Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
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TikTok sludge is overwhelming, uninteresting, and almost impossible to stop watching. How did a genre everyone hates take over the algorithm?
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Support the channel on Patreon: / lily_lxndr
Twitter: / lily_lxndr
Letterboxd: letterboxd.com...
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Sources:
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer - The Culture Industry
Something Is Wrong on the Internet / something-is-wrong-on-...
New York Magazine - Inside the Strange and Slightly Creepy World of Surprise Egg Videos nymag.com/inte...
TH-cam Kids availability support.google...
TH-cam Kids manual channel approval: techcrunch.com...
TH-cam’s Content ID
Meta’s copyright detection variety.com/20...
How the Framing In 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Keeps the Viewer Oriented in a Chaotic World nofilmschool.c...
In Her Own Time: An Interview with Chantal Akerman www.artforum.c...
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Media used (not an exhaustive list):
Opening Elsa animation • Queen & Princess Part ...
Surprise egg video • KidCity Opens Avengers...
Soap-cutting • 1 HOUR ASMR. Soap cube...
Minecraft parkour • 1 hour 20 minutes of r...
Cryptoland • Cryptoland [Original v...
Volksgeist’s video on Yeat (this is the original version) • The Insane Rise of YEAT
This Is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Massage • This Is Marshall McLuh...
How To Be Ninja • How to be Ninja
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)
Columbus (2017)
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"This is content production in the age of algorithmic discovery - even if you’re a human, you have to end up impersonating the machine." - James Bridle, "Something is wrong on the internet"
![ลองสั่งของจากแอพ temu ถูกจริงหรอ?? ( part : 1/2 ) [โกงไหมครับ ep.89 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RTcZSQTiDZw/mqdefault.jpg)
I have to say that I watched this on nebula and after about 15 minutes I had to physically block the left side of the screen with my hand to avoid sensory overload. Making the video itself sludge was an inspired choice that makes a deeply resonant point on its own
i found it more engaging for its sludgishness, funnily enough. very well put lily, making me reconsider my media habits yet again, thank!
Same, I had to intentionally look away because I don't find this type of content soothing or watchable or even ignorable at all, it actively upsets me!
Thank god I listen to this as background noise I'm pretty sure staring at that would have made me get a headache
i just think its weird like id not heard of this stuff til this video since i don't like tictok and its just weird and something i don't like its just uncomfortable
oh and its giving me a headache.
I feel like “channel surfing” was where this started. Growing up that was our “sludge” - flipping through cable channels endlessly for hours and hours, a couple seconds per channel, creating a completely random and incoherent sludge of video content - commercials, infomercials, news programs, soap operas, etc. There were plenty of people condemning it and saying it was destroying our brains. Pretty sure in hindsight they were right lol
Brilliant observation!!
Or watching the TV guide channel
The cause of channel surfing is advertisements. On PBS, no ads, no surf.
"Joylessly waiting around for nothing in particular" is such a solid summary of this content
It’s worse than Waiting for Godot, because that play makes you think
@@bookworm272was thinking of waiting for Godot too! Imagine if the whole play was them scrolling, occasionally showing one another a video and chuckling haha
the tartar steppe by dino buzati
"content sludge is ai generated art that just happened to be made by humans" - nailed it!
I don't understand.
@@DavidSartor0 It's content that's aimless and vapid, like a lot of AI based stuff, but people have actually put time into it without any creativity or passion that makes human stuff worth it.
@@maxv9464 Thank you.
@@DavidSartor0 Yep!
I was looking for this comment to see whether I should make it myself or not.
This reminded me about something Hank Green said in relation to TH-cam shorts vs TH-cam videos. “The biggest difference between a TH-cam Short and a TH-cam video is one you decide whether to watch it. And the other you decide whether to keep watching it.”
Yes, I’m glad to see someone mention it! That was the first video to get me thinking about the difference
Oh my god, I never realized that but that makes so much sense! This puts it perfectly clearly the feeling of disgust I have every time I accidentally click the 'shorts' button.
I used a plugin to deliberately turn all shorts into standard youtube videos. I really do not like the shorts format, and I don't like auto-loading unless its a cued up playlist. It kinda freaks me out.
@@osakanone oh!! Whats the name of that plugin? I could really use that in my day to day life! My monkey brain loves shorts even tho they mostly make me miserable
Uhm wait a second, please explain, I'm a bit slow here... which one is which? A short is the one where you decide to watch it, because it's only 30 seconds long, and a video is where you decide if you keep watching because it's long enough that you start to wonder if you really want to keep watching this? (Even though you also decided to want to watch the video, when you clicked on it... I ... I don't get it)
the most infuriating part of the soap cutting videos is that they only ever cut towards themselves
I noticed that too and was very annoyed.
I cut myself doing that today. It sucked.
This is one life rule my mother and father somehow hardwired into my programming, and I have autonomically programmed into all my offspring. I cannot watch someone cutting TOWARDS themselves without reflexively reaching a phantom arm into the videoscape and saying “Stop that!”. Pretty effective behaviour modification I’d say, and I was built and programmed in the fifties! What is wrong with kids these days? 😝
also that all looks so careless tbh
just, looks dangerous
You can always see their hands are battered and cut up, too.
you mentioned something in here that i haven't seen anybody talk about, but that freaks me out more than most things: the procedurally generated websites that pretend to be answering the question you searched for, but are actually just spitting out summarized versions of other people's answers. sometimes they even have contrasting answers on the same page. it's like walking into your house only to realize it's a fucking mimic.
A lot of those are also written by humans, at least for now - a ton of copywriters pay the bills with those articles! That almost makes it worse to me, tho
It's incredibly easy to automate, lots are definitely ChatGPT or similar
@@lily_lxndr well played
@Lily Alexandre I think Parker means the kind that is just a copy-paste of the article you just clicked on before it. Or even a forum post in a lot of cases
@@saberchild Ohh I see, I might’ve misread
Doing this with a projector (instead of doing it as a comp) made it magnificent.
Some real "Answers in Progress" vibes with it.
Yeaa I also thought that, its beautiful honestt
I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but I deleted TikTok about two years ago because I disliked the way it held onto my attention without me getting anything out of it. But now it seems like ANY social media or entertainment I want to use works on the same principals, and I get sucked into TH-cam shorts and Reels in the same way… I don’t intend to, it always feels like it inevitably happens, or I want to watch ONE short and it becomes a spiral. There is something about how that concept hacks into your brain and doesn’t let go, the infinite digestible content is just irresistible. I wish I would get rid of it permanently, or that TH-cam could give you a setting so that you don’t see shorts- I just want it off. I want to watch things that make me THINK.
Strange how much more I get from a longer (and therefore usually more high quality) YT video but a bunch of smaller ones put together being twice as long doesn't make me feel satisfied in the least.
This. Every single platform just wants to commit artistic suicide for corporate greed. Fuck life right? why enjoy it when we can just be advertised to buy things we never use anyways because we are busy looking at more ads. Fucking retarded.
Yeah, that’s modern social media for you! It’s been a slow change but a change that’s impacted a lot of how we think and create, it’s so strange. Because these “brain hack” videos have been apart of my life since forever basically, and have unironicly caused me to have a crippling addiction to TH-cam. (Yeah surprisingly not TikTok?? I casually use it every once a month or 3 times a week if it gets bad. It doesn’t hold me in the same power trap, TH-cam is really goddamned addictive.)
Yes CRIPPLING, I put off work I put off life I just didn’t do anything outside of watch TH-cam. So I think that counts as an addiction, and it’s been a problem for MANY MANY MANY people for like 10+ years. It’s this power imbalance with the viewer where everything is going “KEEP WATCHING” and you can’t escape it, it gets its hooks in you and then you can never leave!
You know how many times I’ve tried quitting this hellsite??? 70+ times, it’s coming on a 100+ times. I can quit TikTok that’s not the problem I don’t really care about it, but this website? God I’m stuck here forever, but that’s how it’s always been.
