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the YouTube algorithm marches on
Monday, August 19 2019
In the past when most of the media I consumed was podcasts, my goal was mostly to stay informed as well as entertained, so the the material tended to be heavy on things like news and science. Since getting this job a little less than a year ago, I've replaced most of my podcast listening with YouTube, eliminating much of my consumption of news in the process. The reason for doing this has something to do with the infuriating stupidity of current events, but it's also a function of the mental energy required to follow the material. Since I spend much of my workday writing (or at least interacting with) code, it's easier to listen to junkier content that I can tune into and out of depending on what I am doing. For awhile, for example, I was really into police suspect interviews, which grew out of my fascination with To Catch A Predator. Raw footage of such interviews is full of dead air and uninteresting boilerplate, which my brain can ignore as I work, tuning in only during the juicy bits. Over time, I found myself doing what I honestly must admit is "gloat listening," that is, listening to material about people far less fortunate than me. To suspect interviews, I gradually added feeds from the likes of Dave Ramsey, which focus on the ills of people destroying themselves with debt. In more recent months, I also got into YouTube channels run by computer professionals offering advice to members of the general public about getting into software development or IT generally. Based on the nature of this advice, I could tell that the audience for these videos is comprised of a great many desperate people, and the more I became aware of this, the more of this material I consumed.
At some point, the software-development coaching being performed by these YouTubers was subsumed by advice of a more fundamental nature: how to be a man, including how to attract women, impress other men, and generally avoid being a complete loser. I'm referring in particular to the YouTube videos being made by a YouTuber named John Sonmez. His early work was mostly advice for newbies wanting to quit their boring low-wage jobs to get into software development, and he presented it via a channel called SimpleProgrammer.com. But as his manliness coaching emphasis increased, he eventually switched his attention to a channel called BulldogMindset.com. Initially I found Sonmez to be an unintentionally funny character, standing there in front of his camera in a wife beater with bulging muscles talking about technology or the importance of not smelling bad. Though he often talked about things he clearly hadn't thought much about, coming to unnecessarily misogynist or libertarian conclusions, he could be entertaining and even occasionally brilliant.
But the YouTube algorithm marches on, pushing everyone towards the extremity of whatever material they happen to be watching. At some point last week, I started getting MGTOW content in my YouTube feed, starting with someone named "Conservative N'at". MGTOW stands for "Men Going Their Own Way," and is a form of misogyny in which men decide to "opt out" of the grind of relationships with women for a variety of reasons based on overgeneralizations. Women are, according to MGTOWs, "hypergamous" (meaning that, for them, every man is a stepping stone to a better man) and they cheat at the dating game by their use of makeup and body-shaping clothing. This might sound like the complaints of Incelss (the "involuntarily celibate," some of whom has resorted to violence against random women), but the distinction is that MGTOWs are claiming that they are the ones doing the opting out, and that if they wanted to they could be dating women. Another difference is that YouTube appears to have removed most if not all of its Incel content. Its algorithm apparently pushes viewers to the extreme edges of ideologies and then cuts off the content just as it turns violently insane.
Earlier today, Gretchen and the dogs headed off to the Adirondacks for the week to begin our yearly stay at the cabin on Twenty Ninth Pond. Since I recently spent a long time away from work while cruising in the Baltic Sea, I can't take this whole week off, though I'll probably be there for some time at the end of the week. Meanwhile, I'm fending for myself. This evening I made myself a Vegan Harvest "flatbread" pizza (which included Daiya "cheese"), and to this I added a bunch of fried-up deliciousness: vegan bacon, mushrooms, onions, and even diced eggplant (which I'd bought today at the Red Hook Hannaford).
Later I continued rebuilding the boot volume on the Speakerbot, making it able once more to do the important things it had done before it destroyed its last boot volume (things like serve web pages via https). I also made some more progress on the waterbot, even running water into the upstairs bathtub to see how the impact driver battery affected its ability to float. At 9:00pm I joined a rare diaspora happy hour of the old Mercy For Animals IT team, and it was just as fun as such happy hours traditionally have been. We all have a similar twisted sense of humor, and almost no topic is taboo. I have, however, been sworn to secrecy about most of what was discussed. There was, however, a protracted conversation about circumcison I feel free to mention. Dan is exploring it as an option for his first son (due in November), but not for any religious reasons (though Dan is culturally Jewish). He's been researching the matter and suspects medical circumcison will make for a better outcome. If nothing else, he said, he says, at he himself understands a circumcised penis in a way he will never understand the alternative. Allison, though, is of the opinion that the baby should not be circumcised because she has heard that sex for men is better with a foreskin.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?190819 feedback
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