Comment by temp-dude-87844 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by temp-dude-87844 | Hacker News Reader

temp-dude-87844

I wonder, where does this assertion come from, that "readers crave brainjunk at the expense of all other quality content"? The surrounding sentences suggest that the author genuinely believes that demand came (and comes) first, and "media companies have been more than happy to oblige". I posit that this is a load of crock.

Free "junky" content is popular simply because it's free and plentiful, and has a vastly, unquantifiably lower barrier to entry than paid content -- and not because it's dopamine-releasing junk. It's popular because it's accessible, requires little cognitive load to evaluate ahead of time, and its momentary consumption is noncommittal. If article mills stopped producing throwaway clickbait to fill an Outbrain footer, the corresponding "demand" would plummet.

But this content keeps being produced, because business models on the web suck, so every publisher feels they have to put some eggs into advertising. Because reader attention has an upper bound, one publisher's gain is quite often another's loss, and this directly translates into advertising revenue.

Given the low appetite for the masses to pay, Apple, Google, Facebook, Medium, and incumbent news publications have all tried to solve this problem in ways that further integrate advertising, analytics, and personalized suggestions, and these efforts continue to face challenges due to the misalignment of incentives.

Is junky free content really more popular in the grand scheme of things or just the most popular content on the web?

The only thing that creeps up on TV consumption in the US is social media use. Billions of books containing hundreds of pages each are sold in the US each year and presumably some large fraction of those are read.

Hundreds of millions of magazine subscriptions are sold in the US, mostly of monthlies.

The metrics used to measure online success are just sort of muddled. Imagine if we evaluated magazines by how many pages were turned. You would get some very silly magazines very quickly.

Instead magazines are evaluated by the demographics of their subscribers, prestige as judged by things like prizes, and the scale of the subscriber base.

Unlike websites which just model demographics and are usually not audited, magazines can have their subscriber lists audited and are mostly not modeled. Same thing with cable TV/Netflix/other paid services. The demographics don't really have to be modeled because you have every person's name and address. Each individual or household has to pay so you know they're individuals that exist and not bots.

I think one issue with the way media companies have evaluated 'social media' is that they considered it to be another form of professional media. Really what it replaces are phone calls, mail, and in-person chatter or photo album sharing. It does not and has not really replaced traditional media consumption.

The Gutenberg Project had free e-books decades ago, but people did not and do not devour Beowulf the same way they do an Instagram feed, even though Beowulf is even easier and cheaper to access.

Great point. And another example: I would much rather mindlessly browse Reddit or HN on the toilet or in between tasks at work, than to commit my attention to a classic like Beowulf at those times.

Most people couldn’t even read Beowulf if you gave it to them.

Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten, mære mearcstapa, se þe moras heold, fen ond fæsten; fifelcynnes eard wonsæli wer weardode hwile, siþðan him scyppend forscrifen hæfde in Caines cynne.

Many people struggle to read their own language sadly, or comprehend stories with any amount of depth. Old English is probably asking too much of them.

I’m not convinced that this is new though, we’re just far more connected to the LCD than ever before.

Edit: Translation of excerpt:

Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged...

There are translations also on The Gutenberg Project.

Yes, I remembered that and included the translation, but I’d say that my overall point stands. How many people would find the translation overly accessible unless they were already of a literary bent, or just well educated?

It's an epic about a king traveling and killing a dragon, it doesn't take a ton of education to enjoy. And beyond that, there are many books on there that are accessible for anyone who can read. Your overall point seems fine, but it agrees with the person you replied to that cheap and easy to get isn't what's driving this.

> It's an epic about a king traveling and killing a dragon, it doesn't take a ton of education to enjoy.

That is an extremely simplistic look at literature - you just reduced it to one sentence description of plot alone. That is not how it works and that is not how it ever worked. What makes it hard is the way it is written, presence of either dragon or killing does not make something easier to read. He is right in that most people would not enjoy it.

> And beyond that, there are many books on there that are accessible for anyone who can read.

And many many more that are decisively not accessible. You assume that people will dig for hours through guttenberg to find something fun and accessible, but they wont and probably cant.

>That is an extremely simplistic look at literature - you just reduced it to one sentence description of plot alone. That is not how it works and that is not how it ever worked.

There's more in the text than just the plot, but the story alone can be enjoyable without knowing everything else. I'll agree the old translation of an ancient poem is probably still going to be a chore, a better example is something like Dracula.

>And many many more that are decisively not accessible. You assume that people will dig for hours through guttenberg to find something fun and accessible, but they wont and probably cant.

No, I assume that people will find something fun and accessible by the same means they do elsewhere, either through talking to other people or looking at what's popular.

You’re giving me the strong impression of someone who is very bright, and has spent most of their time around other very bright people in the context of an excellent education. You should be proud of that, while recognizing how many more people live profoundly different lives. Consider the popularity of entertainment you’d find offensively boring, and remember that far more people enjoy that, than Beowulf.

