“Stop consuming, start creating” is sometimes considered to be a call for publishing whatever was done/performed. I think publishing is the root of the societal mental problem. More people get access to the internet over years, bigger proportion of people begins to publish some content. 15 years ago the amount of content in the internet was orders of magnitude smaller, and it was more authentic. Now people are hooked by a flood of information, then are encouraged to join to add a drop, they join the crowd and listen to advice of how to make content seeable, making the flood harder for the next person. It becomes more difficult to find great authentic content, difficulty provokes search (scrolling), but also exposes to lots öf ok content, giving small gratification (addiction).
But switching from a consumer to a creator mindset is a process that seems to improve the quality of one’s thinking. I’d even say that more people should start creating. Though I do agree that we also need better consumption and better metrics for creation (not just volume & engagement).
I say this because I recently made a Wikipedia account (inspired by Why You Should Edit Wikipedia) and as a first-time contributor I noticed a big difference between what reading a page on whatever does to my mind and how my mind acts when working through an edit on a page I care about. Reading/consuming can easily fall into passive pattern matching, but editting/writting pushes one into building an overall understanding of the meta of context of content, structure, audience &more.
My take is that the cognitive development justifies the noise.
I was not talking about creator mindset, just about publishing mindset and the resulting flood. This year people talk about “ai slop” content, but slop content existed even before ai.
The current tendency of the internet will benefit like SOME creators (not all of the internet creators put thoughts into their production) and just overwhelm the majority of passive users, making it more addictive for them and less healthy over years.
The minimal change that in my opinion tilts the situation in the healthy direction (but is absolutely not economically profitable and thus unrealistic), is to limit the posting frequency. Can’t make more than 1 publication per day/week. I bet most people would think just a bit more between they post, and they would not be able to spam content into twitter/reels etc.
Limitation of internet exposure time is the complement idea that is already quite spread. Timers, minimalist phones. But the person is controlling exposure, something about themselves.
Controlling/limiting the production is something about others. People, who would most benefit from thinking more between talking, would not go to such a website. And that us why I said it is unrealistic. Although it is possible to create a social meme to “make it cool” to use a website with limitations, and promote that “feed becomes less saturated with slop”.
Looking back at this take I think It became even more true. Now creation is made simplier, AI slop is quicker than persobal effort, and the internet is flooded even more.
“Stop consuming, start creating” is sometimes considered to be a call for publishing whatever was done/performed. I think publishing is the root of the societal mental problem. More people get access to the internet over years, bigger proportion of people begins to publish some content. 15 years ago the amount of content in the internet was orders of magnitude smaller, and it was more authentic. Now people are hooked by a flood of information, then are encouraged to join to add a drop, they join the crowd and listen to advice of how to make content seeable, making the flood harder for the next person. It becomes more difficult to find great authentic content, difficulty provokes search (scrolling), but also exposes to lots öf ok content, giving small gratification (addiction).
But switching from a consumer to a creator mindset is a process that seems to improve the quality of one’s thinking. I’d even say that more people should start creating. Though I do agree that we also need better consumption and better metrics for creation (not just volume & engagement).
I say this because I recently made a Wikipedia account (inspired by Why You Should Edit Wikipedia) and as a first-time contributor I noticed a big difference between what reading a page on whatever does to my mind and how my mind acts when working through an edit on a page I care about. Reading/consuming can easily fall into passive pattern matching, but editting/writting pushes one into building an overall understanding of the meta of context of content, structure, audience &more.
My take is that the cognitive development justifies the noise.
Also, feedback helps.
I was not talking about creator mindset, just about publishing mindset and the resulting flood. This year people talk about “ai slop” content, but slop content existed even before ai.
The current tendency of the internet will benefit like SOME creators (not all of the internet creators put thoughts into their production) and just overwhelm the majority of passive users, making it more addictive for them and less healthy over years.
Soo, what do you see as a better alternative?
Or mini-alternative, with some minimal changes that could create a better future for quality content and access to it?
edit: silly typo
The minimal change that in my opinion tilts the situation in the healthy direction (but is absolutely not economically profitable and thus unrealistic), is to limit the posting frequency. Can’t make more than 1 publication per day/week. I bet most people would think just a bit more between they post, and they would not be able to spam content into twitter/reels etc.
Limitation of internet exposure time is the complement idea that is already quite spread. Timers, minimalist phones. But the person is controlling exposure, something about themselves.
Controlling/limiting the production is something about others. People, who would most benefit from thinking more between talking, would not go to such a website. And that us why I said it is unrealistic. Although it is possible to create a social meme to “make it cool” to use a website with limitations, and promote that “feed becomes less saturated with slop”.
Try searchmysite.net
Looking back at this take I think It became even more true. Now creation is made simplier, AI slop is quicker than persobal effort, and the internet is flooded even more.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai?utm_campaign=post_share&utm_source=link this new post fits to my argument, üresenting many instances of the edge case of “mindless publishing”. It shows the problem from memetic view, not from the addiction concept.