Young female Japanese biker is 50-year-old man using FaceApp(mothership.sg)
mothership.sg
Young female Japanese biker is 50-year-old man using FaceApp
https://mothership.sg/2021/03/japanese-biker-actually-man/
533 comments
It was probably so successful precisely because it was seeing the world through the eyes of a 50 year old Japanese biker with the face people expect in influencers.
Most young people aren't that interesting. Older people tend to be more interesting, but no one wants to look at them.
It's like when movies show Charlie's Angels or James Bond fluently speaking multiple languages and efficiently wielding various weapons and skiing like Olympic skiers. You know that's not real. Any one of those things takes all your time to master. But it makes for a cool movie to bundle them all together.
And maybe people fell for it in part because we watch nonsense like James Bond. So it hit that note and didn't immediately set off alarm bells.
Most young people aren't that interesting. Older people tend to be more interesting, but no one wants to look at them.
It's like when movies show Charlie's Angels or James Bond fluently speaking multiple languages and efficiently wielding various weapons and skiing like Olympic skiers. You know that's not real. Any one of those things takes all your time to master. But it makes for a cool movie to bundle them all together.
And maybe people fell for it in part because we watch nonsense like James Bond. So it hit that note and didn't immediately set off alarm bells.
> You know that's not real.
You can definitely do the James Bond semester at college if you're so inclined, which iirc is: wine tasting, handgun safety, cross country skiing, swedish massage, and ballroom dancing.
You can definitely do the James Bond semester at college if you're so inclined, which iirc is: wine tasting, handgun safety, cross country skiing, swedish massage, and ballroom dancing.
What college are you people going to? I never saw any of these, not even as clubs, at Waterloo.
Cornell. The specific classes are:
Introduction to Wines: https://sha.cornell.edu/admissions-programs/undergraduate/ac...
Introduction to Handgun Safety: https://courses.cornell.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=...
Cross Country Skiing: https://scl.cornell.edu/coe/pe-courses/spring-pe-courses/sno...
Swedish Massage: https://courses.cornell.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=...
Ballroom Dance: https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP20/class/PE/1153
Of course the advantage of going to Waterloo is that you can probably pass the Google coding interviews.
Introduction to Wines: https://sha.cornell.edu/admissions-programs/undergraduate/ac...
Introduction to Handgun Safety: https://courses.cornell.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=...
Cross Country Skiing: https://scl.cornell.edu/coe/pe-courses/spring-pe-courses/sno...
Swedish Massage: https://courses.cornell.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=...
Ballroom Dance: https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/SP20/class/PE/1153
Of course the advantage of going to Waterloo is that you can probably pass the Google coding interviews.
"I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." -Ezra Cornell.
I'm not sure if they're offered anymore, but they used to have Basic Rifle Marksmanship and Epee de Guerre. My friend once told me he thought my major was "weapons".
I'm not sure if they're offered anymore, but they used to have Basic Rifle Marksmanship and Epee de Guerre. My friend once told me he thought my major was "weapons".
I clearly wasted my time with English Lit, Modern European History, Linguistics and German in my first year at University!
Don't feel bad. I wasted my time with Soviet Studies. Oops.
Something tells me that that is still pretty relevant...
I thought you were joking, but handgun safety really is a college class... Just wow.
It makes sense, given there are academic fields where a gun might be needed. E.g. if your research involves inventorying songbirds in the jungles of Colombia or whatever. Even in the U.S. a lot of mycologists carry weapons, so if they get shot at while accidentally stumbling on an illegal weed grow or whatever they can shoot back.
The description looks like it's about competition, not just safety, akin to a class on poker. Perhaps the title is a bit of spin for defensive reasons.
Thats what I was thinking, safety is critical, but an easy 2 day class. There are so many more interesting angles for engineering students to approach handguns whether self defense (more Bondish) or marksmanship, engineering principles etc.
Laughed at that, cheers bro :)
Svalbad University has an, AFAIK mandatory, course that includes learning hot to shoot a rifle: https://www.unis.no/course/as-101-arctic-survival-and-safety...
In most of Svalbad you need to carry a rifle to defend yourself against polar bears.
In most of Svalbad you need to carry a rifle to defend yourself against polar bears.
I thought it was mandatory for anybody leaving town to either carry rifle, a sacrificial husky (!), or a guide who had both?
I mean, Cornell is an Ivy, not a regional school.
> at Waterloo.
That's your problem, but at you had:
Underwater Linux .iso Distributing
The Computational Fluid Dynamics of(strictly hypothetical) Human Sexual Intercourse in a Canoe
Outdoor Code Golf(Winter Session)
"E-Sports"
That's your problem, but at you had:
Underwater Linux .iso Distributing
The Computational Fluid Dynamics of(strictly hypothetical) Human Sexual Intercourse in a Canoe
Outdoor Code Golf(Winter Session)
"E-Sports"
I took Introduction to Wine Science as my 'non engineering' course. Lab component was tasting - but you had to spit it out.
It was one of the hardest courses I took at university - so much memorization of various wine regions around the world, grape varietals, etc.
It was one of the hardest courses I took at university - so much memorization of various wine regions around the world, grape varietals, etc.
Not sure whether I'd prefer to be Bond, or a pirate: archery, fencing, pistol, and sailing.
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I think Bond is good with a sailing yacht, pistol, and fencing. Just missing the archery unless some Bond nerd wants to point to some Bond archery (and I'd believe it).
Bond. Simply for the hygiene.
You're not going to learn ballroom dancing in a semester.
By learning it I mean being proficient with it that you're smooth and comfortable with it, and can make your partner look good.
By learning it I mean being proficient with it that you're smooth and comfortable with it, and can make your partner look good.
The point of the James Bond semester is more so about the lack of learning
Waste of school tuition perhaps, but certainly not time wasted learning any of those skills.
Are you really learning the skill, or are you sampling it? One semester is maybe 40 hours of instruction. Even twice that in practice puts you at 120 hours. I hardly think that is enough time to become a good skier, etc.
40 hours of skiing is 10 4-hour sessions. For a young adult in decent physical shape and with good instruction, that's enough time to establish a base of technique and confidence.
That's pretty much all you get in most undergrad courses anyway. It's usually an intro to, or first taste of, a sophisticated subject that would take a long time to master. It's only after many such intros (i.e. many hundreds of hours of study) that the student will begin to develop a more sophisticated understading of their chosen field.
In that light, is a 1-credit skiing course any different from a 1-credit astronomy course?
That's pretty much all you get in most undergrad courses anyway. It's usually an intro to, or first taste of, a sophisticated subject that would take a long time to master. It's only after many such intros (i.e. many hundreds of hours of study) that the student will begin to develop a more sophisticated understading of their chosen field.
In that light, is a 1-credit skiing course any different from a 1-credit astronomy course?
I’m a decent casual skier and I’ve probably skied about that much in total.
People are different. I knew a couple newbie ballroom dancers who picked it up incredibly fast. But they were one in a few hundred. Ballroom dancing looks natural, but it isn't. Every move works against natural body movement. It takes a while.
For example, when walking, one sets the foot down heel first. With ballroom dancing, it's ball first.
For example, when walking, one sets the foot down heel first. With ballroom dancing, it's ball first.
Depends entirely on how much time you’ve spent on it. In my experience people become pretty good after 1hr of lessons every week for 3 years (and pretty low intensity training at that), so I imagine you can condense that into 6hrs of lessons every week for half a year.
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Distributed practice is a lot more effective at teaching than massed practice per hour[1]. You might need 12 hours a week, double the number of actual hours of instruction.
[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/2005-seabrook.pd...
Distributed and Massed Practice: From Laboratory to Classroom RACHEL SEABROOK
[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/spacedrepetition/2005-seabrook.pd...
Distributed and Massed Practice: From Laboratory to Classroom RACHEL SEABROOK
Completely ignores political science, economics and physics? Checks out. ;)
James Bond can't afford to worry about physics when he's skiing off the edge of a mountain onto the top of a plane.
Wouldn't that require an understanding of physics to properly make his landing :D
"Is a Mongolian horse archer applying physics even though he has no idea what physics is and it hasn't even been invented yet" is a pretty deep philosophical rabbit hole.
In the same way that one can appreciate good wine without having memorized the names of all the world's grape varieties.
Understanding physics wouldn't cut it, what you really need is a generous dose of plot armor.
It does work if we're living in a simulation.
[deleted]
> You can definitely do the James Bond semester at college if you're so inclined, which iirc is: wine tasting, handgun safety, cross country skiing, swedish massage, and ballroom dancing.
Pretty sure James Bond's handgun use is more on the unsafe side of things. I mean, he does have a license to kill and uses it frequently.
Pretty sure James Bond's handgun use is more on the unsafe side of things. I mean, he does have a license to kill and uses it frequently.
nit: "deadly" is not "unsafe". You can be perfectly safe in your firearm handling and still wield the power to kill other beings. "Unsafe" presents the risk of being unintentionally deadly, but being intentionally deadly is perfectly compatible with being safe in the gun's handling.
> It was probably so successful precisely because it was seeing the world through the eyes of a 50 year old Japanese biker with the face people expect in influencers.
I can't read Japanese and I used Google translate for the post text (so maybe there's more depth that's lost in translation), but the pictures look to be pretty "generic influencer". None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer. Additionally, the text on the tweet is pretty much "I like motorcycles" along with "her" age and height. Everything here seems to be pretty much the same "here's a pretty girl in front of something" post that instagram is full of.
Again, I'm only going off the pictures and Google translate, so if someone who understands the culture better wants to correct me, feel free, but until that happens, I'm going to believe there's nothing more to this than a bunch of people wanting to look at a pretty girl.
Edit: Ran the tweet in the article through DeepL at the suggestion of some replies. Here's the translation so you all can come to your own conclusions:
٩ Everyone!
Do you have a bike?
Spring will be here soon
Age: Showa era
Height:166
Lives in Ibaraki Kumamoto
I love to tinker with motorcycles
Comment: Life is once, play this world
I can't read Japanese and I used Google translate for the post text (so maybe there's more depth that's lost in translation), but the pictures look to be pretty "generic influencer". None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer. Additionally, the text on the tweet is pretty much "I like motorcycles" along with "her" age and height. Everything here seems to be pretty much the same "here's a pretty girl in front of something" post that instagram is full of.
Again, I'm only going off the pictures and Google translate, so if someone who understands the culture better wants to correct me, feel free, but until that happens, I'm going to believe there's nothing more to this than a bunch of people wanting to look at a pretty girl.
Edit: Ran the tweet in the article through DeepL at the suggestion of some replies. Here's the translation so you all can come to your own conclusions:
٩ Everyone!
Do you have a bike?
Spring will be here soon
Age: Showa era
Height:166
Lives in Ibaraki Kumamoto
I love to tinker with motorcycles
Comment: Life is once, play this world
I don't know anything about motorcycles. I wouldn't trust Google translate because one of my son's hobbies is looking up the original Japanese (and translation notes, etc) for anime and other works to figure out what in the heck went wrong with the translation because Japanese culture has all these honorifics that English lacks and that goes weird places, along with the gender neutral pronouns, among other things.
If you know nothing of the language, culture, motorcycles, motorcycle gear, etc, I am going to guess there are a lot of really important details that are utterly lost on you.
If you know nothing of the language, culture, motorcycles, motorcycle gear, etc, I am going to guess there are a lot of really important details that are utterly lost on you.
> If you know nothing of the language, culture, motorcycles, motorcycle gear, etc, I am going to guess there are a lot of really important details that are utterly lost on you.
I know bikes, I know Japanese, and I lived and road in Japan.
The translation is largely accurate (just minor structural stuff that doesn’t matter).
The only content that might matter, and it doesn’t really seem to, are the hashtags for the tweet that were not covered above (roughly “connect with bikers” and “quick biker self-intro”).
While I agree with your general characterization of Google translate when dealing with Japanese content, in this case it did a decent job, largely because the content was very simple and straightforward.
I know bikes, I know Japanese, and I lived and road in Japan.
The translation is largely accurate (just minor structural stuff that doesn’t matter).
The only content that might matter, and it doesn’t really seem to, are the hashtags for the tweet that were not covered above (roughly “connect with bikers” and “quick biker self-intro”).
While I agree with your general characterization of Google translate when dealing with Japanese content, in this case it did a decent job, largely because the content was very simple and straightforward.
I can’t edit my reply, but I just realized another comment i made might be what you mean in terms of something “being lost” on someone who is using Google translate.
