They didn’t even have a proper primary with Hillary. She was anointed by the DNC to start and the party itself worked against other candidates any way it could to make sure she “won”. Completely ignoring the fact that she was the opposite of any candidate that might snag a single vote from the republicans, and unlikable among most dem voters themselves. Throw in the fact that they were so convinced of a victory that Trump flipped blue states by virtue of showing up versus ignoring them on the basis of “who cares, they’ll vote for me anyway”, and it was a recipe for disaster.
Had the DNC allowed Bernie Sanders to win, or had Biden not picked his running mate on the basis of a Berkeley focus group where the participants were trying to out-virtue each other, we would live in a very different world.
I don't really disagree with this but my opinion is that basically no one is capable of winning a US presidential campaign in the modern era in a matter of ~100 days. The fact Harris was a uniquely bad candidate that weirdly refused to differentiate herself from Biden, just exacerbated that problem.
If Biden and his administration had not been so hellbent on hiding his decline and allowed a robust primary process to start a year earlier, we'd also probably be living in a very different world. There was an extraordinary amount of hubris involved. Hell, even the amount of time between the debate and Biden stepping down (and then initially refusing to endorse Harris) took an absurdly long time. Felt like the lesson with Hillary's campaign was not learned - they expected people to vote for Harris by virtue she was not Trump. Clearly that has not been working.
That’s a good point. The fact that the administration and media spent nearly 6 months telling the world not to believe our own eyes did that campaign no favors.
Especially when it became so untenable to continue the lie that they had to implicitly admit to it along with falsely accusing everyone else of misinformation.
Letting someone make free life choices is good. Disincentivizing not working isn't. It's a reasonable choice for one adult in a family to not work, especially if their earnings don't exceed the costs incurred by having both adults at work. We shouldn't set up our societies in a way to forces people to work even if it makes no financial sense.
More evidence the EU solved the wrong problem. Instead of mandating cookie banners, mandate a single global “fuck off” switch: one-click, automatic opt-out from any feature/setting/telemetry/tracking/training that isn’t strictly required or clearly beneficial to the user as an individual. If it’s mainly there for data collection, ads, attribution, “product improvement”, or monetization, it should be off by default and remain that way so long as the “fuck off” option is toggled. Burden of proof on the provider. Fines exceeding what it takes to get growth teams and KPI hounds to have legal coach them on what “fuck off” means and why they need to.
DNT was useless because it didn't have a legal basis. It would have been amazing if they had mandated something like this instead of the cookie walls.
Advertisers ignored it because they could. And complained that it defaulted to on, however cookies are supposed to be opt-in so this is how it's supposed to work anyway.
remember how all of HN and tech people were saying that DNT is a Micro$oft scam designed to break privacy because it was enabled by default without requiring user action?
to the point that Apache web server developers added a custom rule in the default httpd.conf to strip away incoming DNT headers !!!
Exactly. I went through a phase of playing around with ESP32s and now it tries to steer every prompt about anything technology or electronics related back to how it can be used in conjunction with a microcontroller, regardless of how little sense it makes.
Personally I always wonder why a pdf tool puts 3-6 background processes on startup that are constantly doing something with my CPU and internet connection when my PC is otherwise idle.
If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. Everything is intentional because he obsessively tests anything that might give him even the slightest edge in a sea of videos. The content itself barely matters.
This seems like innately hostile behaviour. Not to other video creators, but to his audience. Stripping as much as he can using data and mathematics is the kind of thing engineers do to pull more out of a machine, not something you do when you're creating informal communications to other humans.
Attention engineering is how the charts are topped. Media producers knew this decades before the social media, and perfected it by the late 90's. Avoiding extremely popular stuff is just common sense if you want any real authenticity.
I can't think of any. The upside is that people who think it's weird to not reflexively consume mass-market garbage identify themselves voluntarily, which makes it much easier to avoid them.
> when you're creating informal communications to other humans.