In short, what you’re saying isn’t wrong or unreasonable, but I think it’s fair to say that it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what “average” looks like.

Popular entertainment isn't a new phenomenon, there are plenty of books on Project Gutenberg that anyone could find enjoyable without needing some deep understanding of literature.

And remember what's being discussed here. You can't blame "brainjunk" on people unwilling to pay for content, as they are also ignoring the free content on Project Gutenberg.

Popular entertainment of 19 century is often not fun for someone living in 21 century. The reasons why it was fun to people went away with changing society.

So, as someone who attempted to read Dracula - Dracula is boring and nothing whatsover happens till half of the novel or so. Which is approximately where I stopped reading.

Also, if you have hard time to interpret the story, because the sentences are oddly written and unnatural and characters talk the way real people now don't talk, you wont have no fun no matter how many dragons.

> No, I assume that people will find something fun and accessible by the same means they do elsewhere, either through talking to other people or looking at what's popular.

On Guttenberg? That brain junk stuff goes out of their way to reach you. It is completely different model. That is not criticism of Guttenberg, their mission is to preserve and they do it well.

Eh, I got hooked on it pretty fast. Plenty of other examples though.

>On Guttenberg? That brain junk stuff goes out of their way to reach you. It is completely different model.

Yeah, this is the point. Project Gutenberg isn't ignored now because you need decades of education to possibly enjoy it, brainjunk is crafted to be addictive.

No, it is completely different point. Gutenberg puts zero work into helping you to find something you might like. It just is not their thing.

And the education is necessary to be able to figure out which few books on Guttenberg might be interesting to you. Because overwhelming majority of them is not interesting to you or anyone except few specialists on something.

And majority of that could not possibly replace the kind of reading you do when you relax for 6 minutes between one task and another task at work.

They have the most downloaded page, all the categories, maintain copies of "Best Books" lists with links to available books, and a page with the top bestsellers for most years available. Hardly zero help, no education required.

People read in those situations, but that is a different argument altogether.

Most downloaded page contains basically mandatory reading for students. Who I guess use Guttenberg to download books to read as homework. Then there are few popular things most people already read (like Sherlock Holmes) and there you end.

It is great place for study, good place if you actually are into some historical period and not much of a place if you are contemporary person and just wanna have some fun. No, majority of those most popular books are not fun for most people.

OK? I'm not saying people should be using the platform, I clearly spend my free time on other things. It shows this issue can't be blamed on price, as there is free, easily accessible quality content available. People could read those books and find them enjoyable, that's why many of them are taught by schools or considered great.

It is a choice each one will make for oneself. I e.g. made the choice to selectively read things, drop out completely from social media, buzzfeed (and the sort) and rely on proper journalism. I am 100% with Danny on this one.

Of course (freedom of choice) one may select the Kardashians (and unfortunately not the Star Trek ones) over poetry. I want them to select what they feel like consuming, and I want me to have the same choice. The problem is with many outlets switching to 'junkfood', the few that may remain become hostage to money-hungry shareholders and thus the game is slowly being lost.

If you define good book as "a book I will enjoy to read", then finding good book on Gutengerg is quite hard. You need to know either author or book name. Finding those takes quite a lot of effort. Otherwise you will be downloading things that have no interest to you - and end up on instagram.

YouTube Red is a nice exception. For $10 per month, I get no ads, and some portion of my fee goes to the creators of the videos I watch. I've already taken the time to subscribe to certain creators, so now my YouTube feed is high quality with little noise. If Google revealed exactly how much of my subscription is going to creators, I think it would be easier to convince more people to sign up. I'd like to see other services try a similar model.

A lot, most even, of the channels I subscribe to do not even care about YouTube monetization any more. They get most of their operating revenue from outside sources like Patreon, merchandise sales, affiliate linking to e-commerce sites, etc. The general consenus seems to be, in a nutshell: It's just not worth it -- YouTube/Google's algorithmic approach to monetization and what is and what's not "advertiser friendly" (whatever the hell that means, I don't think Google themselves know at this point) is an absolute schooolbus fire. Also how they handle "strikes" is a hot, hot mess. Google can pull the rug out from under you overnight on a whim for quite literally no good reason and there's nothing you can do about it because there's no one to call, e-mail, or talk to unless you're one of the big channels that have millions and millions of subscribers.

I get that the scale of YouTube is far too big to do it by human hands & eyes, but the approach they're taking currently is flat out failing.

>The general consenus seems to be, in a nutshell: It's just not worth it

It probably isn't for the creators I follow, and I try to put a few bucks of coffee money into patreon like collections for them. The value for youtube red is in time saved and advertisement avoided for the user. Then again never being interrupted by advertisements I don't go looking for is a personal eccentricity so it's a time money trade-off. How many minutes of video commercials avoided a month is worth $10?

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