Specifically, even though “Showa ??” was translated accurately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone knows what it means (born before Jan 89, that is, the Showa era).
If so, good point!
Specifically, even though “Showa ??” was translated accurately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone knows what it means (born before Jan 89, that is, the Showa era).
If so, good point!
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I agree with you about Google translate not being perfect. I actually wrote most of my comment up before running it through translate. Even without the text, none of those pictures seem especially deep, so even taking the text out of the equation, I still stand by my comment.
That being said, this is the Google translation of the tweet in the article:
Minasan ٩ (ˆoˆ) ۶ Do you have a motorcycle? Spring is coming soon Age: Showa ○○○ Height: 166 Living: Ibaraki I love: messing around with bikes
Like I said in my last comment, I know Google translate is far from perfect and I'm very open to being proven wrong, but I have a hard time believing that there's some deep insight in this post when that is what Google translate put put out. The translation seems pretty "influencer" to me.
That being said, this is the Google translation of the tweet in the article:
Minasan ٩ (ˆoˆ) ۶ Do you have a motorcycle? Spring is coming soon Age: Showa ○○○ Height: 166 Living: Ibaraki I love: messing around with bikes
Like I said in my last comment, I know Google translate is far from perfect and I'm very open to being proven wrong, but I have a hard time believing that there's some deep insight in this post when that is what Google translate put put out. The translation seems pretty "influencer" to me.
I've been up all night and I feel awful and I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I'm just thinking of some novel I read where some nouveau riche fool paid someone for their riding boots because his were too new looking and he wanted to look like he had been riding a long time. He wanted worn-looking boots. He didn't want to look like it was his first time.
And the guy took his money with a straight face and sold him the boots even though the color of the boots signaled he was a trainer or something, which is something the nouveau riche guy had no way of knowing. But it would have been immediately laughable to most people who were in the know.
I am not going to go through the account and try to make up BS, but the bike may be custom built, the gear he's wearing may be amazingly good, the locations he is posting from may be something incredibly special in some way and not commenting on those details may be part of the appeal.
I'm a writer by trade and I get paid by the word and also have to meet other constraints and you can sometimes say very little with three paragraphs or you can say a metric fuck ton with a few well-chosen words.
I absolutely don't know enough about the topic. I just know that when things get popular, it is often due to some value-added detail that no one explicitly talks about. The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular.
A density of quality info and yadda is often some element of that and that is often not obvious to outsiders who cannot readily tell that this photo is some superficial tripe and that seemingly similar one is worlds apart in quality, data, informativeness, whatever.
Anyway: This is my insomnia talking. It is absolutely not intended to be ugly or pick a fight or yadda.
You have a great day/night/whatever.
And the guy took his money with a straight face and sold him the boots even though the color of the boots signaled he was a trainer or something, which is something the nouveau riche guy had no way of knowing. But it would have been immediately laughable to most people who were in the know.
I am not going to go through the account and try to make up BS, but the bike may be custom built, the gear he's wearing may be amazingly good, the locations he is posting from may be something incredibly special in some way and not commenting on those details may be part of the appeal.
I'm a writer by trade and I get paid by the word and also have to meet other constraints and you can sometimes say very little with three paragraphs or you can say a metric fuck ton with a few well-chosen words.
I absolutely don't know enough about the topic. I just know that when things get popular, it is often due to some value-added detail that no one explicitly talks about. The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular.
A density of quality info and yadda is often some element of that and that is often not obvious to outsiders who cannot readily tell that this photo is some superficial tripe and that seemingly similar one is worlds apart in quality, data, informativeness, whatever.
Anyway: This is my insomnia talking. It is absolutely not intended to be ugly or pick a fight or yadda.
You have a great day/night/whatever.
I think you are onto something. He's very comfortable with his hobby. Going through his twitter, there are many photos of him doing motorcycle maintenance with his own tools. He also has a broad variety, like an old dirtbike he rides on ice or quirky 90's sport bikes he's keeping alive and modding. I hate to gatekeep, but he's not just showing off the flashiest new things off the showroom floor like "influencers" gravitate towards.
Most of his posts are very casual, but his goal is still to ride the bike rather than fix it everyday so that is the bulk of what he shares. His tone is definitely targeting a less experienced audience. In some of the posts, there's light-hearted trivia about niche topics. He's appealing to a younger generation. Getting new people involved in what looks like an exclusive hobby is always exciting to see online.
Most of his posts are very casual, but his goal is still to ride the bike rather than fix it everyday so that is the bulk of what he shares. His tone is definitely targeting a less experienced audience. In some of the posts, there's light-hearted trivia about niche topics. He's appealing to a younger generation. Getting new people involved in what looks like an exclusive hobby is always exciting to see online.
The original comment I was replying to was claiming that the account might have been successful because it presented the wisdom of a 50 year old with the face of a 20 year old.
All the examples you gave are totally possible. There may be something about the bike or the locations being visited that are special, I really don't know. Even if that is the case, that's not really what OP was claiming and not really what I was responding to.
There are tons of little reasons this account could be popular, but based on the little research I did, I don't think it's because "she" is making posts full of wisdom, years beyond "her" age.
All the examples you gave are totally possible. There may be something about the bike or the locations being visited that are special, I really don't know. Even if that is the case, that's not really what OP was claiming and not really what I was responding to.
There are tons of little reasons this account could be popular, but based on the little research I did, I don't think it's because "she" is making posts full of wisdom, years beyond "her" age.
>>> I absolutely don't know enough about the topic. I just know that when things get popular, it is often due to some value-added detail that no one explicitly talks about. The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular
^^ this
Thank you. Wish I could pay you per word for this. [email protected]
^^ this
Thank you. Wish I could pay you per word for this. [email protected]
[deleted]
> The fact that it gets slipped in and not commented on is part of what makes some things wildly popular.
A dogwhistle, basically? "Dog whistles use language which appears normal to the majority, but which communicate specific things to intended audiences."
Dogwhistles are most often associated with politics, but the idea goes beyond that (unless you classify all asymmetric/broadcasted communication as political, which is not without merit.)
A dogwhistle, basically? "Dog whistles use language which appears normal to the majority, but which communicate specific things to intended audiences."
Dogwhistles are most often associated with politics, but the idea goes beyond that (unless you classify all asymmetric/broadcasted communication as political, which is not without merit.)
Eh, more like subtext for things people aren't necessarily consciously aware of.
Which is why I believe the best you can do is stay aware of the present at a meta level, and track things as a function of time.
Of course all of this requires self-drive and personal determination / willingness.
Of course all of this requires self-drive and personal determination / willingness.
I would love an honest account of being a paid by the word Writer these days?
If you don’t to divulge too much on the finance part, I get it.
If you don’t to divulge too much on the finance part, I get it.
I've actually written some about that here:
https://writepay.blogspot.com
That's just one of the things I do. I also blog and do resume work and my blogs get some support from Patreon and tips.
But I have learned a whole lot about writing well doing it on a paid-per-word basis. That's been a real growth experience for me as a writer developing my craft.
https://writepay.blogspot.com
That's just one of the things I do. I also blog and do resume work and my blogs get some support from Patreon and tips.
But I have learned a whole lot about writing well doing it on a paid-per-word basis. That's been a real growth experience for me as a writer developing my craft.
> I wouldn't trust Google translate because one of my son's hobbies is looking up the original Japanese (and translation notes, etc) for anime and other works to figure out what in the heck went wrong with the translation
These are meaningless differences that only people who don't speak Japanese notice. Because once you do, you'd know that the text being in English instead of Japanese is already such a large difference that picking at individual words doesn't mean anything. (And honorifics definitely don't mean much. Even if you "leave them in" for "correctness", that actually means leaving in the ones the kids know and taking out the ones they don't.)
Actually one of the translators for a lot of popular works recently left Twitter because kids kept harassing him because he was "wrong" because the official work didn't match rumors they'd started based on their incorrect Japanese knowledge. Hope he's not doing that.
These are meaningless differences that only people who don't speak Japanese notice. Because once you do, you'd know that the text being in English instead of Japanese is already such a large difference that picking at individual words doesn't mean anything. (And honorifics definitely don't mean much. Even if you "leave them in" for "correctness", that actually means leaving in the ones the kids know and taking out the ones they don't.)
Actually one of the translators for a lot of popular works recently left Twitter because kids kept harassing him because he was "wrong" because the official work didn't match rumors they'd started based on their incorrect Japanese knowledge. Hope he's not doing that.
There's a lot of motorcycle geeking in that twitter account, e.g. https://twitter.com/azusagakuyuki/status/1365132939135127552
DeepL tends to be better than Google Translate for Japanese <-> English translation, btw.
I have never heard of this. Link? How does it do for French-English?
DeepL is pretty great for most European languages. Here's a comment on difficult French text from a previous HN submission [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123833
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123833
deepl.com it's usually better than Google for everything it supports. Though Google has been catching up.
Oh, good to know. I ran it through there and there are some differences, but it's not much deeper. I'm adding the translation to my original comment.
> None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer.
Fwiw, being born in the Showa era (ended Jan 89) would put her at 31 as a minimum.
Minor nitpick, but I just noticed the Showa ?? birth year in the tweet, and that would have raised red flags for me. Even for Japan, the doctored pic doesn’t really look 31, much less mid-30s or older.
Edit: Your translation is mostly correct (The second line is more like “Do you bike?”, but it sounds more natural in Japanese).
Note that this tweet also has a self-intro for motorcyclists hashtag.
Fwiw, being born in the Showa era (ended Jan 89) would put her at 31 as a minimum.
Minor nitpick, but I just noticed the Showa ?? birth year in the tweet, and that would have raised red flags for me. Even for Japan, the doctored pic doesn’t really look 31, much less mid-30s or older.
Edit: Your translation is mostly correct (The second line is more like “Do you bike?”, but it sounds more natural in Japanese).
Note that this tweet also has a self-intro for motorcyclists hashtag.
Lying about one's birthdate is routine though. Both for young and old.
I think it would be fairly rare for a 20-something female “influencer” to say she was 31+ unless her age was part of her schtick. In this case, I wound have expected her to lie the other direction — she could pas for younger than 25, so “Heisei ??” seems like it would have been more likely.
The shift from 20s to 30s for females in Japan is generally not a welcome one — pressure to marry, have kids, “settle down”, etc. are very real. It is also perceived that women in their 30s are not as “cute” (something often sought after, especially by public entertainment figures).
The shift from 20s to 30s for females in Japan is generally not a welcome one — pressure to marry, have kids, “settle down”, etc. are very real. It is also perceived that women in their 30s are not as “cute” (something often sought after, especially by public entertainment figures).
Double edged sword. The shift from 20s to 30s also reduces attention from perverts and weirdos, just as it does from gentlemen suitors. And if someone joined a site back when they're a minor they often had to lie.
Or if someone is just privacy conscious about details that may be used to steal their identity, they may have just randomly chose January 1, 1970 or whatever was the top choice on the little menu.
Or if someone is just privacy conscious about details that may be used to steal their identity, they may have just randomly chose January 1, 1970 or whatever was the top choice on the little menu.
To be fair, a very large chunk of old people are likewise uninteresting. Aside from the general dulling of the mind that comes with age, you have to actually do things with those years for them to mean something.
Ahem they said "older", not old. 50 is middle aged.
Even if a person is a simple product of their times, as one gets older that gets increasingly interesting. Because the times change so much over the years.
Even if a person is a simple product of their times, as one gets older that gets increasingly interesting. Because the times change so much over the years.
Middle would depend on life expectancy. The lower and upper bound is probably 30 to 50 respectively. 50 feels straight up old though. I thought 40 was considered to be the "middle"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age
"Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age."
"Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age."
In my book it's 40 to 59. 60+ and you old.
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And you need opportunity to do it, and other people need to find it appealing. You could do 1 of the 10 old / young people tropes and get clicks.
"Meaning something" personally and "being interesting" are not the same.
Also there isn't that much wrong with just exploiting popularity machine. So a bunch of people thought you were a young girl, and you're not... who cares! If anything you are teaching people to stop putting so much credence into the SM sphere... which can only be good.
"Meaning something" personally and "being interesting" are not the same.
Also there isn't that much wrong with just exploiting popularity machine. So a bunch of people thought you were a young girl, and you're not... who cares! If anything you are teaching people to stop putting so much credence into the SM sphere... which can only be good.