So idk, it’s a really really big problem that I don’t think anyone will be fighting soon.
Hope you have a wonderful day! :>
This is why I don't engage with any of that stuff at all. I use TH-cam just for music. Obviously, I will occasionally click on videos such as these--but never to watch them, just to check the description and see what sources the videomaker cited, so I can read those instead. I also enjoy reading comments such as yours, although don't expect me to ever reply to anything you say to me, I probably won't see it...
The thing is, you can get a whole lot more out of people's personally run webpages, and a good book, than you ever will out of hours of social media. Those guys aren't working towards an algorithm.
YES this is exactly what i experience 2 i realy struggled with it but ultimately the only solution that worked for me was deleting the youtube mobile app from my phone no yt = no shorts i can still watch in my browser but that takes a little more effort so i only do that when im looking for something specific
i only watch youtube on my pc now and 0 shorts :))
I don't know if that was intentional, but "telling the viewer they can have a little bit of everything all of the time" was fucking genius, love this video.
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime...
I think what’s significantly worse about content sludge is that we KNOW that it’s concentrated brain rot. The amount of times my friends and I have joked about how we’re not “fully engaged” because there’s no Family Guy or Subway Surfers clip playing while we hang out is slightly concerning at this point lol
Even if people know something is not good or that it's normalized it still helps to keep criticizing it and breaking people out of the stupor, and telling people there can be better things cause some people say they didn't think there could be. Those things helped me. There's even channel names with names like "Trash", etc. Or negative or vulgar names. So even some channels flaunt that they're sludge. Yet they still get views. It's partly cause people tolerate it too much. But I'm glad some people are criticizing it. Tho it doesn't help that some critics go extreme. Like vilifying all of social media, the internet, art, modern art, or celebrities.
It really displays how insidious it is. The vast majority of people can see through the sludge, but we walk through it anyway.
Like boomers that can't have a cassual conversation during a family gathering if the TV isn't on
i actively avoid watching the sludge part of content
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c I mean, for those of us who lived full lives before social media existed, it might be a legitimate criticism rather than vilifying to say it's hurting society/us. To my view, people have definitely changed. Friends have disappeared, along with quality time. Social media is a part of a bunch of different influences we can't tease out from one another over that span of years, but if you asked me I'd be very happy if livejournal had stuck around and Facebook (or insert any engagement-focused platform here) had never existed, advertising hadn't been entrenched on the web, capitalism et. al. hadn't encouraged hustle culture, etc. Stuff has sped up unimaginably since the 80s and 90s.
dont underestimate that feeling of not existing.
between all the fears and dejection doled out by of the real world, people are sometimes drawn in by the feeling of sitting to watch, think and feel essentially nothing. it's like instead of a high or low, you feel a medium just becuase its better than dealimg with anything substantial
In other words, (quasi-)Buddhist meditation without the hard work part?
@@ionescuflorin7307
basically. and instead of drawing closer to realization of self, you drift further away
Something about the idea of “post human art” is that it is a process that’s been going on for a long time. I was reading a book on the history of art and it mentioned the way industrialization change who we view artisans as opposed to artist. They used this example: in centuries past architect didn’t just have to know how to draw up a plan, but they had to know every type of material, the places these materials came from, know how to build the structure, know how to supply for it; they had to know about every step in the process because that was how knowledge and ability was understood to best function then. After industrialization caused economic efficiency to drive the creation of most goods, the jobs and artistry became further and further segmented in order to increase efficiency. Capitalism acts to break everything down into its most basic parts. This effect hurts human creativity the most because it strips one’s connection to their choices and from their history. Clothing is an example of this. When those who design the clothes are different from those who dye the clothes are different from those that sew the clothes are different from those who tailor the clothes (or standard sizing is just used), then no one in that chain has any connection to each other. A culture’s rich history of design is locked to the few who can afford an education in it and the physical creation of the piece is “degraded” by its association with poverty and labor. Even now as computers are slowly getting better at mimicking the intelectual side of a creation, we are seeing that part being lowered to the status of “lesser work” just the same as physical labor.
Now what is left for humans to do but the most pure form of capitalism: ownership. The only part a human plays in its creation is owning it. That is the horror of post-human and “AI-Art” it turns creativity and culture into commodities to be bought and sold simply because they resemble the form of human creation.
Idk these are just my thought.
The book is called “The Invention of Art”
This is put so well. Thanks for the book recommendation as well, it seems like a fascinating one and I'm going to check it out
this reminds me a lot of something one of my lecturers said in my art history course back in college. He said that the future of the artist was shifting towards having ideas rather than being skilled (craft-wise). He pointed to examples of many renowned and successful fine artists and explained how they had the idea of an artwork, but hired many other skilled laborers to construct the artworks. This was a very controversial idea for my classmates and I remember it being probably the biggest point of debate in the class that semester. It's a scary thought to me, as an artist who is mainly a skilled laborer, and this predicted future of "ideas only" artists is starting to creep into my job and workplace as well. I don't think that it's wrong for artists to be the creator of a work in concept only, but with the dawn of AI artwork and how it's been used recently it makes me question why we are trying to automate the parts of our human experience that automation is supposed to allow us to enjoy. You want machines to do the hard, tedious, or boring things so that you can focus on the fun or creative things- so why are we making the computers do the creative part, too?
@@SusannahGraceMusic if your wanting to buy the book, then I suggest buying used. It can be quite expensive bought new.
i'm saving this comment, i'm gonna keep it copied somewhere on my phone, this should be immortalized.
You reminded me of why I hate modern house design. One artist draws plans for a house and that house gets built 150 times in the same area. People buy that house but have no time to personalize it because they spend all day working and only come home to sleep. Not to mention that personalizing the house is discouraged because it might lower the property value. People don't buy houses to live in them long term. You buy a house with the expectation that you will sell it in 10 to 15 years. You can always tell when you enter an older/wealthier neighborhood because the houses will actually look different.
This is why tumblr is such a good platform for art. It relies on reblogs. Basically, you only see content that a different human liked enough to save to their page
I joined Tumblr recently and honestly it has been a very good experience so far
as an artist, i really wish tumblr never fully died. there's no better social media platform for artists right now - but the career and commercial opportunity there is not ideal due to the lack of its popularity. Tumblr is the best formatted platform for discovery (talented artists rarely go unnoticed there) and for posting itself. gif support, grid layout image/gif posts(instead of carousels), minimal video/image compression, image size/ratio is up to the poster, audio only for musicians, text formatting, custom user pages, tags that actually work, lack of algorithm... it's optimal. I don't understand why we ditched it after porn was banned because it's not like the other major platforms allow porn... anyways, i miss it. even though I make fun of the tumblr era all the time, it was a blast.
@@coleydotmp4i really get what you mean, but also, I just recently joined, and its definitely not dead! And I feel much more comfortable than on other social media platforms
tumblr is great ^^ unfortunately the staff still suck hard
same principle with reddit upvotes and crossposts
Honestly even if local bands aren’t that good, it still feels awesome to be in the scene and be a member of your community. When I do go to stuff around my area, I always end up having a good time even if the quality isn’t revolutionary. That has made me more fulfilled than most stuff I see on TikTok and Instagram reels.
as a person IN multiple bands it is SO hard to go out myself and actually watch other musicians when I could stay home and watch youtube all night, but when I do go out its always memorable. we are on the brink of losing touch, but so far, luckily reconnection is usually right down town on a friday night.
Most people are exhausted and time poor, as well as actual poor. Going out to do stuff requores resources they dont have.
As a non-tokker, I remember being so confused the first time someone showed me a video that had what they called an "attention trap" in it. The content the trap sat beside was reasonable thoughtful and substantial. It really is gross to see the results of capitalism and consumerism in this area. These sorts of "maximising watch time" strategies frustrate me so much in a way that's really hard to describe.
