This is where working in the entertainment industry has jaded me a bit. By default, I assume that if it captured on camera, it has been planned/staged/etc for the explicit purpose of being shown to people. With social media, I think it has been turned up to an 11 as everyone is trying to become social media famous. It takes a bit of convincing for me to believe that something is truly real at this point.
Due to the "inside baseball" knowledge of how fake everything is on film/TV, I find it sad that so so many people fall for thinking something is real and actually needs this kind of disclaimer.
"To the Capital building...this should be fun!!" Hahaha....
(Technically your initial claim is almost tautological, but I assume you meant "shown for purposes other to genuinely convey information about the real world")
I hate when a real car accident is attributed to a drunk driver when it was not. There are plenty of wrecked cars from actual drunk driving, you don't need to lie to get an example. Some people think their intentions justify their actions, even when their actions can accurately be described as "lie" or "cheat" or "for profit" or some other dishonest thing. This may be effective in many cases, but in others it discredits your efforts and perhaps even your cause.
Random acts of kindness DO happen, but are usually not captured on video.
Indeed. In fact, when the act is intentionally captured on video by its performer, not only is it already very debatable that it is an act of "kindness"... but it is also obviously NOT "random"!
(For the colloquial meaning of "random" of course)
I was about to propose to my girlfriend and was setting up my DSLR on a tripod to take photos via IR remote (she thought we were just going to take photos of us at sunset).
Then a guy came walking by and offered to take the photos for us. I demurred, but he said he had the exact same camera and knew how to use it. So I quietly told him what was about to go down, and he took a bunch of great photos of our engagement.
For at least a year after, my wife didn't believe that he wasn't a plant!
Also giving someone flowers is quite a cheap kindness. Help somebody in need out. Or just go clean the streets. No good content clickbait video to be made of you picking up the trash ?
That phrase, to 'remove yourself from the equation' applies here too. That leads to a better 'test' and metric.
The real definition of compassion.
Before I left, plans changed, so now I was in the mall parking lot, and had (to me) useless flowers. In the parking lot, I saw an older woman sitting in her car.
I walked up to her, proclaimed "surprise, flowers!", which she took, and I walked away.
It is sad to think that these days, it almost makes more sense to just throw them away, instead of giving a bit of unexpected joy to someone.
(the woman seemed surprised, and happy)
Or give it, for fear of a negative response... the well is being poisoned.
Only if you're going into the whole "every act is selfish" kind of thing.
> but it is also obviously NOT "random"! (For the colloquial meaning of "random" of course)
Why not? It only takes a few seconds to start filming.
If you mean having a camera person, that starts to get into the weeds, but it depends on how much planning there was and how it was done.
--Jesus
There are selfless acts of kindness, but this isn't one of them. There's no conflict there. He did it to make a video he could monetize on TikTok. It's his job. It's a really simple distinction.
> If you mean having a camera person, that starts to get into the weeds, but it depends on how much planning there was and how it was done.
If he went to that mall and bought flowers and picked a sympathetic-looking subject, with the intention of filming a video of himself doing it to upload to TikTok, it's not random. It's premeditated. I don't mean that in the legal sense, though it probably applies. I mean he thought about it in advance, so it's not "random".
Okay but that goes way beyond the general-case statement I was responding to.
We don't do social media, we don't even tell anybody, except for this one time, right now to support your point, so I think it's appropriate in this case.
We've told each other because we talk about our finances and it's reasonably to discuss why the grocery bill was double triple, etc what it would have been for what was brought home.
You might also just pass 5 to 10 x 20 USD cash (or local equivalent) to the cashier and have that applied to the next person in line, and let them work out how to split any leftovers on their own.
I've never done either of those things myself, but I did feel horrid enough about our government during an extended shutdown over budget stuff to directly support the food bank with some 'staples' from Costco as well as a just outright cash donation back when that BS happened last.
Directly supporting the food bank is also an option that can help the even more needy.
But I think it's a good thing to do if you "hit" the correct "target".
It's feels good to genuinely do something nice for another person and I wouldn't want to take that from them. It's also nice just knowing that not everyone in your community is only looking out for themselves. Might as well take the opportunity to do something for someone else
I've wanted to pay sometimes for people - but didn't have the courage... shame.
I tend to just try help out those who are having trouble paying, regardless who they are, on the condition that if we're in a supermarket, their shop is a grocery shop on the whole; if they're buying £70 worth of spirits and nothing else, I'm probably not going to offer.
I work in central London, so sometimes a tourist will come into my local cash-only coffee shop just in front of me and not have cash, so I'll just offer to buy their coffees or whatever, though there are no cash-only coffee shops now since returning to the office after the pandemic, so it doesn't happen as often.
If they're struggling, card declined etc, they're probably already frustrated, they might turn to me to apologise, that's my cue; I'll just say, "hey, can I get that for you?“. I remember the first time, a guy about my age just buying food, his card was declined, he had a little bit of cash so the cashier was having him figure out what to leave behind so he had enough to cover it. I just asked if I could get it all for him and he just asked, "why?", looking puzzled, I just said "why not?", and something along the lines of "you can pass on the favour one day", he accepted.