Exactly. The one thing I immediately noticed was the ~30 year old vintage Yamaha TZR 2-stroke model complete with pics of open engine etc (check the small diameter exhaust pipes). Which youngster would ride such a bike, let alone touch its internals? This stuff is very niche, maybe not so much in Japan but over here in Europe you would have to search for it or pay some decent money to get it in that condition. The owner probably has bought it in his 20s :)
Edit: the power output curve is also not for the faint of heart and there's no electronic helpers, overall very different to ride compared to a current 600cc model with all the bells and whistles :-)
Edit: the power output curve is also not for the faint of heart and there's no electronic helpers, overall very different to ride compared to a current 600cc model with all the bells and whistles :-)
This is why Batman and Superman are perpetually 35ish in the comics. Young enough to be in their physical prime, old enough to have a clue about the world.
In the Ian Fleming novels, James Bond is clearly intended to be in his late 30s / early 40s. The same seems to hold true for all the movies. Bond is not a young man by any stretch of the imagination. He is a world-weary traveler well-versed in high culture, espionage, elite military tactics. His cultural knowledge is explained by virtue of his upper class birth and upbringing; its likely he served in the military before being recruited by MI:6, and of course the espionage is the hallmark of the latter agency.
That said... when Jonathan Goldsmith was auditioning for part of The Most Interesting Man in the World, the ad agency called his agent and said, "We really like him, but we think he might be too old," and she replied (quite masterfully), "How could the Most Interesting Man in the World be young?", implying it would take a lifetime to acquire the achievements.
So I guess the answer is, be old and good-looking, like Goldsmith, or Sean Connery.
That said... when Jonathan Goldsmith was auditioning for part of The Most Interesting Man in the World, the ad agency called his agent and said, "We really like him, but we think he might be too old," and she replied (quite masterfully), "How could the Most Interesting Man in the World be young?", implying it would take a lifetime to acquire the achievements.
So I guess the answer is, be old and good-looking, like Goldsmith, or Sean Connery.
> Most young people aren't that interesting.
They are not, but I think people will get better at realizing this the way many now know what it means for something to be "photoshopped" whether they can identify it and subsequently dismiss it or not.
I believe that physical "good" looks, analytical and social intelligence, trade and athletic skill, and artistic talent will eventually converge as our future "stars."
They are not, but I think people will get better at realizing this the way many now know what it means for something to be "photoshopped" whether they can identify it and subsequently dismiss it or not.
I believe that physical "good" looks, analytical and social intelligence, trade and athletic skill, and artistic talent will eventually converge as our future "stars."
I worry that the norm is moving more towards specialist and away from generalist. Things have been pretty stable for a while. And people who invest ridiculous amounts of energy in stuff like the stock market or social media tend to get serious returns.
Those are not truly useful skills anywhere except this one ecosystem.
Those are not truly useful skills anywhere except this one ecosystem.
This could be because Of the relative concentration of these ideas.
We’re at the stock market has gotten competition from cryptocurrency’s, and social media becomes less service oriented and more of a layer.
Sort of like photoshop enthusiasts knew about and admired skill in the tool but the public generally had little familiarity.
As photo manipulation became common “photoshopped” as an idea was more commonly understood.
We’re at the stock market has gotten competition from cryptocurrency’s, and social media becomes less service oriented and more of a layer.
Sort of like photoshop enthusiasts knew about and admired skill in the tool but the public generally had little familiarity.
As photo manipulation became common “photoshopped” as an idea was more commonly understood.
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I like to think James Bond is terrible at DIY and cooking, at least.
Actual reality:
James Bond is like The Dread Pirate Roberts and gets played by someone new every few years. Only the name stays the same.
James Bond is like The Dread Pirate Roberts and gets played by someone new every few years. Only the name stays the same.
He certainly doesn't know how to operate an espresso machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3UQmKiVH9E
...
Maybe this Maybe that
This type of argument is toxic. Adds little to the conversation. If you can back any of these maybes that would be great...
Maybe this Maybe that
This type of argument is toxic. Adds little to the conversation. If you can back any of these maybes that would be great...
Efficiently wielding weapons is not terribly difficult. It just takes practice. My parents bought a number of guns and became quite proficient at firing them accurately within 2 years.
I have many relatives and friends who are amazing at skiing. My cousin posts pictures every winter of the sick lines he skis down.
I'm neither an excellent marksman nor skier, but I don't think it would be difficult to become excellent at both given an excessive amount of free time within a few years.
I can though drive a manual very well, own a sports car, and have no fear of drifting it.
A coworker of mine was a pro skydiver, and recommended it to everyone. I've met other skydivers as well; it's supposedly easy and affordable.
Another coworker owned his own plane. Planes are costly but he wasn't James Bond rich...
My brother-in-law owns a few hundred guns including fully automatic weapons.
Being James Bond is a bit idiotic in real life as he engages in a lot of high risk stuff, but it is certainly doable.
I have many relatives and friends who are amazing at skiing. My cousin posts pictures every winter of the sick lines he skis down.
I'm neither an excellent marksman nor skier, but I don't think it would be difficult to become excellent at both given an excessive amount of free time within a few years.
I can though drive a manual very well, own a sports car, and have no fear of drifting it.
A coworker of mine was a pro skydiver, and recommended it to everyone. I've met other skydivers as well; it's supposedly easy and affordable.
Another coworker owned his own plane. Planes are costly but he wasn't James Bond rich...
My brother-in-law owns a few hundred guns including fully automatic weapons.
Being James Bond is a bit idiotic in real life as he engages in a lot of high risk stuff, but it is certainly doable.
Showed this to my wife. Her reply? "makes sense. Women do the inverse if they want to be taken seriously in business".
I remember reading an article in the French press, about two women founders that mailed the off-site dev team under the moniker of Mike and Bob.
They were fed up with being second guessed on business decisions and had found out that 'Bob' was getting less pushback than 'Marissa'.
I remember reading an article in the French press, about two women founders that mailed the off-site dev team under the moniker of Mike and Bob.
They were fed up with being second guessed on business decisions and had found out that 'Bob' was getting less pushback than 'Marissa'.
Yeah, that's my take. You see it often in other areas too - it's a lot easier to get thousands of followers as an attractive person (especially an attractive young woman, but it works for men too). The ability to more easily build a large audience and then leverage that is huge (and can make a ton of money).
My general heuristic is online personas from attractive people are often over valued (specifically considering the value of things they say/do - not their ability to make money which is huge) and when you compare pretty people with high follower numbers to unattractive people (or just people that don't lead with their prettiness) with high follower numbers, the latter are often better quality/say more interesting things. Someone leading with their prettiness has a big advantage in getting attention, even if what they say is dumb.
There's a lot of pseudo-intellectualized bullshit on twitter that gets a lot more attention than it would otherwise because the person is young and pretty, but would not get nearly the same attention if they looked different.
It reminds me a lot of Liking What You See: A Documentary, which is the last Ted Chiang story in his first short story collection - I think it's worth reading.
Obviously attractiveness is only one factor among many, but I suspect it's a much bigger factor than people currently think.
My general heuristic is online personas from attractive people are often over valued (specifically considering the value of things they say/do - not their ability to make money which is huge) and when you compare pretty people with high follower numbers to unattractive people (or just people that don't lead with their prettiness) with high follower numbers, the latter are often better quality/say more interesting things. Someone leading with their prettiness has a big advantage in getting attention, even if what they say is dumb.
There's a lot of pseudo-intellectualized bullshit on twitter that gets a lot more attention than it would otherwise because the person is young and pretty, but would not get nearly the same attention if they looked different.
It reminds me a lot of Liking What You See: A Documentary, which is the last Ted Chiang story in his first short story collection - I think it's worth reading.
Obviously attractiveness is only one factor among many, but I suspect it's a much bigger factor than people currently think.
Of the adults on this top 26 list of Youtube accounts, only 1 is a woman, and she has less than a third of Pewdiepie’s subscriber base:
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-youtubers-with-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-youtubers-with-...
I think most top YouTubers are considered "creators" more than "influencers". It takes a substantially different set of skills to create videos people want to watch than photos people want to view, and intuitively you'd expect the latter to tilt more towards first-impression attractiveness. Instagram fits more closely with the way this guy used his Twitter account (pictures and text), I can't seem to find an authoritative list of independently-famous Instagram influencers, but the lists I've seen consist primarily of models.
Almost every guy in that list is pretty damn handsome. The notable exception is Luisito Comunica, who I'm guessing makes up for it by being exceptionally interesting.
"Pretty handsome" is relative. Pewdiepie is a good-looking guy, but his analogues on Instagram are 1000x more so. And I can't imagine someone like Casey Neistat becoming remotely as big an Instagram star as he is on YouTube.
It's also telling how male the list is.
It's also telling how male the list is.
Very true. Casey is an odd-looking dude but damn can he churn out masterfully edited and interesting videos.
When people say “influencer” they’re usually referring to the long-tail of people with 10k+++ followers who don’t really create anything other than a curated snapshot of their life. They’re usually on platforms like Instagram and Twitter where the bar to post content is very low. They make their money by posting sponsored content, because they have no other way of monetizing their audience (they have no skills except for building audiences).
The top 26 list of YouTubers is filled with influential people, and many people would say that they’re influencers, but they’re not typical examples.
The top 26 list of YouTubers is filled with influential people, and many people would say that they’re influencers, but they’re not typical examples.
> (they have no skills except for building audiences).
And that "skill" is based almost entirely on being attractive.
And these days, with camera and video filters, even that's not necessary any more.
And that "skill" is based almost entirely on being attractive.
And these days, with camera and video filters, even that's not necessary any more.
I follow a lot of rock climbing on insta, and the top men definitely have more followers than the top women, but if it's a pic of an average climber on an average climb, it'll get way more likes if the climber is a woman.
In the old world of professional climbing, when the magazines decided who was worthy of attention and accolades, sponsorships were generally handed out according to merit.
Now days, sponsorship is shifting more and more to climbers who are media friendly and good at drawing attention to themselves. Top tier climbers are now refashioning themselves into mediocre youtube celebrities, with mixed results.
In the old world of professional climbing, when the magazines decided who was worthy of attention and accolades, sponsorships were generally handed out according to merit.
Now days, sponsorship is shifting more and more to climbers who are media friendly and good at drawing attention to themselves. Top tier climbers are now refashioning themselves into mediocre youtube celebrities, with mixed results.
to dominate the top of leaderboards, whether it's Youtube or Starcraft, takes a single-minded obsession that is more common with men.
Pewdiepie was obsessed with having the most subscribers. Mr. Beast did little else than obsess over the Youtube algorithm for many years on end.
Pewdiepie was obsessed with having the most subscribers. Mr. Beast did little else than obsess over the Youtube algorithm for many years on end.
It's worth noting that platforms tend to have a gender(sex? sorry I'm bad with the terminology), bias that skews male/female. I seem to recall hearing that Youtube skews male (in viewership) and IG female. (if someone has links to stats, thanks in advance)
I wonder if this is at play with these two cases?
I wonder if this is at play with these two cases?
It is such a bizarre market. I sometimes browse it for sociological amusement, but it creeps me out quickly.
For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
The issue here is that YouTube (and other platforms) encourage this. It works, in that if you ask people to like comment and subscribe, they like comment and subscribe more. (And that boosts your standing within the system getting you more impressions.)
Plenty of good creators do this (as it works), just to keep up with their peers. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the rest of their content. Don’t blame the player, blame the game IMO
Plenty of good creators do this (as it works), just to keep up with their peers. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the rest of their content. Don’t blame the player, blame the game IMO
Okay, I'll hate the game. The game has existed since the first radio ad spot in 1922, the first TV ad spot in 1941, and the first banner ad in 1994.
I would far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll than be subjected to in-content advertising and begging from the creators. Certainly, creators would prefer to do their thing instead of beg and scrape.
What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
I would far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll than be subjected to in-content advertising and begging from the creators. Certainly, creators would prefer to do their thing instead of beg and scrape.
What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
Let’s imagine the video wasn’t ad-supported, but instead viewers had to pay some money a la carte (and YouTube gets a cut of that). Creators would still want to get more viewers to make more money, and YouTube would still have a recommendation algorithm that used signals such as likes, comments, and subscribes to decide what to recommend. So I think the ad business model isn’t really at fault here. Or rather, it’s only at fault to the extent that it’s the only viable business model for a video service as large as YouTube.
The ad supported model made sense for newspapers and magazines but it doesn't scale. Anytime you obscure the price or separate the payer from the benefit you get distorted and unforseen consequences. It took scaling this model to facebook levels before the failure reared its head and it is indeed much worse than we had ever predicted.