It's almost like we need to evolve a new kind of neurotransmitter to deal with this. Something like mixes cortisol with dopamine overload, but nudges you to do something different. (Maybe ADHD?) I feel like other animals understand this on an instinctive level, like a mouse understands a snake will eat it (well, maybe or maybe not. A rat might know a snake is a predator.) even though it can be beautiful and overwhelming. Or we just need to lean into the feeling of healthy boredom. (The dopamine isn't dopamine-ing anymore.)
TikTok is a product of a communist country, so what is this about capitalism?
Why?
Like you said you saw thoughtful content.
More people watched and got something from that thoughtful content because of a dumb bit of visual stimulus.
Why is that a problem?
@@Iquey maybe instead of waiting for our brains evolve, there could be regulations keeping apps from being addictive? not by limiting speech or anything like that but by forcing the platforms themselves to be less addictive, idk how this would work though lol
@@MrCmon113 ok, what are your ideas for non violent solutions?
Also. . im a little confused,
why is it violent to want corporations to be held accountable for the influence they have over people?
Hope this isn't weird but I would 100% listen to an audiobook you narrated. You have the voice for this stuff nailed down
That’s not weird at all - Im actively looking for that kind of work! Thank you :)
I'm sorry but titling an article "Something Is Wrong On The Internet" is such a hilarious concept to me. That is SUCH an understatement. Everything is wrong on the internet.
And sometimes that is what makes it right.
I assume it's a reference to the popular xkcd punchline "someone is *wrong* on the Internet" but still, yeah.
I think Sturgeon's Law still applies to most things. In this case, 90% of the internet is excremental. The remaining 10% is generally not promoted or advertised in any way, of course.
well not EVERYTHING
just an incomprehensibly vast amount of things
Not everything is wrong on the internet. You're watching yt videos like Lily Alexandre or people on the internet calling out these terrible things on the internet. The internet has been helpful to people like me. I'm grateful. That doesn't mean I can't and don't criticize the bad parts too. I would rather more power to the people than only mainstream and expensive studios being about to make things for TV. They make some sludge too. And some of them practice nepotism. Social media helps people to be indie, poor people to do their dreams and get recognition, and talented and helpful people or niche hobbies to get noticed when they might not on the mainstream. I think I heard people say that mainstream award shows like the Emmys don't even recognize all genres. A solution is we need more good content creators. Not scaring them off by just saying social media or the internet is bad.
The thing about sludge that particularly frustrates me is it always feels like my intelligence is being underestimated. When I see a genuinly interesting topic or clip smashed together with sludge, all it says to me is that the creator thinks my human lizard brain can't listen to ANYTHING without being hypnotized into it. It's like if IRL, somebody felt the need to jingle their keys in my face while telling me a story as if I was a toddler. Like my brain actually DOES have a hard time focusing, but I don't want that fact shoved in front of my eyeballs you know. Hell I'd even argue the increase in sludge has only made my and my peers' attention spans worsen, which is a nightmare when you remember that we're artists and/or college students that have better, more important things to do with our time than mentally swim through sludge.
🫱🌱
I hadn't heard about this. The more I learn about tiktok the happier I am I stay away. It's a shame though, because some really cool stuff comes out of there. It's just buried in so much junk.
Thank you. I don't like how some people go to extremes and just vilify social media or the internet either. That's what I think makes the bad parts worse is that it buries good, talented, and helpful content. Instead of just stereotyping it's all bad, people should use the good parts to emphasize why the bad parts are horrible in burying the good parts. A solution is we need more good content creators. Not scaring them off by just saying social media or the internet is bad.
I really really disagree.
TikTok is the only decent social media platform I have ever used.
It has good deep conversations and provides a platform to the marginalized.
It's taught me about myself and about the cultures of the world.
You have to learn to curate your feed but that's how it is on all websites just on TikTok every action you take is part of that curation.
@@donov25 sounds like Tik Tok is making you do free labor to curate your own feed
@@XxCorvette1xX sure and I wish they gave me more tools to directly do it.
Why would I not want to put effort into maintaining a good feed instead of mindless glubglogabgalab style consumption?
@@donov25 ... because it's pointless extra work? It's like drinking tap water without a cup, when you've got bottled water available a few steps away.
One thing that doesn't necessarily fall under sludge but can is that a lot is done to purposefully make the content worse to increase engagement. Movie clips will end fairly randomly or cut off the real final punchline. Not including the movie title so people have to ask or make jokes about giving the wrong title. Another thing I've seen is educational content cut up on tiktok randomly, making it extremely confusing for people (leading to more comments) because they haven't seen the conclusion or background information on the problem. And then some educational content is just wrong for engagement.
Kids like me who grew up with this contant are both at the most and least risk of falling into sludge video rabbit holes. We've grown up consuming abysmal amounts of media all at once, so while we know *why* and *how* the videos are made, and why it's bad, it gets difficult to consume any other type of content. It's not as easy to digest if we aren't multitasking hard enough for the constant input to wash over us, allowing us to snatch small bits of infomation whenever we want to tune back in to a piece of content.
While watching this video, even with the clips in the background, I still periodically had to browse discord, go through emails, or play a few songs to retain my attention. School feels pointless because it's so difficult to pay attention to teachers in such a stimulus-free environment, not to mention actually doing the work. I don't mean to speak for everyone, but even with heavy restrictions since my youth, the internet still ruined me, and it's probably ruined most other kids my age.
I relate so much! I only really got acess to social media in middle school, and now i don't even question that i can only motivate myself to do anything creative if i watch a show and read emails at the same time.
I'm seriously scared of how the young children that are now growing up with sludge content pumped into their brains fron day one are going to cope with school, teachers are already noticing how attention spans have been gett worse
An interesting self-reflection. Do you think it's because this type of content gives some sort of endorphine drip infusion, permanently giving you instant gratification? Something like that?
Please know millennials want to stop this shite but the onslaught is so heavy and we have so little power. I hated thinking my parents didn't "do anything" to stop the stuff that hurt me when I was young, and I know your friends and yourself may end up feeling the same about your experiences on the Internet later on, but with how quickly this happened, I promise we didn't know what was going on until it was way too late. And I wish we didn't have to rely on bullshit like Zuckerberg to make decisions for us.
Not sure how old you are, but I'm 22, and I want to just let you know that that was incredibly insightful. I was born with a childhood of late 90s remnants still hanging around and a non-capitalism-optimized internet, and social media picked up around the time I hit puberty. Sludge videos only started hitting my feeds around my early college years and it's still so enticing, and the literal attention deficit thing, having to switch between tasks and barely being able to pay attention if you're not being stimulated enough, is something I feel SO HARD.
I'm feeling a lot of the same feelings you are right now, and I can't even imagine what it must feel like to be inundated with all this crap from as far back as you can remember AND KNOWING that it's crap but not being able to look away. At least I have a part of me that remembers what the internet was like before giant social media companies and content optimization, and even before we even gave that much of a shit about using the computer for an extended amount of time anyway.
Seriously, I feel for younger Gen Z. Y'all have all the access to be as smart as you want, so you know what's being done but being unable to stop it anyway because it's all you know. (REALLY hope this doesn't come off as patronizing or offensive.)
18 year old chiming in. I can totally relate to this. I'm not sure I should have been given a tablet at such a young age.
This reminds me of the novel "Mockinbird" by Walter Tevis, where he describes this dystopian future that nobody can read and there is no content with narrative, only color flashes and naked bodies in videos. Also nobody dreams or love. The book is wonderful and all the "strange" features of that society are slowly getting real.
This video was fantastic and I'm in awe at the use of the projector. Also that project you talked about near the end seems pretty interesting, I'll have to check it out when it comes out!
Omg thanks stranger 🥰 it’s always great to meet a fan 🤝
The scary thing for me personally, is that, in my teens, when I started warning people about this 15 or so years ago, people called me a dramatic edgy hipster, and now that it's come to full fruition, people are still calling me that.