Other times its that the place doesn't take cards and they need to get cash, I'll just say, they can add it to my bill and I'll get it, if they don't mind.
Sometimes people decline, but usually I'm pretty good at judging when people would appreciate it so it's rarely awkward.
Which I have done on a couple occasions, including the note, so they understood my motivation. I am hoping that when they get old, they'll pass it on.
There's a whole industry of this shit.
With staged content the only victim is the duped audience who can always just not watch TikTok.
If you want to do a skit, make a skit.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90287323/people-are-falling-off-...
Wow.
Not everyone is cut out to be an entertainer, influencer, or celebrity. The problem in our current world is that social platforms are encouraging everyone to quit their job to be those types of entertainers (while not paying the very same people), and it's not a realistic model for success, and quite possibly very harmful to the world's future and to mental health.
It has happened in the past, Evel Knievel was one of the most popular incidents of someone sacrificing themselves to entertain others well prior to the "like and follow" era.
"God, make me famous. If you can't, just make it painless"
They should definitely be warned, and perhaps be put into therapy with a professional, but self harm isn't social darwinism. It's just a mental health issue.
I agree that self-harm isn't social Darwinism. People sharing amusing stories of self-harm and chuckling about "cleaning the gene pool" absolutely is.
Natural selection is not the right tool to downplay and excuse harm to others, and has nothing to do with the scientific theory of evolution.
I don't think the GP was referring to social Darwinism, just plain old Darwinism, of the "Darwin Award" variety.
It's not related to the science of evolution, it's using the principles of natural selection for social commentary.
Yes, it is, at least to the extent that intelligence and common sense are selected for, and their opposites are selected against, in our current selective environment.
Fake cooking videos en masse. I think it's time to give people the option of opting out of filming, carry a small rfid/chip or s-t and then you can't be filmed - built in AI blur :)
A friend of a friend is an influencer doing 50K a month. He has a network of influencers he knows. It is overwhelmingly referral schemes for apps or pumping shitcoins.
gaining influence with videos like these (widespread, "easy content") will probably earn you some advertisement deals
They're unionizing Starbucks, but it might be wiser/better to unionize social media creators before it's too late.
These apps don't allow for people to choose the content they see. Even the front page of CNN.Com is regularly now citing TikTok clips that went "viral". In the next few years there will be no way to avoid this staged and shilled content anywhere. Especially as monopoly platforms begin to collaborate with each other to create marketing campaigns.
Suggestive/manipulative marketing has a stranglehold on the Internet without most people knowing. Things displayed on site front pages are there for a reason, and it's not usually because it naturally went viral, it's there because it makes companies a lot of money.... The real content, made by authentic people is buried by algorithms and under a sea of staged and copycat content. (Just my opinion though)
Not even close. There are plenty of places on the Internet that are not infected with this trash. (This site is one of them: nobody has to wade through videos and ads just to post here.) It is unfortunate that so-called "mainstream news" sites like CNN are not among them, but that's CNN's problem.
News sources previously reporting on and praising crypto companies and coins that have now been exposed as scams (now gone bankrupt) is a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.
Many influencers pushed crypto heavily in the past years, leading to huge money losses for people who follow them. There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.
I already gave you one: this very site.
> a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.
So-called journalism has been in that mode for decades, if not centuries. If anything, the Internet makes it harder for them to keep it up, because there are so many more ways for their practices to actually be exposed so people can see them. That might make it seem like journalists do more of that kind of thing than they used to, but it doesn't; it just means that they get caught at it a lot more than they used to.
> There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.
Social media can only mentally manipulate you if you're naive enough to (a) use it, and (b) believe what you see on it. No amount of "public account" is going to fix that problem.
Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing, and has been from the very beginning. The whole point is to push Y Combinator the angel investment company.
Really? That's what this discussion is? Or, for that matter, every discussion I have participated in in the 10 years or so I have been posting on HN? Are we both posting on the same site?
I get that the existence of HN gives publicity to YC, and that every so often pg or sama posts a new essay and those always make it to the front page. But to call the site itself "almost entirely influencer marketing" seems to me to be, to say the least, highly inaccurate.
It doesn't work
I forgo something when I opt out, but I absolutely am in control of that choice whereas a bullied child is not.
I think things really took off with the people who were making "gold-digger" videos, where a guy tries to talk to a girl and she rejects him, only to come back when he walks up to a (most likely rented) exotic car. In many of these cases, all of the people involved in the video are not authentic, but there's never disclaimer that the video is staged or a skit. Even car accidents, sad stories of addiction and mental illness, and stunts can all be staged to gain views as well.
I'm skeptical of everything I see online, been that way for a long time... Worst part is there is no real way to avoid that type of content, and that phony content often gets plastered across all the sites, and reposted for years too come, and even written about when it's exposed as fake, so there's no real way to avoid it, and there's no incentive for people to stop doing it because of the (negative) popularity it breeds for the people and companies that sponsor and create it.