Indeed many YouTube creators already plug the opportunity to pay an honest few c̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ dollars for their content on Patreon or their private course website in exactly the same way they ask for likes other interactions, especially if the nature of their content means they don't see [much] ad revenue.
YouTube quite literally has a subscription service. With the service you don't see ads on videos and creators get a cut based on how much you watch different content. It's been around for years, but has remained rather unpopular.
You're not wrong though. Most creators probably hate asking for stuff.
You're not wrong though. Most creators probably hate asking for stuff.
well youtube has a premium service without ads that presumably brings money to the creators. One of the music subscription services actually is about to change their system so that the money of every subscriber actually goes to the artists that THEY listen to (sorry, forgot which service it was, not spotify). So, there actually is movement in this direction. And with ads becoming ever more obnoxious (and privacy threatening) it becomes more interesting for users, too.
Surprisingly, tiktok is better at this: it surfaces new content to people based on factors other than existing popularity.
> far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll
I don't think this holds true for most people. PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing, and eclipsed now by all-you-can-stream services. The feeling of continually inserting coins, or the taxi meter running, is uncomfortable to many people.
> far rather pay an honest few cents for a page view or a video roll
I don't think this holds true for most people. PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing, and eclipsed now by all-you-can-stream services. The feeling of continually inserting coins, or the taxi meter running, is uncomfortable to many people.
> PPV TV has always been kind of a minor thing
This is true, but I think fails to be a good counter-example. PPV has always been expensive and focused on single events. What we haven’t seen is AWS style small payments.
Imagine if instead of paying $100/mo for cable TV, we could pay $0.25/hr. If you watched TV 24x7, you’d pay more, but the vast majority of people would pay much less.
The main problem with smaller amount PPV and micro transactions in general is that it is hard to get the billing/accounting right. But this is something that could vendors get right. You only pay for what you use, and what you get is billed in small enough increments that it makes sense for everyone involved.
How this could be applied to online videos, I’m not sure.
This is true, but I think fails to be a good counter-example. PPV has always been expensive and focused on single events. What we haven’t seen is AWS style small payments.
Imagine if instead of paying $100/mo for cable TV, we could pay $0.25/hr. If you watched TV 24x7, you’d pay more, but the vast majority of people would pay much less.
The main problem with smaller amount PPV and micro transactions in general is that it is hard to get the billing/accounting right. But this is something that could vendors get right. You only pay for what you use, and what you get is billed in small enough increments that it makes sense for everyone involved.
How this could be applied to online videos, I’m not sure.
AWS style small payments existed at coin-operated arcades. They're all dead, Jim.
Micropayment news services have existed (Blendle). Unpopular.
Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche. So is the a-la-carte gym membership. It's not that billing/accounting is difficult. It's that it plain straight up makes less money. SAAS vs one-time upgrades, etc.
Micropayment news services have existed (Blendle). Unpopular.
Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche. So is the a-la-carte gym membership. It's not that billing/accounting is difficult. It's that it plain straight up makes less money. SAAS vs one-time upgrades, etc.
> Pay-as-you-go prepaid cell phone service is also niche.
The reason for that is that it's much more expensive than paying by the month. I wanted pay-as-you-go specifically because I have nearly zero need for cell service, but would prefer to be reachable even if I'm not at home.
But you can't get a pay-as-you-go plan with pay-as-you-go pricing. T-mobile's monthly plan now is "$15" (actually something like $16.60) per month. The pay-as-you-go plan would cost less than that, given usage rates, except that it also costs $1 for each day you use it to any degree. The incredibly high minimum fee overwhelms the already small advantage of not paying for service you don't use -- as soon as you use any service, you get charged for more than a full day of every service, and then you have to pay a usage rate on top of that!
The reason for that is that it's much more expensive than paying by the month. I wanted pay-as-you-go specifically because I have nearly zero need for cell service, but would prefer to be reachable even if I'm not at home.
But you can't get a pay-as-you-go plan with pay-as-you-go pricing. T-mobile's monthly plan now is "$15" (actually something like $16.60) per month. The pay-as-you-go plan would cost less than that, given usage rates, except that it also costs $1 for each day you use it to any degree. The incredibly high minimum fee overwhelms the already small advantage of not paying for service you don't use -- as soon as you use any service, you get charged for more than a full day of every service, and then you have to pay a usage rate on top of that!
It might be somewhat irrational, but I prefer the fixed-cost-for-unlimited-use model, as it makes the cost of looking at a new thing zero. If I have to pay per use, I'll be discouraged from exploring new content I might like or might not and will look at things similar to what I already see.
One problem is that this would deter people from watching, as they would only be watching what they want to see. Bad for business.
What can we do? Deregulate the payments industry. Ain't gonna happen though. The regulators and the regulated like things just the way they are.
Why should content creators (or anyone else) have to earn money to live?
Ah, the Roddenberry universe. I think that will begin after the cost of clean, limitless energy approaches zero. At that point anyone can turn dirt into a house or a hamburger so compensation becomes much less of a concern.
Just have to avoid the preceding world war.
For those downvoting Parents comment, in Star Trek canon, a 3rd world preceded the creation of a unified planet.
Turning dirt into hamburger exists already; it's called agriculture.
> What can we do to accelerate micropayment tech and patronage communities for creators?
Make them nonprofit foundations democratically run rather than middlemen biding their time until they can increase their margins or sell to a megacorp.
Make them nonprofit foundations democratically run rather than middlemen biding their time until they can increase their margins or sell to a megacorp.
You are in minority I think. Most people dont want to micro pay for entertainment.
It works really well actually.
Personally I refuse to do this and my channel on youtube still grows but it is probably growing a lot slower than if I had been begging.
Since I do it for fun and not profit I couldn't give a damn though.
Personally I refuse to do this and my channel on youtube still grows but it is probably growing a lot slower than if I had been begging.
Since I do it for fun and not profit I couldn't give a damn though.
There's this minecraft youtuber I've been following for ages, who has been on youtube for like 10 years and still doesn't ask for likes or subscribes (ethoslab). Especially in that space the absence of it is remarkable, I haven't found anyone else who does this. Occasionally he does collabs and the collaborators will do it, and you can really see that it does work, it makes a big difference.
Yep I know him.
He is the only one I can think of that doesn't do this and it makes me personally much more inclined to watch him. He also feels "uncommercial" even after 10 years I think it's fantastic that he is able to keep it that way.
He is the only one I can think of that doesn't do this and it makes me personally much more inclined to watch him. He also feels "uncommercial" even after 10 years I think it's fantastic that he is able to keep it that way.
This. I run a... moderately popular by niche standards channel myself, and asking for likes, subscribes, comments etc gave me way more of them than I was getting before. I'm not particularly interested in the monetary side of things, but for getting a bit more popular on the platform... it's worked well.
Yeah, occasionally a reputable channel will show how many views are from non subscribers and it’s a pretty massive ratio. These creators aren’t begging, they are just trying to carve out an audience.
Is there evidence to show that it actually works? Me I instinctively want to close the window anytime a Youtuber asks me to "smash that like button and hit the notification bell" 5 seconds into the video. At a minimum I think less of the Youtuber and am less likely to recommend them to friends. Some of the fastest growing and most popular channels never beg their viewers for likes/subs.
I also hate this, but if people don't ask, they don't get, and typically those who don't end up with far fewer subscriptions. After a while they get demoralized and give up.
While I haven't taken time to measure this out to academic standards, it's extremely obvious in niche interest channels - eg I'm into synthesizers, and there's a whole little subsystem of review videos, technique videos, not-talking demos, jam sessions etc. The more heavily branded/self-promoting presenters tend to get vastly more views. My favorite reviewer centers the equipment under review and makes occasional appearances talking to the camera, but his maximum views tends to be near the average minimum for reviewers who center themselves, eg always being on-screen in a box, mirror, or direct-to-camera shot and always showing their face and a relevant emotional reaction to the subject of the video in the poster frame. I'm sure the same patterns play out in many other specialist topics.
To some extent this may be a product of the Infamous Algorithm, but it might also reflect cognitive preferences of viewers in that many people prefer to have information mediated by a recognizable presenter whose reactions and emphases become more meaningful with repeated views, while others like me find an overly-expressive presenter distracts from the material under discussion and gravitate towards a more subdued/restrained communication style.
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan distinguishes between 'hot' and 'cool' media which employ more or less intensity to solicit and maintain attention. 'Hot' styles with a charismatic and overtly solicitous presenter seem to be more popular in general, so even people who don't like that style may end up adopting it to gain viewership in a competitive market. There might be a market opportunity here for catering to different kinds of viewers, eg a 'CoolTube' for people who strongly prefer a more low-key presentation format.
Incidentally, I sometimes do prefer hot 'in-your-face' sort of media, especially on things like experimental music videos or the occasional guilty pleasure of a cheesy monster movie. It's just a hunch, but it seems to depend on things like a rapid tempo of editing and high levels of discontinuity/unpredictability rather than spatial maximalism.
While I haven't taken time to measure this out to academic standards, it's extremely obvious in niche interest channels - eg I'm into synthesizers, and there's a whole little subsystem of review videos, technique videos, not-talking demos, jam sessions etc. The more heavily branded/self-promoting presenters tend to get vastly more views. My favorite reviewer centers the equipment under review and makes occasional appearances talking to the camera, but his maximum views tends to be near the average minimum for reviewers who center themselves, eg always being on-screen in a box, mirror, or direct-to-camera shot and always showing their face and a relevant emotional reaction to the subject of the video in the poster frame. I'm sure the same patterns play out in many other specialist topics.
To some extent this may be a product of the Infamous Algorithm, but it might also reflect cognitive preferences of viewers in that many people prefer to have information mediated by a recognizable presenter whose reactions and emphases become more meaningful with repeated views, while others like me find an overly-expressive presenter distracts from the material under discussion and gravitate towards a more subdued/restrained communication style.
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan distinguishes between 'hot' and 'cool' media which employ more or less intensity to solicit and maintain attention. 'Hot' styles with a charismatic and overtly solicitous presenter seem to be more popular in general, so even people who don't like that style may end up adopting it to gain viewership in a competitive market. There might be a market opportunity here for catering to different kinds of viewers, eg a 'CoolTube' for people who strongly prefer a more low-key presentation format.
Incidentally, I sometimes do prefer hot 'in-your-face' sort of media, especially on things like experimental music videos or the occasional guilty pleasure of a cheesy monster movie. It's just a hunch, but it seems to depend on things like a rapid tempo of editing and high levels of discontinuity/unpredictability rather than spatial maximalism.
The average youtube user and the average hn user are two very different populations. Things like ads etc don't make me buy things, at least in most instances. But they are effective, otherwise companies wouldn't make ad campaigns. They are just not meant for me.
There are also plenty of content creators that don't beg for likes or subscriptions if that kind of thing bothers you.
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> For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
Same here. There are some YouTube channels I really want to watch and follow as I can learn new skills from them, but the constant begging and over-dramatization is a real turnoff so I cannot watch it without feeling bad about it.
I have a similar feeling about people who takes photos of themselves all the time and their social feed is filled with the photos they take of themselves. I can't take a photo of myself without feeling vain, and I'm getting passive-vain feelings when I see friends of mine posting selfie after selfie of themselves...
Same here. There are some YouTube channels I really want to watch and follow as I can learn new skills from them, but the constant begging and over-dramatization is a real turnoff so I cannot watch it without feeling bad about it.
I have a similar feeling about people who takes photos of themselves all the time and their social feed is filled with the photos they take of themselves. I can't take a photo of myself without feeling vain, and I'm getting passive-vain feelings when I see friends of mine posting selfie after selfie of themselves...
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Let me recommend a solution: https://sponsor.ajay.app/
Been using this for a month or so - game changer. Can skip in-video advertisements, interaction reminders, introductions, (configurably) via a user-submitted and curated database.
Well, The UI, Logo etc., feels like my browser blocked me from going to sponsor.ajay.app url - insecure, evil site. I closed the browser window. But went there again to see what it says.
Wow! This is terrific!
If you're curious why asking for subscribers is so prevalent, I recommend taking a look at this Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/stalman/status/1369082704138883073) that describes the before and after effects of asking for subscribers, here's a quote: "Just the subs that came directly from the video page were 5x what they are on similar size videos".
I also recommend this blog post about the best way to ask for subscribers: https://reneritchie.net/how-to-get-subscribers-on-youtube-ev...
I've never done any of these things, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it, but I consider it required knowledge for anyone with any interest in leveraging online attention.