The gaslighting is real.
Very true, I was saying this back when websites with endless scrolling became common.
i had no idea this genre of video existed, and I'm honestly kind of terrified by it. you made some really concise points in your essay, and stylistically this might be my favourite video of yours yet. looking forward to your future endeavours! :)
It takes you into a trance and it's hard not to fall into, it's deeply terrifying
It's not terrifying.
It's actually helps keep your attention on things.
In my FYP I have never once seen it paired with a clip from a movie.
I see it paired with academic lectures.
@@donov25 And how much information have you retained from those sludge academic videos? The only time splitting your attention in half isn't also splitting your retention capabilities is when you're doing something entirely mechanical (doodling, driving the same road everyday etc.) - essentially going on autopilot.
With these types of videos, both sides are actively fighting for your attention. You might think you're focused and listening, but - funnily enough - if you pay attention to your information intake, you'll most likely find that you were kinda just drifting in and out of focus and well, not remembering all that much.
I know that watching 'intelectual' content makes people feel good and smart but like - if you're not retaining any of that information, it's not actually giving you those brain boosting gummies you so desire lmao
@@donov25 also (and I don't mean it in any negative way, just food for thought relating to the vid!) it might be a good thing to ask yourself - why is my attention span getting so low, I can't watch this short lecture without some colorful video playing beside it?
@@mydzy I have ADHD it's not a mystery. And your wrong visual information and audio information are processed separately.
I listen to podcasts while working and playing video games. I retain information from that why is this any different truly?
I think this is an overreaction to seeing a tool used poorly.
It's not scary or concerning. It's just a tool that can in fact be helpful to retain attention.
It can be used poorly it can be used well.
15:28 - I don't watch "content sludge," but do watch YT videos one after another and for hours and it's absolutely to feel like I don't physically exist. Definitely a depression thing.
Fortunately, I don't seem to have sunk low enough to watch just anything put in front of me though, lol. It's all stuff that at least mildly interests me. But I do seek it out in an almost panicked way, like if I run out of stuff to distract me, it will just be me and my thoughts and that's something I just can't deal with anymore.
As a professional juggler born into a family of jugglers 6:16 is absolutely hilarious to me especially because i was literally practicing as i listened to this.
That’s INCREDIBLE
Secret’s out!
knowing that somewhere out there there is a family of jugglers makes me happy, i don't know why but thanks for the info!
@@altertopias aw that’s really sweet :) there’s more of us than you would think. Also a surprising amount of queer jugglers lol
@@DraconiaDrawing didn't expect it, but in hindsight, our history has never shied aways from circuses now that i think about it
I normally hate when i see these attention trap memes but there was one that was played next to a scene from My dinner with Andre that really nailed in a point from that movie.
The scene shown was specifically when Andre is describing the systemic nature of boredom to Wallace
I'm blown away by how you can take a topic that seems super vague and disjointed, and make it so cohesive and interesting!
Just taught a lesson that used excerpts from this video to get high school students thinking about their (social) media diets and it was a hit! Minds were blown and critical thinking occurred, huge W. Thanks so much for your thoughtful work, Lily
This is an old comment but thank you for being a class act!
something that i think is kind of insidious abt the algorithm-centered state of art online is that it’s kind of weirdly manipulative? the only sort of movement you as a consumer will make is a move towards liking the content that the algorithm likes. it’s frightening to think of how these platforms mold and change u into someone that is easy to market to. great video as always, got a lot to think abt now!!!
Oh it's not just weirdly manipulative. It's entirely manipulative, the goal is to get you to spend more and more time on the platform for more of a payoff for them, completely uncaring of what that does to those watching
What I think needs to change is us 1. getting into technology with an Ethics-First mindset. 2. getting into politics/activism to purge the toxic capitalist culture that’s consumed our society. 3. Be willing to fight the billionaire class to the bitter end.
Yes and no. I’ve found that even if I scroll past each video they still find their way back. It’s awful.
in the middle of watching this video i deleted a fuck ton of apps from my phone, started researching on my athletic hobbies and started cleaning my room. this is not to say that your video didn’t hold my attention, only that it motivated positive change in my actions even if only for today.
I don't even have the words to describe how profoundly this video resonates with me. I didn't even know that people used the word 'sludge' to describe this content but that's just . . . perfect. For at least a few years now, I've quietly described my experience *to myself* of just being alive a 'pushing through sludge.' I constantly feel like I have to force myself up a river a sludge to do *anything*, from schoolwork to showering to exercising to visiting a friend to LITERALLY PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. Aren't video games supposed to be the thing you use to procrastinate on other work? Part of the experience for me is definitely some ADHD "wall of awful" procrastination garbage but sludge content makes this experience so, so much worse. TH-cam Shorts (I haven't touched TikTok and don't intend to start) are incredibly insidious because I don't even realized I've been sucked in until it's been an hour or so and I realize I'm not even enjoying the experience.
You describe sludge videos in terms of a food metaphor but I'm not eating the sludge: I'm being smothered by it.
If you're trying to get out of that habit, the block tube add-on/extension's got an option to completely remove shorts from your home feed and search results, and I think also an option to convert them to the regular video URL so you don't get sucked into an autoplay hole.
In case you were looking for a way to at least filter your experience to make it easier.
Also in my case I don't see games as something to procrastinate with but as a rewarding activity just like reading a book or watching a movie, so I constantly have to fight with the "but I didn't achieve anything today i don't deserve the fun" response I'm still trying to unlearn, so games aren't always the procrastinating thing.
Also, as someone with depression, are you sure your sludge surrounding is your ADHD and not depression, or both ADHD and depression? I'm concerned that you might be approaching it from an ineffective angle, I'm sorry if you already checked that possibility off and it didn't improve anything
The most disturbing part about short form video content is that every platform tries to push you into it. Reddit and TH-cam both try to bring you into the shorts feed-- on Reddit, scrolling down on any video will scroll just like TikTok, into another popular short video. On TH-cam, not only are shorts listed on the front page with no way to turn them off, sometimes *the TH-cam app opens directly into a short*!
I’m sorry that life feels like pushing through sludge to you but it’s nice to know that I’m not alone
Yeah, I also like and think it's fitting that some people named a certain kind of poor entertainment Trash, ragebait, clickbait, clout, grifting, etc too.
God, the mesh of ADHD paralysis and addictive short form content is SUCH a hole. I have genuinely screwed up important life things because of my difficulty pulling myself away from technology. it's really hard to realise that prevention is sometimes the only solution, i often don't have the presence of mind to act while I'm in the middle of scrolling.
Thank you for giving me the language to explain to people why I don't use Tik Tok. It is the adult equivalent to Elsagate baby sensory videos and I am direly afraid of messing with my brain chemistry in that way.
There's something so deeply miserable lurking beneath the thin layer of numbness I feel while watching sludge content. I usually get South Park and Surfers sludge but i genuinely cannot remember a single scene from what I have watched and I've found myself getting genuinely addicted to it, like, enough to procrastinate my usual procrastination tools. Luckily I noticed this and decided to open myself up to the real world, so I joined a queer gallery group which has got me to visit places I would never think to on my own and now I'm having eurovision party with them, wow who knew the boring solution worked!
You'll hopefully be happy to know that I am able to remember pretty much any of your videos that I've watched, and I come out of them feeling something more than I did going in. I really distinctly remember a unbearably boring workday where I put on your kiss between two women video and it helped me feel more attached to reality!
