern.  In some sense, it prevents you from finding new experiences, keeping society frozen in time, repeating the behavior sequences of those before them, the pioneers and trailblazers that define the relationships early.&lt;p&gt;Im a broken record with how often I cite this article, but any chance I get where it is relevant it is worth exposing people to.  And this thread is that moment.  &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;adamcurtis&amp;#x2F;entries&amp;#x2F;78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;adamcurtis&amp;#x2F;entries&amp;#x2F;78691781-c9b7...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The other thing algorithmic feeds, and even some sites like buzzfeed do, is generate strings of nonsense.  This isnt quite a new phenomenon, but started in the 80s with MTV.  &amp;quot;Whereas variety shows and televised concerts in the 1960s and 70s provided context and structure to the music they presented, MTV instead gave viewers a rapid succession of wildly different sounds and visual accompaniments to those sounds, without any logic connecting one video to another.&amp;quot; 
 &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;5730762&amp;#x2F;buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;20&amp;#x2F;5730762&amp;#x2F;buzzfeeds-founder-used...&lt;/a&gt;  Compare America&amp;#x27;s funniest home videos, with a host, callbacks, and even a basic narrative structure to tiktok.  At least Tiktok accomplishes SOME of the culture missing from prior products on the market in the last decade by inviting people to remix videos with the same audio.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reality is just a game now</title><url>https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bombcar</author><text>The &amp;quot;customized feed for you&amp;quot; is not as unique as you&amp;#x27;d expect. It basically is the algorithm fitting you into some number of buckets and then serving you that content.&lt;p&gt;And speaking of shared experiences, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=XqZsoesa55w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=XqZsoesa55w&lt;/a&gt; has been watched 11 &lt;i&gt;billion&lt;/i&gt; times.&lt;p&gt;However, I suspect 10 billion of those may be my kids ...</text></item><item><author>alexpotato</author><text>Back in the mid 90&amp;#x27;s as the Internet was starting to become more accessible to the general public, I remember reading an article that made the following point:&lt;p&gt;The telegraph effectively killed many newspapers as everyone moved to newspapers to printed national and global news. That was bad b&amp;#x2F;c it lowered the options people had for consuming news and dramatically reduced the diversity of ideas and opinions. The Internet was going to do the same to the point that we all read the same big websites and therefore had the same thoughts, opinions etc. &amp;lt;end of the point&amp;gt;&lt;p&gt;I remember reading this and thinking &amp;quot;that kind of makes sense&amp;quot;. Revisiting the idea recently, Pandora, YouTube, TikTok etc have all made a business out of building a customized feed for YOU. It&amp;#x27;s become the exact opposite of what the original article predicted. It&amp;#x27;s not surprising that we&amp;#x27;ve become so divided when you can &amp;quot;build&amp;quot; your own reality by choosing the information streams that you want to consume.&lt;p&gt;PS In terms of mass media shared experiences, 120 MILLION people watched the series finale of the TV show MASH. Hard to imagine a similar event today.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>magic_hamster</author><text>While billions might watch a video on YouTube, it&amp;#x27;s not truly a shared experience unless it happens at the same time. And at least for me, even with live chat scrolling in the speed of light to the side, it still doesn&amp;#x27;t feel the same as &amp;quot;Live TV&amp;quot; did. But as I commented elsewhere in the discussion, I still prefer the current experience.</text></comment>