I also recommend this blog post about the best way to ask for subscribers: https://reneritchie.net/how-to-get-subscribers-on-youtube-ev...
I've never done any of these things, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it, but I consider it required knowledge for anyone with any interest in leveraging online attention.
I completely understand the pressures that lead to people begging in videos.
My point was simply that I find it unappealing pleasure viewing, so I don't understand wanting to watch them do it.
My point was simply that I find it unappealing pleasure viewing, so I don't understand wanting to watch them do it.
> I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.
I am aware two things:
1.) If they earn money from youtube, they need likes and subscriptions so that youtube algoritm shows them to more people.
2.) I as a programmer earn more money with less effort then them. I also very likely have to deal with less bs (like harassments and jerks trying to insult you or take you down for lolz).
A combination makes me accept that these people are doing entertainment as work, I consume that entertainment for free and thus am absolutely fine with them trying to succeed.
There is also absolutely nothing wrong with entertainers wanting attention. That is what pays their bills, without attention they cant be successful. Attention is not dirty word to me.
I am aware two things:
1.) If they earn money from youtube, they need likes and subscriptions so that youtube algoritm shows them to more people.
2.) I as a programmer earn more money with less effort then them. I also very likely have to deal with less bs (like harassments and jerks trying to insult you or take you down for lolz).
A combination makes me accept that these people are doing entertainment as work, I consume that entertainment for free and thus am absolutely fine with them trying to succeed.
There is also absolutely nothing wrong with entertainers wanting attention. That is what pays their bills, without attention they cant be successful. Attention is not dirty word to me.
This is a very reasonable way of looking at the situation and I completely agree with you. It's important to consider that producing content to put on YouTube is the primary source of income for some people. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Without a subscription, the visibility of their content is at the mercy of the algorithm. What choice do they have? It's no different from subscribing to someone's email list. It's annoying, but nobody bookmarks anything these days.
It’s just how economic of YouTube works. If you don’t have likes, subscribes and views, you don’t make money. And if you want high quality content, it costs money.
Lots of educational channels I watch do it, and I fully understand why they do it.
Lots of educational channels I watch do it, and I fully understand why they do it.
For me it's when they do that faux: "hey guys, I was looking at my metrics and <insert percentage here>% of you who viewed the last X videos aren't subscribed, so it would be really great if you hit that bell"
I mean really? Do creators realize that viewers could be interested in several dozen channels and don't want to swamp out their own notifications since Youtube's prioritization gets shittier the more you subscribe to? Sorry you aren't in my top 10? Maybe a video got popular on an algorithmic whim...
I'd much rather they ask me to join a Patreon, which I am very keen to do if the content is good and continues to do so. But pulling that "peek behind the creator curtain" crap puts me very off because it's like trying to shame you into behaving differently as if you're part of the problem.
No... you decided to make Youtube your source of income. I don't owe you crap.
I mean really? Do creators realize that viewers could be interested in several dozen channels and don't want to swamp out their own notifications since Youtube's prioritization gets shittier the more you subscribe to? Sorry you aren't in my top 10? Maybe a video got popular on an algorithmic whim...
I'd much rather they ask me to join a Patreon, which I am very keen to do if the content is good and continues to do so. But pulling that "peek behind the creator curtain" crap puts me very off because it's like trying to shame you into behaving differently as if you're part of the problem.
No... you decided to make Youtube your source of income. I don't owe you crap.
Sometimes content is good and I feel I owe them crap. But exactly! Youtube recommendation system is so cretinous and only gets worse that sometimes I end up adding videos to a special playlist that I can consult later and check a channel without subscribing. Clicking something state-changing on youtube as a viewer is like eating a trash food that seems tasty, but you’ll regret that later.
It’s actually a problem with all “favorites” on every platform. A browser bookmark system with notifications (a little dot) would be great, because then you can sort/categorize/describe/thimbnail/speeddial it, but platforms crave for stupidity and make it a non-configurable list instead.
It’s actually a problem with all “favorites” on every platform. A browser bookmark system with notifications (a little dot) would be great, because then you can sort/categorize/describe/thimbnail/speeddial it, but platforms crave for stupidity and make it a non-configurable list instead.
Marketing teaches us that this works, they call it a CTA - Call To Action, asking people to do what you want them to works...
Youtube could simply inverse that and make their “don’t recommend channel” actually fucking work. Then people would just unsubscribe from what is not needed periodically and watch a feed full of what they actually like automagically. But of course it is much easier to leave creators on their own and profit from those who survive, while doing your job with a left heel. Youtube doesn’t deserve a penny from these hardworking guys.
>For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off.
I used to as well but realized platforms like YouTube effectively force the creators to do it.
I used to as well but realized platforms like YouTube effectively force the creators to do it.
I don't understand it either. If there are 2 channels with otherwise comparable quality and 1 begs me for likes/subs, I'll watch the other one
> For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off.
I do too, but not without first hitting the dislike button. I only wish others would do the same.
I do too, but not without first hitting the dislike button. I only wish others would do the same.
Wow, so you're fine with hurting creators who just happen to be drowning in a competitive marketplace?
People who don't say those words exist, but you won't find them very easily. There's a reason for that.
People who don't say those words exist, but you won't find them very easily. There's a reason for that.
What do I owe them?
Nagging and soliciting subs and likes is fucking annoying. If you want me to like a video, make a good video and stop nagging.
If I dislike those naggers enough, maybe Google's stupid artificial non-intelligence will eventually learn to recommend only videos from non-naggers. I try, even though I don't have much faith in Google's algorithms.
Nagging and soliciting subs and likes is fucking annoying. If you want me to like a video, make a good video and stop nagging.
If I dislike those naggers enough, maybe Google's stupid artificial non-intelligence will eventually learn to recommend only videos from non-naggers. I try, even though I don't have much faith in Google's algorithms.
This is nothing to do with "Google's algorithms". The simple fact is, people do not subscribe without being prompted to. The reason all the top YT'ers are annoying about it, is precisely why they are successful. Things work like that in the real world, too.
Yes, I know exactly why these annoying naggers are being annoying. I don't like it.
And here I'm telling that maybe people should stop listening to annoying naggers and just dislike & close the tab, maybe block the channel too if it keeps coming up in recommends.
And here I'm telling that maybe people should stop listening to annoying naggers and just dislike & close the tab, maybe block the channel too if it keeps coming up in recommends.
Btw, it is not clear whether a dislike drowns the content – people believe it’s inverse, and you’re helping. Best you can do to counteract is closing a tab.
He has a point and has found a solution.
Want to influence people? Use faceapp to change yourself into a face people feel good seeing (pretty girl strikes the correct neurons in majority of viewers). In the best case limit everybody does this and hopefully it stops being effective. Worst case every influencing person does this anyway?
Want to influence people? Use faceapp to change yourself into a face people feel good seeing (pretty girl strikes the correct neurons in majority of viewers). In the best case limit everybody does this and hopefully it stops being effective. Worst case every influencing person does this anyway?
He's rediscovered the second meaning of MMORPG: Millions of Men Role Playing Girls. People have been representing themselves online as female to gain some advantage for a very long time.
Many do so openly but with animated avatars that duplicate their facial expressions by way of facial motion capture.
They effectively play an animated character live and voice it as they perform it's facial expressions.
On the subject of Japanese gender changes, a most interesting one is played by a Japanese female artist who plays a male character that looks like a female once again. — this artist has a particular habit of creating male characters that look as though they be female.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkO-V29fFw&ab_channel=Spiri...
They effectively play an animated character live and voice it as they perform it's facial expressions.
On the subject of Japanese gender changes, a most interesting one is played by a Japanese female artist who plays a male character that looks like a female once again. — this artist has a particular habit of creating male characters that look as though they be female.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkO-V29fFw&ab_channel=Spiri...
That might contribute to a diversity of perspectives but I wonder what would be the consequences for society when everyone needs to reconcile their online appearance with their real world appearance.
Can we clarify what a real world appearance is here? Does your real world appearance involving nice looking clothes, makeup or having showered recently?
Why do we even really care about real world appearance, appearance is something that we have very little control over and if we've accidentally created something in the internet that allows folks to escape their appearance can't we just celebrate it?
We seem to be accepting that gender identification and body dysmorphia are both real things that people deal with and this meta-society where you can look however you please is probably a really helpful outlet for those who don't like how people judge their appearance from day-to-day - I think it's important that we preserve this freedom and try and ascend beyond judging people by their meat-bags.
Why do we even really care about real world appearance, appearance is something that we have very little control over and if we've accidentally created something in the internet that allows folks to escape their appearance can't we just celebrate it?
We seem to be accepting that gender identification and body dysmorphia are both real things that people deal with and this meta-society where you can look however you please is probably a really helpful outlet for those who don't like how people judge their appearance from day-to-day - I think it's important that we preserve this freedom and try and ascend beyond judging people by their meat-bags.
> The majority of “influencers” are young women,
Just to add on that.
"Though women make up 77% of the influencer market, male influencers are paid almost 100% more. " [1]
And 88% of female influencers are less than 34 years old. [2]
So 67 % of influencers are young women (if 34 years old is considered young)
Also women get 10 times more like than men [3]
[1] https://klear.com/blog/influencer-pricing-2019/
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/893733/share-influencers...
[3] https://www.influencerbay.com/blog/the-future-of-influence-i...
Just to add on that.
"Though women make up 77% of the influencer market, male influencers are paid almost 100% more. " [1]
And 88% of female influencers are less than 34 years old. [2]
So 67 % of influencers are young women (if 34 years old is considered young)
Also women get 10 times more like than men [3]
[1] https://klear.com/blog/influencer-pricing-2019/
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/893733/share-influencers...
[3] https://www.influencerbay.com/blog/the-future-of-influence-i...
> male influencers are paid almost 100% more
This isn't entirely surprising. They're much more rare so there is lot more competition for their services, piled on top of the usual biases in our society against paying women equally.
This isn't entirely surprising. They're much more rare so there is lot more competition for their services, piled on top of the usual biases in our society against paying women equally.
Or it could be that since women are more desirable there is a larger section of women paid lower than the top earners. C.f. print media sales, top 5 authors are making all of the money.
> Women charge an average of $351 while Men charge $459.[1]
That's 31% more, not almost 100% more.
That's 31% more, not almost 100% more.
I can't see the full data, but as I assume they didn't just blatantly make that up men also likely receive more deals. In normal business terms, women would get 31% less per hour and also x fewer hours.
There is clearly some nuance here, that they aren't making clear in order to headline "most surprising result" without context.
It seems more like they're just teasing part of their paid service, which is why I don't think they're trying to be misleading with the claim.
> "Though women make up 77% of the influencer market, male influencers are paid almost 100% more. " [1]
But thats how suply-and-demand workforce always work doesn't it? Too much people doing the same job tends to lower the wage for that job; and because a lot of companies compite for different markets when sponsoring a male influencers vs female influencers (e.g. "this is the shaving cream I use" vs "this is the bra's brand I use") they are income-wise 2 different jobs.
But thats how suply-and-demand workforce always work doesn't it? Too much people doing the same job tends to lower the wage for that job; and because a lot of companies compite for different markets when sponsoring a male influencers vs female influencers (e.g. "this is the shaving cream I use" vs "this is the bra's brand I use") they are income-wise 2 different jobs.
> nobody want’s to see an uncle
I think it depends of your style. Of course I wouldn't want to see an uncle if I were looking for sexy girls being rad, but I would love to see a 50yo uncle tell biking stories, motorcycle repair, or his brand of manly zen.
Definitely no one wants to see an uncle posing as a young girl, and I am also intrigued by why did an uncle wanted that badly to feel admired on Twitter in the first place. Someone younger I would understand.
I think it depends of your style. Of course I wouldn't want to see an uncle if I were looking for sexy girls being rad, but I would love to see a 50yo uncle tell biking stories, motorcycle repair, or his brand of manly zen.
Definitely no one wants to see an uncle posing as a young girl, and I am also intrigued by why did an uncle wanted that badly to feel admired on Twitter in the first place. Someone younger I would understand.
Rather think about "What portion of the population wants to follow a sexy girl on a bike?" vs "What portion of the population wants to follow an uncle?" rather than "does a population that wants to follow an uncle exist?" I think it is pretty clear that the size of the group that wants to follow the sexy girl is larger than the group that wants to follow the uncle. Larger audience to be able to pull from.
Curiously, it seems like the portion of the population that wants to follow a sexy girl on a bike that acts like a biker uncle (i.e. getting her gloves dirty maintaining the engine) is even greater. I think this has more layers than I suspected at first.