Also as an aside the Nigahiga part had me feeling some feelings, I genuinely cannot believe I grew up on that era of youtube compared to what I'm looking at now
U r very cool, thanks 😎
I've grown to loathe TH-cam's Shorts page, because it's FULL of sludge, though mine is less internet clips played over Subway Surfers and more text-to-speech voices reading Reddit posts over Minecraft parkour footage. And yet, every time I see it I feel the urge to click on it. It's genuinely disturbing how I go in feeling bad, come out feeling worse, having gained absolutely nothing and wasted my time, and yet I still come back for more. At this point I feel like I need a browser extension that just blocks me from accessing the Shorts page at all, because I can feel it actively rotting my brain.
why do you watch it "sludge content"?
i feel like i'm old enough and "nerdy enough" that i never got sucked into facebook, instagram or tiktok (just grew up on the wild west of the late 90s world wide web).
when myspace died, that was like the end of my "normie days" (excuse my language, i'm sure you'll understand my reference).
@@transsexual_computer_faery because it's addictive... the internet has warped itself in such a way that attention spans have been lost and I can't watch a 30 minute video anymore, but I can waste 'a few minutes' watching insta reels that eventually divulge into sludge content. I need to have insta to keep in contact with my friends so I can't delete it... none of my friends are on Facebook (I'm 21) but even Facebook video now has sludge content. One mistap on an app and I lose three hours, and I can only fix it if I lose all my friends...
@@goldstarsforall hah, yeah, i can't relate to young zoomers at all.... y'all grew up when web 2.0 was alive and kicking.
You have to quit it like a drug. My TH-cam recommendations are good, even the Shorts, because I never ever watch this sort of stuff and tend to go for the video essays. If you can make the initial push to change your viewing habits, eventually the content algorithm should actually make it easier for you.
My gosh, this might be one of the best written video essay channels I've seen. At 18:03, that sentence is just fantastic: "It offers us a chance at *pure* consumption, where what's being watched is secondary to the ritual of staring at a screen."
I can't think of a better way to write that
you've made the longest sludge video ever, congratulations. I'm gonna send this to my friends with low attention spans
"content sludge is AI generated art that just happens to be made by humans" my favorite line. sums up the uncanny valley of the sludge
I have done a lot of experimentation with different tik tok accounts to try and dig into how the algorithm works and I think there's a couple of important points on top of everything mentioned in this video.
First, tik tok's algorithm heavily favors whatever the popular sounds happen to be, probably too much. So the same loud sound over and over and over again is going to get people to get off the app if it gets to be too much, so there needs to be content that isn't tied to those repetitive loud sounds. But as you mentioned ~10:00, people just talking tend to be terrible at getting to the point, so unless a specific type of person is using tik tok, the algorithm usually doesn't push the talking videos too hard.
The reddit stories read by AI and tv clips of low energy animated shows with their consistent cadence and predictable payoff then become the perfect candidate videos for the breath between the noise, if that makes any sense.
Then the purpose of the subway surfers or minecraft parkour animations within sludge content is more nuanced than this video gives it credit for, because you're not supposed to watch it for the duration of the video. When made properly, the correct 'sludge' format has the digital parkour content take up exactly as much space as the comments.
The animations on top of the sludge keep people from scrolling away, then the main content is all available on the top of the screen while people have the comments open, and tik tok's algorithm heavily favors comment participation. The sludge format (whether the creators know it or not) is to incentive comment engagement above all else (including just reading the comments, which can keep people on a video far longer than the content itself).
This also reinforces the earlier point, scrolling through tik tok is the same loud sounds over and over again, so pausing a video to read further accomplishes 'breath between the noise', and if the algorithm is pushing the sludge content, it is likely that the person scrolling has been scrolling for some time.
Unless you're a person who heavily engages with sludge content, it is never the first thing tik tok shows when the app is launched, because while no one person planned it out, the collective purpose of sludge content is to provide a visually engaging but relatively quiet breather for people who are subconsciously primed to leave soon if they don't get a break from the noise.
Holy crap!!! I think you nailed it on so many levels. This is so well thought out and makes perfect, terrifying sense.
this makes a lot of sense
Wow
that is a terrifying and well thought out theory, man..... I keep thinking that genuine quality curation of the flood of media we're surrounded by will be the next big service
@@Bo-kq8tn when it comes to music, using spotify's "radio from a title" is great at curating music... as long as you have good "root songs". For that you should ask friends, like you ask your rocker friend for a couple of rock songs, your hip hop head friend for some hiphop, etc.
Good mix of connecting with real people and using an amazing piece of modern tech.
I keep thinking we already all the "next big services" we need, it's more about "chill the fuck out and enjoy what we already have" wave i'm hoping for
that solo at the end was so good it made me half cry
my life became so much better when I stopped watching instagram reels late at night and started reading books instead. It's like I can think again. I was really turned into a zombie, mindlessly scrolling, unable to think for myself. It's like waking up from a coma.
FR!
a couple of months ago i started a habit of reading at night. it's been one of the most life changing things especially considering how little time it takes (about half an hour each night)
recently deleted instagram too.
books are great
"Joylessly waiting around for nothing in particular" is a pretty good summation of life in the Hyper Content Zone
I don't understand how this is soothing for people! I find it extremely upsetting and anxiety inducing for some reason. Great essay!! I listened to it like a podcast
Same here. Unfortunately I have the problem of needing subtitles to focus on what's being said because of auditory processing difficulties, so it was a question of do I want to get anxious or do I want to risk not understanding anything if I just listen to it as a podcast.
Props to Lily for the artistry in this video (as always), though sadly I couldn't fully enjoy it.
me too, it’s overwhelming to me and i feel my consciousness being taken by something else, it makes me feel really disgusting, like there is a bad smell near me or that my body is dirty. i quit tiktok at the beginning of 2020 and ever since never went back. i’m glad this video was created
I wish I could avoid it. I always hate how my mind just disables after I don't think twice and click on a YT shorts thumbnail, just to stay there for 30 mins straight. It just makes me scared of the future.
It makes me mad, because I can feel what it's trying to do to me. I do NOT understand how anyone can willingly watch any type,of content like this
I can't stand it either, it's overwhelming and irritating, I don't even know how people can multitask like that. When I do something, whether watching, playing video games, reading, or anything else, I do one thing at a time. I hear so many people say they have ADHD nowadays, I'm thinking it's not innate but instead cultivated by media and how people engage with it.
Your point about filler vs nourishing is very salient. Where I am, Suburban culture reinforces a sense of personal control over the world that doesn't exist. Streaming services and social media offer "entertainment," but I think that everyone is screen-fatigued and hungry for something fulfilling
what a lovely video, even if I only glanced at the screen a few times, treating it more like a podcast. While I'm a boomer, and therefore unaware of "sludge"- I can relate it to something in my life- see, "care taking" has been a role I've fit at several points. First, in college, I volunteered at an AIDS hospice service ( it being the late 1980's, this wasn't institutional, much more informal and community organized), then, later, I worked in Group Homes for kids who were impossible to place in Juvenile Detention, or in Mental "care" facilities, but could qualify for both. These days, I'm taking care of both of my very elderly and dying parents. In between these things, I read a few articles about Roky Erikson- a semi famous rock musician who was institutionalized for long stints, first by the State, then by his mother. So, finally, here's the thing: Roky was noted for having multiple TV sets and radios going on all at once. This caught my attention, as I'd seen similar with some of the folks dying of AIDS. So, maybe I was primed to notice it with the Group Home kids, or maybe it really was a thing- but seeing both of my nearly bed-bound parents doing similar, often enough that I've had to up their internet to accommodate each of them running 3 or 4 devices at the same time ( eg, as I type, Mom has a Kindle, Laptop and PC running, while Dad is watching a streaming movie, with TH-cam running on a tablet, and another tablet open, not currently engaged) I'm not prepared to state why, but your video hints at some possibilities. So, thanks!
This is insane to me, I need need need to know what this phenomenon is called! Thank you for this comment
@@FranK-cn1fy I wish I knew a term for it. I've never seen a formal study, or anything- but there's an opportunity, I guess- someone like you could name it. Heck, if I were ambitious enough, I would have submitted a peer review paper, but (Obviously) I haven't.
