Ask Lemmy

It did get better for a while, but now it is worse.

The problem with short form, which is quite evident to those of us who grew up with regular form TV back in the day, is short form format mimics a TV advertisement of yore, most of the time (exceptions exist, we’re talking middle of the bell curve numbers here). The type of music played is exactly that bad as well.

As such, shorts usually hit the brain like an advertisement under the guise of not being one.

I’d be curious to know if shorts consumers are more likely to consume ads, now that they’ve been thoroughly trained to consume advertisement format vids/music.

Yes, TV has gotten worse. When I was a kid, a 90 minute movie had one ad in the middle, if it was longer, there were usually two. Recently I saw TV after god knows how many years and there was an ad every 10 minutes.

And yes, the really short content sucks because it damages the attention span. But it's a trend, it's not like it started with this generation, our attention is attacked constantly and has been for a while.

I wouldn't hate on brain rot that much, sure, it's stupid, but hey - you had your own stupid thing when you were young, as did every other generation.

Steam generally shows you what they think will interest you, I don't see any gooner porn there, that one might be on you.

Yes, you're getting old, yelling at clouds. Not a bad thing as long you don't make others feel bad because of it.

Listen, leave my mundane activity sims the fuck alone

Entertainment is getting considerably worse. I thibk Jack Spirko talked about entertainment fitting with the times of the culture, which is why it's gotten disgusting.

Music has become politicized as well, and people who aren't sorry for them want AI to replace singers (including my folks).

For tv shows and movies:

Older content is rapidly disappearing/getting less accessible. Especially non english content. Shout out to do your part in legally archiving digital media from public libraries.

At the same time new media is pushed build on Existing mega franchises, everything is the same format with the same formula with no higher goal then the profit-margin.

online: is a different story because google owns it. They decide how youtube presents content to users, what do’s and don’ts get punished or get you recommended more.

Again no goal higher then the profit margin,1 ad for a 30 minute video is not as efficient as 1 every so many shorts. And because shorts are more random and your just consuming the flos its harder to tell the ads apart.

Because shorts are optimised on phone, google also rules how 50% of people use their phone it pushes more people to this more exploitative and less ad blockade device.

Good content still exists, its just a lot harder to find because promoting it is less profitable.

Their is a word for this kind of things falling apart to chase profit. Its enshitification.

And with AI sinking its claws in… I can only imagine how rough the ride will be. There is still good content out there, there is just more trash to sift through to find it.

Things have been getting shittier by the day for years.

I did the math, and it looks like when the Twitter crowd came online everything went to shit.

Use Tidal for music. It’s pretty good

Television and Radio are 75% advertisement.

They always have been

Most of my favorite youtubers from 2010s are gone replaced with nonstop politics, drama, reaction, and streaming content farming.

Find better youtubers? But also understand that people are going to talk about what matters to them and most people aren't privileged enough to ignore the political hellscape (or are so privileged they think they can benefit from it...). Same with the "drama" since so much of that is intrinsically tied to how the platforms they rely on for their livelihood function.

I feel it in my heart that short form content is damaging everyones attention spans especially my tablet ridden younger family members.

I very much agree. But this has been going on for decades. TV led to a decline in movies ("I only have time to maybe watch five episodes of a show. Not a full movie") and "book reading" has been on a decline for about as long.

When I go into the search bar on YouTube I see stuff literally called “brain break” and “brain rot”.

Okay? I mean, everyone always made jokes about how TV would rot our brains. It is nothing new

I switch on the news and its 90% pure political propagandano matter the station.

... the news is discussing politics? Gasp, shock, and amazement?

Even the memes suck now, say what you want about caption memes and dancing babies and troll face, Pepe, me gusta but that shit was at least comprehensible in humor. go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says “It has no fixed meaning.”

"I'm Rick James, bitch". "Whatchu talkin' bout Willis". "Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth".

Kids are fucking stupid. At least this crop aren't racist? Yet...

Even the steam store just feels different now. Its full of gooner porn bait visual novels and mundane activity sims and 1 season relevant fps shooters.

Don't expect stores to curate themselves for you. Find others who like what you like and let them trawl through the steam slop. It is no different than being a PC gamer who wanted to buy KOTOR back when every store would shove WoW and Halo down your throat the second you entered.

All the stuff I enjoyed is gone,

No, it's not. Retention of media is at an all time high and you can very much sit down to watch or play the things you live

and everything they make now seems so empty and pessimistic now.

Again, curate better.

Is this just me getting old yelling at clouds, or is something wrong?

What's wrong is that you think the world must revolve around you. It doesn't. But that doesn't mean people out there aren't making content you would love to consume. You just have to put a bit of effort in. Because The Algorithm was never about giving everyone exactly what they want. It was about matching people up to personas and feeding content along those lines.

Pretty much every successful channel you see on youtube these days is made to follow a formula. There are classes you can take on how to attract a demographic, how often to release content, how to keep your followers engaged via discord, what sort of merch to offer...

Definitely what all of us think.