I wish people use this trick to create dent in the universe. For eg. use face of pretty young girls to bring positive changes in the planet - assuming everyone wants to follow young girls & believe in what they say.
Here's one example: https://grist.org/energy/this-radiant-model-wants-you-to-sto...
They do it in Japan. Everything has a cute anime mascot.
It's actually a pretty useful in practice!
Say you need a safety warning tables for your railway station - pandas dangerously fussing with selfie sticks on a crowded platform are much more enjoyable and memorable than just some more generic stick figures doing the same.
You can also encode culture into mascots - everyone probably knows the bear mascot Kumamon (yes, there are many bears in Kumamoto and they occasionally eat somebody) but take forever example Shimaneko, the mascot of the Shimano pprefecture. Neko means cat and indeed its a cat mascot - with a strange hat! And that hat is the roof of the ancient and famous Izumo shrine located in the Shimano prefecture.
Or the even more obscure Kinosaki Kounori: https://mobile.twitter.com/jrw_fukuchiyama/status/1046927976...
On the picture you can see a young female anime character in a summer kimono (yukata).
This is the mascot of a limitted express train (!) that goes from Osaka and Kyoto to the famous onsen (hot spring) town of Kinosaki (hence the Kinosaki in the name). The the other name Kounori is from the name of the train, Kou no tori - oriental white stork.
Which goes right back to the founding legend of Kinosaki about how they built the first bath after observing a stork using the natural hot spring to heal its wounds.
And the last thing - the summer kimono/yukata. If you look closely she also has a ticket stamping tool and a railway company employee badge - that's because station employees really do wear yukata in the summer in Kinosaki instead of their usual uniforms! :)
And the kimono pattern includes of course the oriental white stork but also - fireworks! And that's because of course in the summer there are regular fireworks shows in Kinosaki! :)
Really some much culture and symbolism (not to mention hard work!) goes to japanese mascot characters!
Say you need a safety warning tables for your railway station - pandas dangerously fussing with selfie sticks on a crowded platform are much more enjoyable and memorable than just some more generic stick figures doing the same.
You can also encode culture into mascots - everyone probably knows the bear mascot Kumamon (yes, there are many bears in Kumamoto and they occasionally eat somebody) but take forever example Shimaneko, the mascot of the Shimano pprefecture. Neko means cat and indeed its a cat mascot - with a strange hat! And that hat is the roof of the ancient and famous Izumo shrine located in the Shimano prefecture.
Or the even more obscure Kinosaki Kounori: https://mobile.twitter.com/jrw_fukuchiyama/status/1046927976...
On the picture you can see a young female anime character in a summer kimono (yukata).
This is the mascot of a limitted express train (!) that goes from Osaka and Kyoto to the famous onsen (hot spring) town of Kinosaki (hence the Kinosaki in the name). The the other name Kounori is from the name of the train, Kou no tori - oriental white stork.
Which goes right back to the founding legend of Kinosaki about how they built the first bath after observing a stork using the natural hot spring to heal its wounds.
And the last thing - the summer kimono/yukata. If you look closely she also has a ticket stamping tool and a railway company employee badge - that's because station employees really do wear yukata in the summer in Kinosaki instead of their usual uniforms! :)
And the kimono pattern includes of course the oriental white stork but also - fireworks! And that's because of course in the summer there are regular fireworks shows in Kinosaki! :)
Really some much culture and symbolism (not to mention hard work!) goes to japanese mascot characters!
Lest people forget the OS-tan trend of the early 2000's.
https://www.ostan-collections.net/wiki/index.php/List_of_Can...
https://www.ostan-collections.net/wiki/index.php/List_of_Can...
A lot of those are unofficial, which raises the question of why Japan has so many very skilled artists* with so much free time when they work so much.
* not so imaginative, but always consistent and on-model in ways Westerners don't feel any pressure to try for
* not so imaginative, but always consistent and on-model in ways Westerners don't feel any pressure to try for
Sounds like a great idea for politicians at the next election cycle everywhere. Don’t believe in what they say though. I mean... both.
> The majority of “influencers” are young women, and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old uncle.
One interesting side effect of this is that some of the most popular male YouTube channels I follow never show the host's face. Everything is carefully staged to only show their hands / body.
One interesting side effect of this is that some of the most popular male YouTube channels I follow never show the host's face. Everything is carefully staged to only show their hands / body.
Its strange because random old people channels produce great content. Its just that, most of them don't try to be annoying influencers. I follow some old dude who repairs his motorcycle and writes music. He doesnt talk, and its great.
Very true. I came across a channel run by a 60 something man where he sits in his music room, puts on a record and talks about what that piece of music means to him, when he first heard it.
I usually don't watch the whole video as it can get a bit dry, but otherwise it is nice to just see someone expressing themself without shilling their Patreon or using clickbait thumbnails and titles like the more commercial "personal" channels do.
I usually don't watch the whole video as it can get a bit dry, but otherwise it is nice to just see someone expressing themself without shilling their Patreon or using clickbait thumbnails and titles like the more commercial "personal" channels do.
I miss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Carrington 's show, which was basically that on BBC radio. Him, his cat, and a huge collection of old records.
(BBC radio is at the very opposite end from begging for likes; once someone establishes a show, if it's not in a highly contended timeslot it can basically run forever no matter how obscure or unfashionable it is, until the presenter dies)
(BBC radio is at the very opposite end from begging for likes; once someone establishes a show, if it's not in a highly contended timeslot it can basically run forever no matter how obscure or unfashionable it is, until the presenter dies)
Doesn't that sort of depend on the channel? eg Radio 1 has always been Obnoxiously! Trendy! Pop! Music!, Radio 2 a lightweight blend of news, musical standards, and entertainment, Radio 3 classical or music and Very Serious Discourse, and Radio 4 intellectual topics, politics, and and quality news, little or no music. I know there are a few other radio channels but I can't remember what their focus is. And of course all of these channels have variations of their own depending what time of the day/week people are listening.
RIP John Peel. Remarkable how many iconic punk/indie/weird bands he introduced to the mainstream.
Rick Beato? He's 58.
It's so refreshing to have content that is actually just good content and isn't some trainwreck of seeking attention from an increasingly more vapid audience.
I follow some guy in France who restore random stuff, he doesn’t talk and there’s no music, it’s fantastic.
Sounds like my kind of thing. Got a link?
This Old Tony? (highly recommended btw!)
https://www.youtube.com/user/featony
Although there was one where you did get to see his face.
https://www.youtube.com/user/featony
Although there was one where you did get to see his face.
This Old Tony? Just hands.
AvE? Just hands.
Marco Reps? Just hands... wearing gloves.
LockPickingLawyer? Just hands.
BosnianBill? Just hands.
The Signal Path? Largely just hands, although he has appeared occasionally.
Wendover Productions? Disembodied voice.
CGP Grey? Disembodied voice.
Real Engineering? Disembodied voice.
Not to mention innumerable video game streamers.
Of course, disembodied voices aren't in-and-of-themselves a new cultural phenomenon: Radio has existed for years, as have podcasts. And there are TV formats like nature and history documentaries where the narrator may rarely or never appear on screen.
And even on Youtube, there are a number of female voice-only celebrities - for example "vtubers", where a female voice actor plays games while pretending to be a cute anime girl. Of course, one could say that's an example for the theory people want to see beautiful women, not against
AvE? Just hands.
Marco Reps? Just hands... wearing gloves.
LockPickingLawyer? Just hands.
BosnianBill? Just hands.
The Signal Path? Largely just hands, although he has appeared occasionally.
Wendover Productions? Disembodied voice.
CGP Grey? Disembodied voice.
Real Engineering? Disembodied voice.
Not to mention innumerable video game streamers.
Of course, disembodied voices aren't in-and-of-themselves a new cultural phenomenon: Radio has existed for years, as have podcasts. And there are TV formats like nature and history documentaries where the narrator may rarely or never appear on screen.
And even on Youtube, there are a number of female voice-only celebrities - for example "vtubers", where a female voice actor plays games while pretending to be a cute anime girl. Of course, one could say that's an example for the theory people want to see beautiful women, not against
There's several more factors to vtubers than that. It's more interesting if you like lore, it fits with the aesthetic of the rest of the video better, you don't need to get dressed or do your makeup, etc.
As far as privacy it doesn't necessarily apply because the famous ones almost all have previous careers as face streamers, and their fans know who they are since they use their real voices. But if you are doing it to hide yourself then it works, and it means that everyone else can interact with you and seem to be in the same world.
As far as privacy it doesn't necessarily apply because the famous ones almost all have previous careers as face streamers, and their fans know who they are since they use their real voices. But if you are doing it to hide yourself then it works, and it means that everyone else can interact with you and seem to be in the same world.
AvE (Arduino vs Evil) is similar
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChWv6Pn_zP0rI6lgGt3MyfA
There is one (!!!) video where he shows his face. He looks more like 35 to me. Unless of course he is a Japanese girl using whatsapp.
And the ones where I've seen men are related to DIY fixing things at home, where an old plumber is more trusted then a young one.
i've spent more time that I would care to admit trying to find a slip up reflection form Lock Picking Lawyer. So far no dice.
Its not that hard to find the guy, Google better.
Youtubers are mostly content creators, while most instagram "influencers" only try to look pretty.
Arent youtube channels generally male dominated? At least most of what I watch is by males and they are not ashamed to show their faces.
I watch art, some crafts occasionally tech and pop commentary. Some sport.
I dont see people being interested in 50 years old women either in general.
I watch art, some crafts occasionally tech and pop commentary. Some sport.
I dont see people being interested in 50 years old women either in general.
[deleted]
However nobody can deny that his hair is amazing
Part of it's just the medium. Uncles write lots of good books, I imagine they teach lots of great classes. I've seen plenty who have great youtube channels or podcasts. But, instagram (and services like it) is all about aesthetics and nothing else.
Every day I give thanks that I live under a system of government that protects the individual from the wishes of the majority. It's not perfect of course, but it does work.
No doubt people felt good about following "her" because of her authenticity.
No doubt people felt good about following "her" because of her authenticity.
Just curious, where do you live and how hard is to immigrate there?
Not to put to fine a point on it, but aren't influencers essentially a type of very soft-core porn? I don't think they really expose people to world views, superficial or otherwise.
They're more like clothes models. The women are doing Instagram to sell things, not for male attention.
Although sometimes amateur models don't realize what the job of a model is, or they get groomed by fake photographers and end up making bad softcore porn by accident.
Although sometimes amateur models don't realize what the job of a model is, or they get groomed by fake photographers and end up making bad softcore porn by accident.
> 50 year old uncle
Also, 50 year old people tend to have ideas which are frowned upon in the Valley. Especially if they're not from the US.
So when enough people start following them, they get removed.
Also, 50 year old people tend to have ideas which are frowned upon in the Valley. Especially if they're not from the US.
So when enough people start following them, they get removed.
Can you give some examples of what you're referring to? I'm drawing a blank.
> Don't marry, don't cohabit and even avoid dating women.
Now you're an alt-right sexist person and anyone subscribing to your channel is one step away from shooting a school.
Now you're an alt-right sexist person and anyone subscribing to your channel is one step away from shooting a school.
Interesting, I know many 50+ year old men from outside of the US and none of them share these ideals :/
[deleted]
I'm still sorting out what we really mean when we keep referring to the guy as "an uncle". Is he also a father? Is he married? What's the description of "uncle" adding or informing us of? My immediate reaction makes me think he's a 50yo with no kids, maybe a girlfriend, but his sister had kids. I don't know that this is an accurate perception or if it even aligns with how other people read it. Just seems kind of weird that he's summarized as this title.
"An uncle" is just a way to refer to someone mature, unrelated to family connections. Kind of like the popular "Uncle Roger" https://www.youtube.com/c/mrnigelng (usually I'd expect a "generic uncle" to have no family of his own)
I think you're right, sans the bit about human nature. Traditionally influence is a function of understanding and wisdom, and that is a function of time and years.
The internet changed that.
Now it's a function of perceived popularity and perceived influence. That has become a (cheap?) proxy. It's not the person per se, but the "social proof" attached to that person.
We've been trained to use quantity instead of quality. Is that human nature?
Attacted to a pretty face? Yes. That is human nature.
The internet changed that.
Now it's a function of perceived popularity and perceived influence. That has become a (cheap?) proxy. It's not the person per se, but the "social proof" attached to that person.