@@mattvanmantgem8600 it sounds like escapism into a media collage
This is such a genuinely fascinating comment. Perhaps it has something to do with escapism through keeping the mind too occupied? I have ADHD, so I usually need a higher level of baseline sensory stimulation (fidgeting with a pen, listening to a podcast or radio drama, music, chewing something, etc.) and these videos feel like what i can only imagine doing crack is like, in the worst way possible. You really do get sucked into it, even if you aren't entertained- i'd even say that it's like an "ADHD simulator" for people who don't have the condition.
I'm young- gen z or "zoomer" to be specific. (But like, the older half. Bordering on being a millennial lol) so I definitely don't have the experience you have, but I figured i'd offer the information i could in case it's helpful in any way. ^_^
Edit: as per the other responses, there's another comment in the comments section mentioning it could have something to do with the extreme fear a lot more people are experiencing nowadays due to societal circumstances. And if the circumstances of the people you mentioned are also fear-based- it seems to certainly line up.
@Employee 427 I'm prone to the hyperfocus part of the equation, myself, though never DX'ed " ADHD"- ( I'm not shy about it- I'm diagnosed as Bipolar 2, if that illuminates) so, I have constantly policed myself against getting into too deep of a rabbit hole- meaning that I can see the utility of the " fear" hypothesis- bad things happen when we lose control. But, control always seems to be an illusion, at least for me. Still, I think again that y'all are on to something. I hope it helps...
I have seen only a handful of the "content sludge" variety of video and its like. When I was a kid I would sometimes go take a handful of granulated sugar out of the cupboard and just kinda eat it. It didnt taste good, it was actually kinda nasty, but it was sugar and thus made the dopamine circuit go brrrr. And content sludge is like that except its someone elses hand shoving the granulated sugar into your mouth
Christ I have to shut myself in my room and think about this for at least 24 hours. You really conveyed how mesmerisingly mind-numbing the experience of sludge content is, to the point where I feel I need to wash my brain out lmao. Also, how dare you for covering *that* song at the end (it was beautiful tho)
I think this new “tiktok NPC” trend could also be considered sludge content. Besides the fact that it could be sexual and people do it for the money, in my opinion, it is similarly addicting to watch while having nothing of value to even say. Just instead of visual stimulation (sludge) it’s more auditory stimulation (sludge).
“What’s being watched is secondary to the ritual of staring at a screen” is going to stick with me. I despise this trend of content sludge and just mindlessly watching things and while I actively don’t participate in it, I’m terrified of the trajectory of media in general. Thanks for yet another incredible video. Can’t believe the song at the end though. Unforgivable.
this is me in the youtube comments, endlessly scrolling for nothing. social media is the back rooms.
I uninstalled tiktok after months of being addicted to it, and im not saying all of my problems stem from tiktok, but i feel so much better- having the ability to watch a movie without my phone in hand, to sit and wait somewhere and allow myself to be bored without automatically feeling understimulated, the ability to watch a 20 minute youtube video or read a book. I cannot believe I lost that, even for a few months. The algorithm and the sludge content are seriously horrifying, and the best way to go about it is by ripping the bandaid off.
to me, this was what og corecore was trying to express in the begining. post-human art is such an acurate way of putting it. amazing video as always.
The "ten minutes of silence" thing hits me SO CLOSE. I can't bear silence, yet I crave it, I crave silence deeply, but being all alone, in a house without anyone near making any noise ? That's terrifying. Silence is terrifying
Stop being scared
Not for me, it's peaceful
Nah silence is great, expecially when you come out of the shower and the sound of nothing is more loud that normal, top 10 perceptions fr
silence is one of the most effective tools to induce a sense of unending unease. i always love when it's properly used in various mediums
It's so hard to socialize or pull people away from sludge content when we're hanging out. TikTok sludge is just more engaging than other humans. It sucks. This is especially true for my neurodivergent friends :/
They days of enjoying eachothers presence are over. It's really sad.
@@ryno4ever433 1800s no one wants to talk anymore they just read there newspapers all in the same room!
1920s no one wants to talk anymore they just listen to the radio all day!
1950s no one wants to talk anymore my family just sits in front of the TV and stare
1980s no one wants to talk anymore now they just play on their computers
2020s no one wants to talk anymore now they just watch tiktok sludge contents on their phones
It hurts sometimes to want to spend time with someone they get on TikTok like we aren't even in the same room with anything else to do. Doesn't help that the app is absolutely GRATING to my mind.
Makes it sounds worse when it's exploitive of neurodivergent people, kids, or sad empty people. I really don't like the exploitive factor.
This is part of the reason I've stopped enjoying hanging out with my friends. Don't get me wrong, they're still my dearest group of people and I wouldn't trade the world for them. But when we're not doing anything together, instead of conversation a good chunk of them start sitting on their phones and I can hear that they're on tiktok. And I know they're not gonna remember any of it, and it's upsetting to see they'd prefer that over connecting with who they're in the same room with.
But how do you begin to solve that problem? It's like pulling a junkie away from lines of cocaine.
Reminds me of "empire ants". An old Gorillaz song. It has this line "oh Joy's arise, the sun has come again to hold you. Sailing out the doldrums of the whole week".
It makes me think of how sludge content is basically sublime oblivion. Waiting around as life happens. A moment of respite, yes, but one that was unearned. There's no payoff. No engagement. There's only sailing out the doldrums of first a week, then years of your life.
The queasy feeling I got watching this realizing that I couldn't tear my eyes away from the projected footage...
Also never feel bad about whipping out McLuhan haha, I'm convinced "The Medium is The Message" is a foundational concept for even being able to remotely understand digital media.
Great video, I had never heard of "sludge" but the term perfectly describes the direction that media has been going, and at an ever increasing rate, with sludge content tiktoks looking like the algorythmically boiled down to its essence, final form.
Would be interested to see someone chart the rise of sludge from proto-sludge like clickbait articles and mass produced junk cinema like Marvel, to tiktok sludge and onwards to the AI future where nothing but sludge is everywhere.
One half of the recipe is the production of sludge but the other half is what seems to be a growing lack of discernment amongst the audience who seem more than happy to be rebranded as "content consumers".
Also, I'd probably watch Akerman sludge. I subscribed for the playing.
As a local musician, I can confirm we would love it if you showed up. And usually local bands play at places where they have beer and/or food so even if we aren’t very good you can at least redeem the experience with some nachos. 😂
As a person who guiltily deletes and re-downloads TikTok every few weeks, this video was the push I needed to never go back. I can’t waste my life drooling over a screen.
did you redownload? 😅
This is your reminder to delete tik tok! (If you so happened to give in again)
"as big as a kinda small grape" is a bewilderingly expressive description of size and i don't know why it caught in my craw so tight.
It's not a small grape, it's a "kinda small" grape. Important nuance.
same
I have to say, comparing myself to a brain-dead toddler mindlessly watching weird elsa videos and toy unboxing might be the best way to fight my short content addiction. Telling yourself you're being cringe can really be a saving grace.
Loved the "Little bit of everything all of the time" bo burnham reference just after you point out the interaction between creator and viewer in slower media ^^ lovely demonstration!
Congratulations on making the BFI's Best Video Essays of 2023!! Was super excited to see you there.
Lmao i love the look of casual disdain in the thumbnail 💜🏳️⚧️
4:12 Sensory overload is literally a hypnosis method. That’s what the flashing lights and swirling spirals are for.
i am literally blown away by the curation, thought, artistry, and intention behind the making of this video.
rickrolled several years after the trend died, on a video about repackaged sludge content, is peak post-irony but also Eldritch levels of uncanny valley in a strange way.