What he’s creating is fame and money for himself, the fact that it’s by doing videos is incidental. That’s why he also got into ghost kitchens, a game show full of corner cutting, and a theme park in Saudi Arabia open for under two months.
Appealing isn’t the goal. Catching someone’s attention is the goal. (Nobody thinks the balloons on the cars at the car dealership look good but statistics prove that balloons sell cars.) Then, triggering someone’s curiosity, which is more where the copy comes in. (You can increase your click count with this one weird trick!)
You’re subject to it every bit as much as me or anybody else, but for whatever reason, we have different triggers than the Mr. Beast crowd. People that think they’re immune to it after having it pointed out to them are likely just less aware than most how their emotions are being manipulated by things they don’t even consciously perceive. Sales guys love people like that.
If you're aware of it and think you're susceptible then you can make it impossible to be influenced by it. Ie, You can disable all 'related videos'/feeds/home page on Youtube with Unhook, and sponsored segments with SponsorBlock. I'll probably never see a Youtube thumbnail for the rest of my life, throw in Adblock and your exposure is extremely limited.
> Sales guys love people like that.
You can also easily never speak to them. I know they exist, but as a consumer I can't think of anytime I've had a sales interaction with a salesperson. I understand that some people do, and might even actively seek a salesperson - but if I go to a physical store I already know what I want to buy before I get there and the only interaction I might have is to ask how to find the thing I want.
I know it's a common argument/appeal to authority that advertising must work, because companies are still doing it - but there are economists who think that it might not[0].
> Ie, You can disable all 'related videos'/feeds/home page on Youtube with Unhook
This is not specific to YouTube. It’s billboards, product placement, etc etc etc.
> You can also easily never speak to them. I know they exist, but as a consumer I can't think of anytime I've had a sales interaction with a salesperson
Ok, so you make every major purchase online, probably don’t own a car, never purchased a home or lived in a city where its extremely difficult to rent without a realtor, never go out to restaurants or bars in the US where the service staff essentially works on commission in the form of gratuity… sure thing.
Thinking Sony would sell just as many products entirely based on word of mouth is absolutely absurd.
And as an aside, conversion measurement is der rigueur in digital advertising— for obvious reasons, companies don’t publish it. It is the basis for A/B testing which uses large sample sizes to see which presentation is more likely to make people do or not do something. It’s easier than ever to tell where someone was exposed to something and the click trail they took to end up on a purchase screen. I don’t, nor have I ever worked in digital marketing, but this information is extremely easy to find. Additionally, the Freakonomics guys are no strangers to vibing their way through topics they know nothing about and mistakenly assuming their brief thought experiments and unchallenged researchers have uncovered something useful. It’s not like they’re never right, but they’re no stranger to unforced errors in their analysis and you’d be wise to not rely on them as a source.
I somewhat suspect our difference here is cultural divide - I've never been to the US, but none of the things you mentioned have involved salespeople in my experience in Europe.
I live in a city, have a car (bought second hand), buy things in person, go to restaurants. We have no tipping or gratuity, apartments have a fairly standard application process and often it's a previous tenant showing you around because they want you to take over their lease, unless the apartment is empty.
It doesn't have to be appealing, it has to make you click.
Car crashes are not appealing, and yet it is something most people are tempted to look at. Many people think of dopamine as the pleasure hormone, not really, it is the motivation hormone, pleasure is one way to achieve that, but so is horror.
It makes evolutionary sense, if something horrible happens, you better pay attention, to get prepared so that it doesn't happen to you.
I don't know the details of the psychological response to Mr Beast thumbnails, and I think neither does My Beast himself, the analytics say it works and that the only thing that matters to him.
They give access to these features to their partners before general release, but this A/B feature has existed for quite some time now. I’ve seen various Patreon tech creators run those A/B tests and see them discuss them in their creator Discords.
Had the DNC allowed Bernie Sanders to win, or had Biden not picked his running mate on the basis of a Berkeley focus group where the participants were trying to out-virtue each other, we would live in a very different world.