We've been trained to use quantity instead of quality. Is that human nature?
Attacted to a pretty face? Yes. That is human nature.
It's also the incongruence which people like I think.
It would be great to see Adolfo Mateo[0] as a 20 year old Japanese girl, not that he needs any improvement as he is.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOKERSOFCIGARSPIPES
It would be great to see Adolfo Mateo[0] as a 20 year old Japanese girl, not that he needs any improvement as he is.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOKERSOFCIGARSPIPES
True! Unless you are a 50 year old uncle who looks Lenny Kravitz.
It would be quite funny to make a "facebook" that automatically transforms everyones photos in a similar way. Such that everybody becomes attractive.
Beauty is a skill like any other that has both a factor of talent and training to hone it, that, as with many skills, declines with age.
It happens to be a skill that influences require for their work.
Here, I see no problem; where I see a problem is that often those who hire judge those on their beauty where their beauty would play no factor in their performance, not only hurting those whom they would hire, but their own finances in the processes.
Of course, the scariest part of all is how much more easily the ugly are found guilty on the same level of evidence than the beautiful.
It happens to be a skill that influences require for their work.
Here, I see no problem; where I see a problem is that often those who hire judge those on their beauty where their beauty would play no factor in their performance, not only hurting those whom they would hire, but their own finances in the processes.
Of course, the scariest part of all is how much more easily the ugly are found guilty on the same level of evidence than the beautiful.
A skill is something that can be learned, your looks are something that you are born with.
And while there is a skill to "beautifying up" people, that only works to a certain degree and can't change the looks you were born with, it can only enhance/hide them in parts.
But you can't learn to uncrook your nose just like you can't remove your acne scars trough learning or straighten out your ears. These things don't require learning a skill, they require surgical procedures you most likely can't perform on yourself even if you had the skills to do so.
And while there is a skill to "beautifying up" people, that only works to a certain degree and can't change the looks you were born with, it can only enhance/hide them in parts.
But you can't learn to uncrook your nose just like you can't remove your acne scars trough learning or straighten out your ears. These things don't require learning a skill, they require surgical procedures you most likely can't perform on yourself even if you had the skills to do so.
> A skill is something that can be learned, your looks are something that you are born with.
As I said, any skill has a component of talent and acquisition.
Most men can train their entire lives and will never have the skill at chess José Capablanca had when he was six, simply from watching others play the game. — every world chess champion that ever lived was born with talent of the game most others can only dream of.
> But you can't learn to uncrook your nose just like you can't remove your acne scars trough learning or straighten out your ears. These things don't require learning a skill, they require surgical procedures you most likely can't perform on yourself even if you had the skills to do so.
Just as an average man cannot ever reach the level that chess grandmasters had when they were 8 years old, even if he trained for his entire life.
As I said, any skill has a component of talent and acquisition.
Most men can train their entire lives and will never have the skill at chess José Capablanca had when he was six, simply from watching others play the game. — every world chess champion that ever lived was born with talent of the game most others can only dream of.
> But you can't learn to uncrook your nose just like you can't remove your acne scars trough learning or straighten out your ears. These things don't require learning a skill, they require surgical procedures you most likely can't perform on yourself even if you had the skills to do so.
Just as an average man cannot ever reach the level that chess grandmasters had when they were 8 years old, even if he trained for his entire life.
> Most men can train their entire lives and will never have the skill at chess José Capablanca had when he was six, simply from watching others play the game.
This is a massive exaggeration. There's no way it's true.
> Just as an average man cannot ever reach the level that chess grandmasters had when they were 8 years old, even if he trained for his entire life.
I found the results of the world chess championship 2018 U10. [1] The best ones of the 10-year-old kids here are rated slightly higher than 2000 elo. And 8-year-old ones play significantly worse. (Also with the Internet these kids have access to all the knowledge in the world and typically have top coaches which Capablanca hadn't.) Do you really think it's impossible to reach 1900-2000 fide for an average man who trains the entire life?
[1] https://info64.org/world-cadets-chess-championships-2018-u10...
This is a massive exaggeration. There's no way it's true.
> Just as an average man cannot ever reach the level that chess grandmasters had when they were 8 years old, even if he trained for his entire life.
I found the results of the world chess championship 2018 U10. [1] The best ones of the 10-year-old kids here are rated slightly higher than 2000 elo. And 8-year-old ones play significantly worse. (Also with the Internet these kids have access to all the knowledge in the world and typically have top coaches which Capablanca hadn't.) Do you really think it's impossible to reach 1900-2000 fide for an average man who trains the entire life?
[1] https://info64.org/world-cadets-chess-championships-2018-u10...
> This is a massive exaggeration. There's no way it's true.?
It is indeed only an undocumented family story of the family that is hard to prove. However, such things as that Bobby Fisher at the age of 13 played what is now known as The Game of The Century against the best North American player at the time to victory, or that Capablanca beat the Cuban Chess Champion at the age of 11 are documented facts in history.
These chess prodigies amassed skills in the game at very young ages that most could never achieve in their lifetime.
> I found the results of the world chess championship 2018 U10. [1] The best ones of the 10-year-old kids here are rated slightly higher than 2000 elo.
And none of them will rise to the exceptional levels of Capablanca or Fischer, will they, many of them will be forgotten and never become professional to begin with.
Apart from that, 2000 Elo is already a higher rating than many serious club players will ever achieve. 2000 elo is candidate master level.
> Do you really think it's impossible to reach 1900-2000 fide for an average man who trains the entire life?
The average man? absolutely. Those that train their entire life are already 90% skill in chess.
And that's hardly the issue, even if he could if he trained his entire life, the exceptional professional players in chess that so earn their livelihood achieved 2000 at around 8-9 years old. 2000 is not close to a level that allows one to play chess professionally, for which 2550 is probably needed these days.
Most human beings on the planet lack the talent to ever be a professional chess player, no matter how hard they train, — it is no different from tennis, football, darts, or beauty.
It is indeed only an undocumented family story of the family that is hard to prove. However, such things as that Bobby Fisher at the age of 13 played what is now known as The Game of The Century against the best North American player at the time to victory, or that Capablanca beat the Cuban Chess Champion at the age of 11 are documented facts in history.
These chess prodigies amassed skills in the game at very young ages that most could never achieve in their lifetime.
> I found the results of the world chess championship 2018 U10. [1] The best ones of the 10-year-old kids here are rated slightly higher than 2000 elo.
And none of them will rise to the exceptional levels of Capablanca or Fischer, will they, many of them will be forgotten and never become professional to begin with.
Apart from that, 2000 Elo is already a higher rating than many serious club players will ever achieve. 2000 elo is candidate master level.
> Do you really think it's impossible to reach 1900-2000 fide for an average man who trains the entire life?
The average man? absolutely. Those that train their entire life are already 90% skill in chess.
And that's hardly the issue, even if he could if he trained his entire life, the exceptional professional players in chess that so earn their livelihood achieved 2000 at around 8-9 years old. 2000 is not close to a level that allows one to play chess professionally, for which 2550 is probably needed these days.
Most human beings on the planet lack the talent to ever be a professional chess player, no matter how hard they train, — it is no different from tennis, football, darts, or beauty.
As a transhumanist, I'm fine with this. It's clear that a lot of people would physically transform themselves into whatever illusion FaceApp provides today.
I certainly would.
I know this is being perceived as "fraud" right now, but the same people who were attracted to that person and now feel betrayed are overdue for some well-deserved self reflection.
It's hard to make an argument that the world would be worse off if everyone could just have the body they want. Regrettably, I was born too late to live to see it become reality.
I certainly would.
I know this is being perceived as "fraud" right now, but the same people who were attracted to that person and now feel betrayed are overdue for some well-deserved self reflection.
It's hard to make an argument that the world would be worse off if everyone could just have the body they want. Regrettably, I was born too late to live to see it become reality.
It would make for a far better world:
Older men chasing younger woman and replacing their previous wives? Completely unnecessary.
Child sex crimes? Someone can just morph into a child and hook up with someone with the same interest.
Unattractive but a good personality / similar interests? Not a problem.
Trans? Just morph into a woman / man.
Older men chasing younger woman and replacing their previous wives? Completely unnecessary.
Child sex crimes? Someone can just morph into a child and hook up with someone with the same interest.
Unattractive but a good personality / similar interests? Not a problem.
Trans? Just morph into a woman / man.
It’s human nature to follow only young influencers? That’s a weird claim. Sounds like we take the current situation and justify it afterwards by saying “that’s human nature”.
> It’s human nature to follow only young influencers?
Marketers have known this for years before the appearance of "influencers" - youth sells, and a young women have better cross-gender appeal than young men. Go ahead an open any pre-WWW paper magazine, count the number of women vs. men who appear in the adverts for non-gendered products
Marketers have known this for years before the appearance of "influencers" - youth sells, and a young women have better cross-gender appeal than young men. Go ahead an open any pre-WWW paper magazine, count the number of women vs. men who appear in the adverts for non-gendered products
Sex sells. Young attractive women attract the most sexual attention of any demographic (see any online dating/hookup site's stats, porn stats, etc).
And the commenter didn't say "only". Yes, people follow non-sexual influencers all the time, but it's much easier to get followers if you're sexually attractive.
And the commenter didn't say "only". Yes, people follow non-sexual influencers all the time, but it's much easier to get followers if you're sexually attractive.
Not a weird claim at all, you have to be very self conscious not to click and watch young people doing whatever. It is a natural tendency humans have. It has worked in any entertainment industry (from Hollywood to Youtube) because it exploits how our brains are wired.
If a majority of people do something because that's what they want to do, doesn't that by definition make it human nature?
That’s ignoring how much control and influence the platform itself has. It’s not a free market, the platform decides who trends and what matters or not.
No, it makes it a kind of human nature. People are not homogenous, there are distinct sub-types of personality, albeit not that many.
No. A majority of people doing something in a particular moment doesn't mean that it is an intrinsic quality of people. Otherwise we'll start to say that Coca-Cola and The Simpsons are genetic destiny.
There have been plenty of times during history during which nobody cared what young people thought. I'd venture to say the majority of it.
There have been plenty of times during history during which nobody cared what young people thought. I'd venture to say the majority of it.
Nobody cares about what young people think now either. We are talking about a very small subset of model-like stylish youngsters (mostly women). 99.99% continue to be ignored as usual.
It's human nature to want to look at young pretty women.
I didn’t write “only”.
lol, and yeah it worked.
I also don't think there is an issue here.
I also don't think there is an issue here.
I don't know if they're literally uncles, but men in that age-range like Elon Musk, Louis Cole, Joe Rogan, brooklyn dad defiant, Donald Trump, etc. are huge influencers (orders of magnitude more so than @azusagakuyuki). It's a bit handwave-y to say "nobody wants to see an uncle".
> The majority of “influencers” are young women
Is this actually true, or just bias from your own interessts? If we look at technical stuff and gaming, we see far more successful male influencers. Similar with entertainment-industry.
> and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old
This more or less is true, because not many like to see unattractive people doing boring things. But the point here is, this in not because of gender or sex, it's about the quality of content and chemistry with the consumers. An old ugly guy without any real skill, would be usually as unsuccesful as an old ugly woman without any real skill. Though, for both there always is chance to find niche to sellout your content over something, the chance is pretty low.
With younger and more attractive people, the chances are significant higher, because they have more selling points besides the content itself, thus they sell better. But it also depends on the target-group and content.
> it’s human nature
No, it's human culture. People sell according to the crowds reception on what the gender is suposed to do. So woman sell better in female-stuff, men better with manly stuff. Woman do have a slight advantage, in that they are the gender which in most cultures is educated from early days to sellout. They dress up, use fancy cloths, catter to the people, etc. This works better for laymen when becoming influencers, because woman have more likely the skills to sell themself on a broader are, while most men need to learn it first.
Is this actually true, or just bias from your own interessts? If we look at technical stuff and gaming, we see far more successful male influencers. Similar with entertainment-industry.
> and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old
This more or less is true, because not many like to see unattractive people doing boring things. But the point here is, this in not because of gender or sex, it's about the quality of content and chemistry with the consumers. An old ugly guy without any real skill, would be usually as unsuccesful as an old ugly woman without any real skill. Though, for both there always is chance to find niche to sellout your content over something, the chance is pretty low.
With younger and more attractive people, the chances are significant higher, because they have more selling points besides the content itself, thus they sell better. But it also depends on the target-group and content.