As someone who was obsessed with hypnotism from the ages of 16-19, I think these sludge videos are a form of hypnosis. It's like troll net fishing. You get people distracted by the high stimulus video, while the actual content (the narrative podcast or movie) gets hijacked into your brain. It's the new nasty form of commercial or propaganda. Almost like overly intimate. To use less kind language, like eye-molestation.
when you describe it like that Im kind of left wondering about some 'other dangers' from this content; maybe medical conditions that we wont find out about until much later. (besides brainwashing)
Brain-molestation, not eye.
These videos definitely induce hypnotic trances. You could combine them with propaganda to increase people's familiarity with extreme statements, without ever needing to have an actual dialogue or persuasive argument. That is dangerous
Well sure that sort of stuff can have an effect propaganda/commercial wise it's the "common-sense" stuff that if someone were looking directly at no distractions they wouldn't see the problem that ultimately causes more harm and proliferates more
This is the first time I've discovered any of your stuff and I am just blown away. I love that this couldn't have been anything else than a video essay; no Atlantic article would replace the experience of fighting against the sludge content to retain your deep analysis. Honestly, I feel exhausted after the video and I think that's part of the point.
The Nebula point was so smooth too, you may finally be the creator that wins me over on that one. Well done all around!
I knew of this style of content, but I don't use TikTok so I've never been exposed to it. After watching this I can totally get why people watch it. It made this 20 minute video feel like 5
when I was a kid there was these racoons on TV that told you not to eat mushrooms you found in the forrest or walk down dark alleys alone at night
As I watched this video, I expected to play it in the background while I played a game. Its what I usually do, but as I watched the video, and really focused on the message, I could not in good conscience give in to the brain rot that permeates sludge content. Now I don't go on to tik tok or really any conventional social media, but I do scroll through reddit. Reddit, as I am now recognizing, has a similar scroll formula to tik tok just less egregious because of the emphasis on sub-communities and discussion. But when you scroll the front page, that hypnotic affect grabs you. Watching this video was hard because of the sludge content you showed through the projector. The sheer amount of stimuli kinda hurt, not just my eyes but I had a legit physical repulsion. My eyes hurt and I had to look away like fucking Dracula from the sun. My body was just telling me, "This is not okay. NONE OF THIS IS OKAY!" Now I do suffer from sensory issues and can experience sensory overload so that could explain it, but for people are numb to this content and whose attention spans have been so broken that they can consume it normally, that's scary. The anecdote about the 2 year old, that's fucking terrifying. I'm not even that old yet the internet progresses everything so fast that just 5 years ago, 2018, the internet felt like a whole different place. Capitalism is truly sinking its claws into everything. It will not stop until it has monetized every human interaction. Put every human experience in the language of finance and transactions. And as I watch on in horror, that part of my brain keeps telling me, keeps inundating me with this awful feeling, "THIS IS NOT OKAY!"
this is actually such a great video. i don't use tiktok but i definitely feel this whenever i use any other social media
I think tiktok is great at faking community. Everything except the basest features try to convince you you’re part of some niche. Replying to comments creates more of a link between creator and viewer, hiding view counts makes it seem like a smaller audience than it is, and even the meager ‘creator fund’ makes artists seem smaller than they are, because they make less money and so can afford less production quality with the same audience. They want you to think that everything interesting is on tiktok, and you’re special for finding it(being served it by the algorithm).
Yep and its working :(
People are feel so proud and special based on what TikTok gives them. I‘ve seen too much of „Look how quirky and silly I am, my fyp gave me a video with this sound, which only has 7 videos“ and you check and there is already 7000 TikToks saying simular things. It happens everytime remixes with some meme go viral. Also not related but damn some of these memes turn remixes sensations are for sure marketing strat
I think sludge is just the inevitable end point of mindless TV Netflix call it what you will. A lot of streaming service shows aren't far from sludge, there definitely seems to be something going on with how easy it is to passively ingest moving pictures and sound. As the cost to access has fallen off a cliff so has content, we've known for a long time cheap production sketchy writing still get views but now we know how deep the barrel goes.
Sign up for Nebula with my link for 40% off! It's a great service and really helps me make these! go.nebula.tv/lilyalexandre
If you liked this video, check out these two next:
Millions of Dead Vibes: How Aesthetics Hurt Art
▸ A spiritual prequel to this video, about how the internet understand the world through art movements & content trends: “cottagecore”, “dark academia”, and so on.
th-cam.com/video/CMjxxzq88R0/w-d-xo.html
The Surreal Dreams of AI-Generated Art
▸ Exploring what makes AI art unique, and how it can be misused. This is from 2021 - it’s staggering how much the art has evolved!
th-cam.com/video/Bi4sJEE8wCs/w-d-xo.html
hehehe 🤭
The ending's great
Just so you know, premiering videos (especially way ahead of the time they're gonna go live) might hurt your analytics because people click on the premiere, immediately click off and don't get the video on their recommended page again after the premiere.
The quality of your sound design and management is awful, if not for the content itself, I would be long gone 💀
Sheep Ketchup
That's so unnecessarily rude, were you raised by discord?
I'm not a tiktok user so I barely had exposure to this genre, and had no idea what it was named, so it was a greatly informative essay.
Just found out this channel. Thanks!
YAY!!! A new Lily video. :}
You're fast becoming my favorite TH-camr. And honestly....I might have to finally get Nubula, because of you. And a few other creators. But mostly you. I find gender and AI and aesthetics to be basically THE most interesting cutting-edge thing happening in the world now. So needless to say, I'm a bit of a fan of your channel. :D
Reminds me of that Back to the future scene where marty's son turns on multiple TV chanels at once...
I really like that you didn't put unnecessary background music in this video. Thanks for trusting us to pay attention and be "entertained" by the topic and your voice alone. It's refreshing.
Doing this over a projector instead of a greenscreen or a facecam so you literally can't look away from the sludge is brilliant.
I smiled at the ending. Why would I want to remove a smile from the world.
"When I watch content sludge, I feel like I don't exist" god that's exactly it. I've been in kind of a life-torpedoing depressive episode and I'm averaging like 3 hours a day on Instagram Reels alone, something I'm massively embarrassed about, but that's just it. I know it's like self harm, I don't want to exist right now, and that's like a free drug that saps my intellect and keeps me from existing for x amount of time. I can feel myself saying "I don't care". I do care, I know what it is and what I'm doing to myself, but I don't care about myself. It's like sleeping while I'm awake. Also, the note about not being able to sit in silence for 10 minutes from PTSD, I can't tell you how much this is an impact on my functioning. I can't hold down most jobs for more than 6 months. The time to think drives me insane, and I start having daily panic attacks and huge depression ruts. I can't sleep without a video just because I feel unsafe in an empty quiet room closing my eyes, I'm on high alert, threatened. In silence I wake up in the middle of the night afraid I'm in danger, so I load up on long video essays. I've got like an average screentime of 11 hours a day and I'm incredibly embarrassed and ashamed of it, but it's not because whatever "content" I'm "watching" (rarely looking) is so good, it's because I have come to a point where I cannot tolerate living inside my own head, and must distract myself at all times. I should do ketamine.
Thank you for giving me sludge that has all of my daily vitamins and nutrients in it (delicious food for thought re: the wacky online world we live in).
Your point at the 11:40 mark about not being able to sit in silence. For me that is a new development. Happened within days of finding out my dad was a child abuser. I have since had to actively work on getting my attention span back. The revelation ruined my life for a number of years.
As a novelist, it's been hard. My writing/game design went from non-stop 8hr stints (which admittedly, were unhealthy in and of themselves as I would forget to eat) to sporadic, hyper explosions of writing which would last, at best, 45 minutes.
The middle ground would be ideal. I am working my way back there. The PTSD made me feel stupid for a while. I couldn't make decisions, I was doom scrolling online, I was seeking arguments or something stimulating. Something, anything.
TikTok is the perfect app for people who do not want to think. If you want to avoid your past, your future, your present, TikTok is there for you.
