Category: Media

STOP PRAYING TO ALGORITHMS

I see this so much on Substack Notes: “I wish the algorithm…”

STOP! Stop wishing a computer in the cloud is going to deliver your new favorite band, some cool new writer – the algorithim can only process 1s and 0s, and by doing so turns all “content” into 1s and 0s, so just stop with this belief that if only the algorithm were better you’d be able to know about better stuff.

It’s all bullshit. Don’t rely on computers to discern editorial quality, or help you discover.

Don’t let AI take these jobs of editors, curators, DJs, writers, and various other conveyors of taste and fine art.

Via Stephen Moore’s Trend Mill:

“A lot of people seem to actually enjoy AI-generated content, and are ready to eat up more. We should have seen that coming. There’s a simple explanation — too many people have become so lost in platforms, so dictated to by algorithms, ‘for you’ feeds and suggested content, that we’re collectively losing our taste.”

Everything has been reduced to bits. Cleaned up, covered with a vanilla scent, and optimized to keep you tied into whatever platform you think is somehow “good.”

Friends are filters. People are guides. Pick up something in print that still requires some editorial discernment, or find your local college radio station. Email the writers of the newsletters you like. Go find some blogs again.

Moore is right, we’re collectively losing our taste, and we’re become helpless babies being spoon fed whatever media someone else wants us to consume.

MTV IS A GHOST

This is unreal:

“MTV is a ghost. Its average prime-time audience of 256,000 people in 2023 was down from 807,000 in 2014, the Nielsen company said. One recent evening MTV aired reruns of “Ridiculousness” from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.”

This from ‘They are TV’s ghosts – networks that somehow survive with little reason to watch them anymore,’ via Simon Owens.

Such a unique opportunity in front of us, if only we could all look up from our phones for fucking three minutes, shake out of our trance, and believe that we can make something great.

DON’T MISS BLOCKBUSTER

Like I mentioned yesterday in ‘TRADITIONAL MEDIA KILLED IT ALL,’ the quote that got me was, “(podcasting) started as a homegrown endeavor before traditional media got into the game.”

Then I read ‘You Don’t Really Miss Blockbuster‘ by Chris Dalla Riva, and something else hit me between the eyes:

“Blockbuster was also constantly maligned as the corporate behemoth that bowdlerized mom-and-pop video shops.”

Oh, yeah, that’s right. The town I grew up in had several mom-and-pop video stores, one was run by people I knew!

But then Blockbuster rolled in, and the mom-and-pop establishments closed one by one.

It’s like maybe these corporate giants who waltz into our communities don’t have our best interests in mind (see also Conde Nast buying Pitchfork, Bandcamp left in the hands of Epic Games).