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I've been saying this for a while. For all the talk about kids, seniors are the ones addicted to phones. Doomscrolling on Tiktok, Facebook, even locked into mobile games. Its very depressing.

I also see it as an issue because kids model what they see. A parent telling their kids not to be on a phone kind of falls flat when every adult in their life is glued to their phones.

When I go to family gatherings I make it a point to keep my phone in my pocket and not scroll. I don’t want the kids to see that as an example of how to act when getting together with family. Meanwhile, my mom (their grandmother), is glued to Facebook the whole time.

Beyond the bad example, it makes her frustrating to interact with. She’ll mention a news story that came up in her feed. Occasionally it’s one I’m familiar with and I engage, thinking we’re about to have a conversation about this topic… but no. As I’m replying, she mentions the next thing in her feed, she’s already moved on.

Ironically, my dad is probably the most connected person in the family, yet doesn’t do any of that stuff when getting together with family. There are all sorts of loud notifications going off, because he never has anything on silent, but he glances at his watch and carries on with the conversation. But to a point in the video, he maintains a lot of in-person connections and has a really rich social life in his 70s, which I think is rare. So he isn’t looking to fill holes in his life with doomscrolling.


+1, I see so many 50 to 70 year old folks using the phone way more than Gen Zs.

Yes, this! We spent so long (and rightfully) worrying about what it was doing to our kids, we forgot that there was a whole other generation equally unprepared for this.

I work in marketing and not nearly as much effort as you think goes into removing bots. They go after the lowest hanging fruit, the most obvious bots like scrapers and crawlers but most bots impersonating real people easily make it through. Traffic is traffic.

AI scrapers can beat Anubis now if I recall.


Honestly sounds like a you problem. I haven't had to return anything to Amazon in years but I'm a deliberate shopper and don't just buy stuff to buy it.


I used to be like you. But overall the return culture changed drastically - "no fault" returns where stores have zero care to hear about how their items are defective. And then Amazon's constant games with pricing has pushed me into "buying" (ie caching) something if it's a good deal, and then making the actual purchase decision of whether I want it sometime later. Much better than "I'll think about this tonight", and then going to buy it and the price has jumped 30%, making me feel like a sucker.

If I've already got pending Amazon returns to do, adding something to the queue costs me very little. If the queue is empty, then I'm a little more deliberate. But this time of year Nov-Jan is great for this, as the return dates are further out and all on the same day Jan 31 so it doesn't catch me by surprise.

The slow spiteful shipping also pushes me into this behavior when I'm in the middle of a project. Order a few different types of a thing, decide exactly what I need when I'm in the middle of doing, and then when I'm done with the project, return the pile of leftovers.

It's felt like something enabling this dynamic has been waiting to break for years now, but so far it hasn't. The only time I've gotten pushback from Amazon is a nastygram interstitial for a while after I returned a motherboard that I opened and tested (the manufacturer could have avoided this return by documenting the IOMMU groups, but once again... return culture). I have no idea if the problem there was the opening (seemed to be fine under their published policies), or whether something else happened to the item after I handed it to their return agent and they blamed me.


This is going to be very bad. Clearly defined ads is the start but they will eventually mixed ads into responses in the form of sponsored content. It's just the natural progression of things.


No one is saying don't make noise. They are saying be considerate of those around you. It is not a radical idea.


So you would advocate for someone to do this in public against someone else playing a video on their phone? Do you think this is the most considerate option?


Considerate? Yes, I'll consider leaving you alone. If it seems that you're having an actual problem, I'll even leave you alone. But if you're being rude because you haven't considered that others might not be interested in listening to your tiktok videos repeat endlessly, then when I take that into consideration it will likely have a negative effect on how I decide to treat you.

I'll also take into consideration whether or not you appear to be homeless if you stink (choosing not to shower and deciding not to shower are two different things). I'll take into consideration who it sounds like you're talking to when you're telling on the phone ("are you ok" vs interminable conversations on speakerphone in the break room/restaurant/other public places). If you're playing loud music in your car, before calling you out I'll consider whether the doors are open (you might not realize) or if you have the windows open (sharing your music choices with the world).

Consideration is the entire point. It doesn't mean letting people do whatever they like, it means judging (thinking about) then before doing anything. You have every like right to play your video, and I have every right to get annoyed at you for doing it without being considerate yourself.

Considerate: 1. Having or showing regard for the needs or feelings of others. synonym: thoughtful. Similar: thoughtful 2. Characterized by careful thought; deliberate. 3. Given to consideration or to sober reflection; regardful of consequences or circumstances; circumspect; careful; esp. careful of the rights, claims, and feelings of others.


No I think this solution is for people who have social anxiety and are too afraid to talk to people but whatever they feel like they need to do to stand up to inconsiderate assholes


This is one of the most insane things I've ever read. You have to be so disconnected from reality to believe this.


This is actually the definition of competition. You are just being drowned by AI music so no one can discover your music. Steam had the same issue years ago with asset flips drowning out the discoverability of actual titles and they implemented many curating tools to help resolve the issue. Acting like AI music isn't having a similar effort on genuine musicians is just playing dumb.


as a musician, the internet has made it that there already is a shit ton of competition. AI will make it worse sure, but it was already a 'problem' and never going to be solved.

The thing is, you aren't entitled to distribution.

Most musicians who make it these days work really hard at doing live shows, or growing a following on tiktok.

once they have an audience - who cares about competition?