Perhaps interestingly I have pretty severe ADHD, but sludge videos somehow 0% do it for me. If you had described them to me before seeing one, I would have guessed that they would totally captivate and annihilate me, but somehow that's not how it is at all. I'm not quite sure why this is. Because I'll play a video game, talk on discord, and watch a video or listen to music, which seems like basically the same thing.
@@MrCmon113 it’s funny, I didn’t even notice the sludge back ground until someone pointed it out
nyeah like if I need additional stimulation it'll be MY CHOICE and I have to physically actively engage with it !!!
Same! If I had to explain it I would say I can feel the low quality. I tune out or lose interest on videos where there's God awful royalty free music (just show me the damn cat) or where it feels like it's going to be too long to get to the point if it's just supposed to be funny
Same. I think the concept is sound have multiple stimulation happening at the same time to increase watch time but the execution is terrible. All the clips are very mundane. Instead of two or more clips playing at the same time that are interesting its two boring videos playing at the same time. I’d instantly scroll some clip of whatever is on top and jumping around in circles in a videogame or cutting soap might as well be a sleep aid. Perhaps this kind of content does well for people without adhd because they are more likely to be overwhelmed by multiple things happening at once so its engaging and people with adhd are wired to handle multiple stimuli at once so its not engaging its just low quality content.
You impress me.
Absolutely no green-screen, just firing that projector straight into your eyeballs with reckless abandon
i DO think most sludge are easy to ai. you just need to have a couple different scraping algorithms for the different content, a text-to-speech, and combine. it's actually trivial to create -- ive seen some upsetting stuff get past the human filter because of it
I am incredibly impressed at your fortitude to stand in front of a projector for 23 minutes plus. Especially during those loud subway surfer bits, I don’t imagine that was very fun on the eyes, but makes for a beautiful video!
It's as if you've taken all the incoherent half-thoughts I've had and the mix of feelings (awe, discontent, curiosity, etc.) toward post-human art that I've felt as I watched the internet grow in the past ten years... and you put them into words: genuine, meaningful, and informative words. It's remarkable! I'm gonna share this with so many people and be extremely annoying about it! Thank you sm, please keep making more videos!
The retention-focused, "never gets to the point" format is common on Facebook too. When I started using it again, before the algorithm had attuned itself to me, I was getting lots of 10-15 minute long videos that would just tease and tease and tease the payoff. Extremely painful to watch, clearly geared towards pleasing the algorithm and not the human watching it.
I saw those sludge and quick cut videos some time ago on Instagram, and I didn’t know what they were back then. I couldn’t watch them because they were visually overwhelming, causing sensory issues, and I had to turn away from them. Thanks to you, I know now what they are.
right?!?! i was so confused when a video i was trying to watch was cut in half by something so inane. thankfully, they first started as family guy clips and i am a family guy Hater and so whenever i would see a family guy clip, i would scroll past because there were times in the past when i’d watch the clip to see if the show ever had any funny jokes and noticed just watching the video through made the algorithm put more clips on my feed. so when the sludge videos arrived cut with family guy clips, i scrolled right past. then, they started cutting the videos with minecraft videos but it would always be the videos where an ai voice would read out reddit posts which i occasionally like to listen to. but i remember a time when those reddit videos didn’t have anything else on the screen except the words and the confusion really set in. not long after more of those videos started cropping up did i start hearing people joking about the brain rot of the “subway surfer/minecraft/family guy videos”
now i make an active effort to scroll past no matter what is in the video
its scary how captivating sludge is. I played a little minigame while watching- Trying to focus on your face while ignoring the background. Despite consciously trying not to I looked away so much. Soap cutting was the most effective on me
Phenomenal work as always, perfectly expressed what I feel towards these algorithms and their impact. 💜
So many people I know admit they like having any trash on the tv for a mind-numbing effect…a while ago DF Wallace talked about how tv is like junk food bc it’s low effort and temporarily stimulating but leaves you feeling empty bc it’s just a simulation of human interaction which people need. It’s a bit weird to watch my parents watch people converse on talk shows daily but I guess it gives the illusion of having that human interaction yourself. Feed by MT Anderson is a book I read recently but was published in 2002 and it holds up ridiculously well for a sci-fi about the internet in a future consumerist society. It’s depiction of entertainment-advertisements constantly beamed into your brain, data mining, social media, increasingly simplified pop songs and tv shows, and the strange feeling of being offline -left alone with only your own thoughts -was incredibly prescient. Like obviously it had already started on the early internet if someone wrote about it in 2002 but it has only become even more extreme. Tiktok is on another level tho. I don’t believe internet use is synonymous with brain rot but Something something spectacle colonizing attention pseudo relationships and the ever present imagined audience created in your head when you start to see yourself as entertainment to be consumed. Nice song at the end
It’s honestly TERRIFYING how often I found myself “focusing” on the sludge and had to cover half the screen or close my eyes to bring myself back to reality
I’m hoping that the sludge helps to shoot this into the stratosphere and have lots of others go through this video, this experience, and come out more aware at the end
i kept losing track of what you were saying with all the clips in the background (and literally over your face) so i just closed my eyes and listened to the rest.... well played
This is how I win!!!
I love ur videos :) thanks for stopping by!
So I finally clicked your Nebula link....
I was holding off only because I was expecting it to be like $50 a month or something crazy.
But I clicked.....and....$30 a YEAR? Ok....that settles it. I'm getting Nebula thru your link tomorrow after I get off work!
It's refreshing to see content creators building something THEY own and putting out such cool stuff at a price I'm actually able to pay. I literally don't think I've ever bought a single thing that was advertised to me online(though I'm sure I have), but I'm comfortable going thru with this particular purchase.
Thx Lily :)
PS: I just realized how much my comment sounds like an ad itself. It's not. I'm just a big fan of Lily's channel, I've heard about Nebula off and on for a while now, and she only just now sold me on it. :)
Yeah, Nebula's great~ 💜
I've been subscribed for over 2 years at $24/yr, and with the UK £ exchange rate and TH-cam's recent price hike I'm now paying more for a TH-cam Premium Family subscription _per MONTH_ than I pay for Nebula _per YEAR._ It's totally wild 🤯
(Nebula's US$23.99 @ 2023-01-03 was charged as £19.98. TH-cam is £19.99. Sure it's only £0.01 more, but the exchange rate was particularly bad in January; today the Nebula renewal would be closer to £19)
My only Nebula gripe is that it's a hassle to jump over here to find the TH-cam version if I want to leave a comment or share the video with friends without Nebula. That's a pretty minor complaint, though 😅
It's also amazing for discovering new creators. On TH-cam I'm often reluctant to watch stuff from unfamiliar channels, but on Nebula I can trust that creators/videos won't be obnoxious so I check out new stuff _far_ more often :)
In fact, I discovered Lily via Nebula sometime last year! 😸
I'm sure plenty of people have said it already, but jesus if putting yourself out of center next to sludge doesn't drive your point home. Honestly, watching this video was really hard because I had to actually fight the urge to look at the sludge. It was even worse when the subway surfing was happening on top of you. I guess if there's anything "good" about sludge, is that it's proof we are far more manipulable than we'd like to admit. Subway surfers and a clip of a show we don't care about is all that it takes for our brain to be controlled like that. Scary shit.
I escaped content sludge and my need for it... Rather strangely.. thanks to mushrooms?
You can absolutely escape it without, but it's really hard. Mushrooms on the other hand helped take me out of that mindset needing constant stimulation. Even for weeks after my first trip I felt that way.
Idk if this is something that might help other people, but it'll be interesting to see the changes psilocybin makes on society as it continues to be more accepted, studied, and decriminalized. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I kinda think this might change our world for the better. Lord knows we need a societal shift towards living more in the moment and away from screens.
ive worked pretty hard to get myself out of the content sludge traps, going as far as to use a modded version of the TH-cam app to disable shorts altogether, i literally am not able to watch them