> The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
― William S. Burroughs
it seems like quite a lot of these are just made by people in 3rd world countries to make ad revenue. making videos for westerners gives you the richest audience, so the best ad revenue. and anger creates engagement, so making polarizing content gives you most reach.
Which also generates hate towards Indian people online too which is definitely quite a problem, so this issue cuts both ways.
In my opinion, I used to think that there used to be nation-state actors involved within the perception of a country but the thing is that you can just have such perverse incentives and you wouldn't even need to create nation-state actors and they can then stay away blame-free even.
Edit: another thing that I remembered is that it shouldn't be a developing nation or developed nation critique but rather an critique of the system in general as I have seen western people critique about for example UK's downfall and I have seen Indian people critique about for example say India's downfall.
My point is, everyone makes rage inducing content nowadays if one looks for it and the algorithm sometimes even pushes it and so the algorithmic structure has created these perverse incentives and is pushing them on all of us basically
He constantly sends me hate-porn videos; much of it obvious fakes; AI or not (It's been going on far longer than AI tools).
People get hooked on anger. It's -literally- an addiction, and they behave like addicts; seeking out the best "hate dealers," selling the "best" anger-inducing content, and savagely attacking anyone that questions the stuff.
I learned to just ignore most of what he sends me. I've asked him not to send it, and he's ignored it (like an addict).
I have friends that are into the far-right and far-left cesspits, too. It's pretty sobering.
What was it that Bill Burroughs said about heroin?
> "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."
You could replace "junk" with "hate," and it would apply.
As for UK decline, I am afraid that it very much is visible in the 2020s. There was no real debt protection during the lockdown as there should have been (to prevent people's homes and businesses being seized due to non-payment), and the price of everything is sky high. This is attributed to Brexit, but I suspect that is part of the issue. As for migration, it definitely is much higher than it was twenty years ago, and there are elements which are playing both ends of that debate like the BBC itself.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. The Eurasians are our best allies.
If you're into travel blogs YouTube will serve you an endless barrage of videos with photoshopped thumbnails, exclusively containing fearmongering about whatever country or city they're visiting. This has been going on since pre-AI times.
On social media, you'll see plenty of AI-generated videos of members of $GROUP acting badly. One way to make people hate each other even more.
It's been known for a decade+ that platforms paying by engagement / interaction incentivizes people to post things that cause strong negative emotions. Fear and hate sell in the algorithmic engagement economy.
https://www.youtube.com/@theallornothingpodcastwith4442/vide...
https://www.youtube.com/@ukexplored/videos
1. Protest rights have become more restricted 2. Online speech is more regulated and more policed 3. Digital privacy has weakened relative to state power
And that decline is a good thing.
More recently? It's been making some effort towards burning the furniture.
lol.
As if Farage bought a cheaper Sri Lanka media consultant to win the next elections.
A more reliable guide would be how many women you see wearing hijabs, burqas, niqabs etc. In some areas this is more common than others. You will see more of these in Birmingham than Berwick upon Tweed.
So it really depends where you are.
Drama writers can also imagine situations which don't derive from real life. Channel 4 had a drama about a Muslim riot grrrl punk band called Lady Parts, something which to my knowledge has never happened in the UK... Because if it had the Guardian etc would be all over it. Maybe it was meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. (The drama was written by an upper middle class woman who was sent to private school and lived much of her childhood in Singapore... Not exactly a typical working class British Muslim upbringing.)
i guess we are kinda hardwired as humans to react to perceived danger/threats. warm and fuzzy nice feelings seem harder to cultivate and take a lot of persistent effort. so it’s much easier to fall into this anger/hatewatching cycle than the other more compassionate/reasonable/warm and fuzzy side.
dunno, most of this comment is probably pop psych bs, but it feels right for my experience so i dunno.
fwiw, i hope your friends finds their way to something a little more peaceful one day.
I see lots of that stuff in the Fellowship. I've seen resentments go on for decades, and metastasize. Since no one is putting a stem in their mouth, it's OK.
I gave up my anger at about the ten-year mark. It was really difficult. Just like giving up the substances.
That isn't completely wrong. Bernie Sanders was refreshing because he didn't feel such a big part of the machine. I also hate the way everything is being turned into two polar opposites all the time as if there are not other ways and viewpoints, it feels to me as this is one way that the masses are controlled.
One thing I noticed when I set up my current YouTube account was that YouTube was trying to work out which of two routes to send me down... One very pro-Democrat, CNN/MSNBC and so on, and the other very pro-Republican, Fox etc. I was not interested in either of these, and am not an American, so that is not my circus anyway. It constantly shows me far right (and more rarely far left) content... And within a UK context, it's always about Labour, Tories and Reform type content, occasionally the English Greens... Never about the SNP or even Lib Dems, let alone the Scottish Green Party. This is without getting into the non-party political rabbitholes YouTube will try and drag you into.
The best way I could deal with these RepDem ragebait videos was constantly to click "not interested" on such things. I have a friend who is educated and intelligent, but spends an inordinate amount of time on Trumpbait videos and what looks like NATO propaganda (which has been saying the Ukraine war is about to finish for the past four years at least). I am not a fan of Trump, but I'm not going to watch some hack like Jimmy Kimmel rant about him for twenty minutes. They are not serious political analysis and are based more around mudslinging and personality attacks than actual policy and ideology. It has affected my friend's mental health a lot and I've told him off for it. He is totally out of touch with our local and national political scene now.