The hardest pill to swallow as a musician is that despite everyone who ever listened to you telling you you're great, despite being in a band and playing shows, despite maybe even selling some merch...if you are not in the top 1%, you probably will never even get chance to play a show that might put you on someone meaningful's radar.


I hear you and feel you on this being a hard (hardest) pill to swallow, and I think I have a helpful phrase. It helped me quite a bit so I hope it helps you:

'For the love of the game.'

When you don't make any money and no one comes to your shows; when the booking emails go unanswered and the likes on soundcloud remain <10, just remember why you picked up the instrument in the first place. For the love of the game.


I like that strategy.

As a non-musician, but being into music to an unreasonable degree, I always thought that the best artists are those where I feel that, even if no one bought their records and there were just five people at their concert, they'd still be doing the exact same thing and with the same passion. Audiences notice.


Exactly! Glad you're into music. It's a fun strange journey


> The thing is, you aren't entitled to distribution.

That applies to people spamming AI slop too. People are right to complain about spammers. Platforms are right to try to stop spam, even though everyone knows that spam is a problem that is never going be solved.

> Most musicians who make it these days work really hard at doing live shows, or growing a following on tiktok.

Live shows, by their nature, have almost zero reach. A performance for 40 people takes place once in a single location at a specific time and then it's over. You're either there when it happens or you missed it. A song on youtube or bandcamp can be heard by millions quickly over a few weeks or gradually over years. Social media was a massive boon for musicians.

Sadly, it will get substantially harder to grow a following on tiktok or any other social media platform if those platforms are flooded with AI generated garbage. Real artists will be harder to find. Anyone doing anything new will be drowned out by AI regurgitating everything old. When creative people can't succeed, the creativity they'd inspire in others is lost and everything stagnates.


What you call slop others may enjoy. Calling stuff AI slop doesn't mean it isn't someone's art.


I feel that human artists as a class are more entitled to distribution than generated slop.

And decisions like Bandcamp's above reflects essentially the same view.


Why? Are human made tools more entitled to distribution than machine made tools?


if no one wants the slop, then its not competition. the problem is that people do actually want the slop and artists are mad about it.


That's not how discoverability works. If it becomes too much of a chore to sort through the swamp people will often just opt for whatever is popular.


All of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred. That is their many-billion-dollar industry purpose. Spotify does a fantastic job with this, for me.

> will often just opt for whatever is popular.

Are you suggesting that people consume media they don't like? I'm not familiar with anyone that does this. I personally skip if I don't like a song even a little.


> All of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred.

They are fundamentally about finding the content that will generate the most revenue. That changes the dynamics quite a bit.


You're not wrong, but the need to please the user is still paramount, otherwise they'll just do something else. This is why TikTok is eating everyone's lunch.


I don't agree with this and to answer the question you originally asked me, I do think users are consuming things they don't actually enjoy. The goal isn't to please the user, the goal is to not bore the user. If you talk to people I'm sure you'll find a lot of the music they listened to isn't "enjoyed" so much as it is inoffensive background noise.


It's not surprising that some people are mindless consumers, but it's not useful to assume the majority is, especially of paying customers, and competition exists.


You're assuming it's not useful because it doesn't bode well for your argument. What makes you think assuming the majority aren't mindless consumers is useful?


Again, if people enjoyed watching things they didn't like TikTok would not be eating everyone's lunch.


Tiktok is not eating everyone's lunch. Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts have caught up to and in some metrics even beat Tiktok.


> I'm not familiar with anyone that does this.

I see this a lot, actually. People put things on in the background, for instance, and don't really care if they like it or not (as long as they don't hate it). They just want noise. Or people just scrolling through their feeds without genuinely liking much in them.

In the old days, this was also how the majority of television was watched. People watched TV out of habit, and frequently watched things they didn't like because choices were limited and often there was nothing they actually like on. Thus all the complaints in the day about how "there's nothing on TV".

People are willing to sacrifice quite a lot of real enjoyment for convenience.


Many people don't care because it sounds like music.

It sounds like music, because it was generated by a model that was trained on actual music.

It is music that has been chewed up and regurgitated. It provides no benefit to the actual artists whose music fed that model.


should artists pay royalties in perpetuity to their teachers and musical inspirations?


No - human learning is still something special in this world.

It is a gift of time and effort, from both the student and teacher. The ability to be inspired by other works and draw from them, not merely imitate them.

You can ask any human musician to make music that is either inspired or outright copied from another artist. They have a moral compass to do so in a way that is not infringing on the works of others.

A music AI model will ingest what is thrown at it, and generate whatever you ask of it. It is a tool, and if it is ingesting human works to be formed into something else, proper attributions and royalties to the sources need to be made.


I have not met a single person offline who wants more AI music


AI music gets millions of listens, idk what to tell you dawg.


Sure it's almost entirely things like background music in shops and cafes where nobody is actually paying real attention to the music? I find it hard to believe anybody is actively listening to that kind of stuff (apart from perhaps checking our some of the more notorious cases for novelty value).


but people do want it. people who listen to top 40 want slop. most people want slop


At least top 40 has a room of engineers and at least they're getting some compensation. Yes, I understand splits are a bloodbath.


Same. I buy music from Bandcamp and Qobuz. I don't stream it though instead opting to sync my massive music collection through Syncthing


I use Zen and recommend people give it a shot. It's really good.


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