> it’s human nature
No, it's human culture. People sell according to the crowds reception on what the gender is suposed to do. So woman sell better in female-stuff, men better with manly stuff. Woman do have a slight advantage, in that they are the gender which in most cultures is educated from early days to sellout. They dress up, use fancy cloths, catter to the people, etc. This works better for laymen when becoming influencers, because woman have more likely the skills to sell themself on a broader are, while most men need to learn it first.
> Women sell better in female stuff
Cute women doing traditionally "male things" sells like hot cakes. Not so much the other way around.
Cute women doing traditionally "male things" sells like hot cakes. Not so much the other way around.
>Cute women doing traditionally "male things" sells like hot cakes.
True, but are really bad in selling serious Business stuff.
True, but are really bad in selling serious Business stuff.
Are they?...Take the girls from BoutineLA (an Instagram account), give them some training and send them to sell B2B, I would bet easily on their potential returns
Thanks you made my point perfectly clear.
> Though, for both there always is chance to find niche to sellout your content over something, the chance is pretty low.
In both cases, I think it would be fair to call that niche real skill.
In both cases, I think it would be fair to call that niche real skill.
What really worries me about the DeepFakes stuff is not so much the fakes -- I'm worried about that, but that's been written about to death -- but that now it adds plausible deniability to anyone caught on camera doing anything.
If we had video footage of, say, a politician doing something clearly illegal on camera, then it's simply the word of the politician against the word of the source -- the latter of whom may need to remain anonymous.
That said... the other way around is still the more dangerous, I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.
If we had video footage of, say, a politician doing something clearly illegal on camera, then it's simply the word of the politician against the word of the source -- the latter of whom may need to remain anonymous.
That said... the other way around is still the more dangerous, I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.
It just pressures us to come up with ways to prove authenticity. Those ways definitely exist but are not common yet and we have courts and governments full of people with a poor grasp on technology. But basically it calls for chains of evidence that are cryptographically tamper proof. That's not a thing right now. But it's going to become a hard requirement when evidence can be fabricated, falsified, etc. It's also the key to countering fake news and a few other things.
People accepting everything at face value is not going to stay a thing when world+dog is going to abuse their new powers. Only fools would believe what they see after they've been fooled a few times and suffered the consequences.
Short term it's going to be a mess, but long term it's a good thing for us to figure this out and move on.
People accepting everything at face value is not going to stay a thing when world+dog is going to abuse their new powers. Only fools would believe what they see after they've been fooled a few times and suffered the consequences.
Short term it's going to be a mess, but long term it's a good thing for us to figure this out and move on.
This is not a technical problem IMO. You can't cryptographically sign reality. There's always the analog hole[1].
It's a problem of trust within society. Look at many very mainstream conspiracy theories these days: there's ample proof that it's not true, but people want to believe so they'll believe.
You can't fix the lack of trust in society with cryptography.
I just went on a constructionist website I sometimes lurk when I'm bored, literally the first story I find is titled `The Age of "Credentialism" and "Experts" is over. Every Single Institution works against your interests'. You can't fix this mindset with maths.
Video is cryptographically signed? But what about the secret computers in the Pentagon's basement that run on Quantum CPUs using ancient alien technology found in the pyramids? They can certainly break ECC. Here, watch this Youtube video...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
It's a problem of trust within society. Look at many very mainstream conspiracy theories these days: there's ample proof that it's not true, but people want to believe so they'll believe.
You can't fix the lack of trust in society with cryptography.
I just went on a constructionist website I sometimes lurk when I'm bored, literally the first story I find is titled `The Age of "Credentialism" and "Experts" is over. Every Single Institution works against your interests'. You can't fix this mindset with maths.
Video is cryptographically signed? But what about the secret computers in the Pentagon's basement that run on Quantum CPUs using ancient alien technology found in the pyramids? They can certainly break ECC. Here, watch this Youtube video...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
You can't sign reality, but people can sign statements.
If you see a video at a date D1 where you say Statement1, and cryptographically sign it with your key K, then at a later date someone can verify that at least you said you've watched an backed your statement.
In a way all of security relies on the physical safety of some kind of secret data. So you have the deniability of key compromise in any case.
If everything a president states publicly is signed with his key Kp, then:
1) If something controversial is published without signature, the president can say it's not standard procedure and a plausible forgery;
2) If the president publishes officially without a signature, the public can demand one so there's no later equivocation;
3) Anything that has been said can be verified in the future by checking the presidential signature.
In this case, the worst case is really a compromised key (although key scheduling should mitigate it), but most forgery cases of statements (and potentially documents, mandates, etc.) are eliminated.
In practice, it would be difficult to get your public figures to sign everything they say (and difficult to get them to accept this kind of potential auto-incrimination for the public good).
If you see a video at a date D1 where you say Statement1, and cryptographically sign it with your key K, then at a later date someone can verify that at least you said you've watched an backed your statement.
In a way all of security relies on the physical safety of some kind of secret data. So you have the deniability of key compromise in any case.
If everything a president states publicly is signed with his key Kp, then:
1) If something controversial is published without signature, the president can say it's not standard procedure and a plausible forgery;
2) If the president publishes officially without a signature, the public can demand one so there's no later equivocation;
3) Anything that has been said can be verified in the future by checking the presidential signature.
In this case, the worst case is really a compromised key (although key scheduling should mitigate it), but most forgery cases of statements (and potentially documents, mandates, etc.) are eliminated.
In practice, it would be difficult to get your public figures to sign everything they say (and difficult to get them to accept this kind of potential auto-incrimination for the public good).
That doesn't work for adversarial recordings. No one will sign an embarrassing or damning video of themselves, and those are the cases where authenticity is the most important.
Your solution is technologically cool, but I think the current system of "was this published by a domain controlled by the office of the press secretary" is probably accomplishing this case well enough.
Your solution is technologically cool, but I think the current system of "was this published by a domain controlled by the office of the press secretary" is probably accomplishing this case well enough.
For adversarial recordings, I wonder if we could have a camera that instantly uploads a timestamp and hash of each video taken to a blockchain. This way, we could have videos that we know for a fact were recorded at the latest at a certain time. It would still be vulnerable for a fake video to be post dated, but never pre dated.
Doesn't stop the adversary from simply timestamping, and uploading their fraudulent video's hash to that blockchain.
Seconding this. The fracture at the heart of our society is not rooted in unintelligence, or lack of education or access to facts. It's rooted in a lack of trust. The most rigorous science is only as good as the trust people place in those performing it (and the entire chain of reporting from there to its reception). Those links are being/have been broken. No amount of added rigor will fix that. I don't know what will.
I'd argue it's the opposite. We've relied too much on trust and promises and not enough on rigor and exactness. Most people aren't given facts, constraints and limitations until it's too late, if ever. What they're given are viewpoints with selective evidence and glaring omissions. It's remained a unsolved since the beginning of humanity. A solution to this problem is a rigorous self-proving system that wouldn't need one to convince another of the facts.
I don't want to live in a trustless society. What you describe sounds like a totalitarian dystopia to me.
I want escape hatches. I want plausible deniability. Facts in a vacuum are useless and can be used to propel all sorts of narratives. Facts without framing and contextualization aren't worth much. You can manipulate easily without technically lying, just by cherry picking facts that suit your agenda.
You need some amount of trust and solidarity if you want to live in a healthy society.
I want escape hatches. I want plausible deniability. Facts in a vacuum are useless and can be used to propel all sorts of narratives. Facts without framing and contextualization aren't worth much. You can manipulate easily without technically lying, just by cherry picking facts that suit your agenda.
You need some amount of trust and solidarity if you want to live in a healthy society.
> Those links are being/have been broken. No amount of added rigor will fix that. I don't know what will.
The institutions could start telling the truth once in a while. Statements like "27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London" (BBC) and "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" (CNN) with the city burning down in the background account for why trust in media is rapidly approaching zero. It makes it clear that the violence and devastation is just a curiosity to the upper-class elites that control these institutions, but normal people who actually have to live with aftermath are not amused.
Fauci is another huge contributor. First don't wear masks, they can actually hurt. Then you have to wear masks. Now wear two or three! But earlier he was ridiculing people who wore multiple masks. Along with all the knowingly false statements about how long lockdowns would last. Clearly Fauci should not be allowed to speak in public, but unfortunately the blast radius of his mistakes extends beyond him to the government and media institutions that defend him and amplified his misinformation.
The institutions could start telling the truth once in a while. Statements like "27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London" (BBC) and "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" (CNN) with the city burning down in the background account for why trust in media is rapidly approaching zero. It makes it clear that the violence and devastation is just a curiosity to the upper-class elites that control these institutions, but normal people who actually have to live with aftermath are not amused.
Fauci is another huge contributor. First don't wear masks, they can actually hurt. Then you have to wear masks. Now wear two or three! But earlier he was ridiculing people who wore multiple masks. Along with all the knowingly false statements about how long lockdowns would last. Clearly Fauci should not be allowed to speak in public, but unfortunately the blast radius of his mistakes extends beyond him to the government and media institutions that defend him and amplified his misinformation.
with the city burning down in the background
No exaggeration there ◔_◔
I get that you're complaining about 'liberal' media downplaying disorderly and often dangerous events such as riots to suit a political agenda, but the converse is also true; if one relies on 'conservative' media then you'd think many major American cities are post-apocalyptic smoking holes in the ground.
No exaggeration there ◔_◔
I get that you're complaining about 'liberal' media downplaying disorderly and often dangerous events such as riots to suit a political agenda, but the converse is also true; if one relies on 'conservative' media then you'd think many major American cities are post-apocalyptic smoking holes in the ground.
My larger complaint was about rich people who don't care about the several dozen deaths, uncounted injuries, and billions of dollars of property damage caused by the riots because it doesn't affect their class. I don't watch conservative media, so I don't know anything about the portrayal of major American cities therein.
This is not a technical problem IMO. You can't cryptographically sign reality. There's always the analog hole
Reality has a pretty strong "hash" naturally built in. Even manipulated picture carries a huge amount of information that isn't changed or isn't changed as much as one thinks.
The manipulated pictures the motorcyclist uploaded still would give someone a good idea where and even when they were taken. That doesn't matter here but if you're making a more detailed argument, it's harder.
Just consider, "computer forensics" is a thing even though any single bit on the computer can be overwritten and "faked".
Reality has a pretty strong "hash" naturally built in. Even manipulated picture carries a huge amount of information that isn't changed or isn't changed as much as one thinks.
The manipulated pictures the motorcyclist uploaded still would give someone a good idea where and even when they were taken. That doesn't matter here but if you're making a more detailed argument, it's harder.
Just consider, "computer forensics" is a thing even though any single bit on the computer can be overwritten and "faked".
Your theory is basically the theory behind Minority Report.
What is this analog hole of which you speak? Only nature delivers analog ;)
But nature doesn't create deep fakes - though not as the term is being used here. I would argue that nature has been making deep fakes for millions of years.
Anything that is created by CNN Deep Fake tech is delivered via computer - either using printer or with some sort of screen screen. Let's eliminate printers as nobody uses them anymore. What about screens? I smell a business opportunity.
But nature doesn't create deep fakes - though not as the term is being used here. I would argue that nature has been making deep fakes for millions of years.
Anything that is created by CNN Deep Fake tech is delivered via computer - either using printer or with some sort of screen screen. Let's eliminate printers as nobody uses them anymore. What about screens? I smell a business opportunity.
I was recently watching The Brainwashing of My Dad. Rush Limbaugh made millions of dollars selling lies to the American public. At one point there is a video clip of him admitting that the truth of what he is saying on radio is irrelevant. It doesn't matter to him. He lays out the recipe for generating fear and uncertainty. Basically, if you say something loud enough and with enough confidence no one will stand in your way. Because, as fact checkers know, it takes considerable time to research a bullshit claim. By the time the research is done and published, the bullshitter has moved on and told an additional 20 lies. He also makes a statistical argument for how his business works. He doesn't need to hook every listener. But he does know that enough people will fall for his shtick.
The troubling aspect is that all of this bullshit is blending together. My dad watched Fox News. Now he's hooked on Youtube conspiracy garbage. I'd be terrified if he ever became a QAnon type. We're dealing with literal internet cults becoming a mainstream phenomenon. We're nowhere near equipped for the mess we, the technologists, have made. You have Alex Jones out there claiming that an elementary school shooting didn't happen. You think these guys are going to trust encryption? Or anything that their Youtube priest tells them is a "hoax"?
Education would be the answer. But education is at war with engagement algorithms and attention spans.
The troubling aspect is that all of this bullshit is blending together. My dad watched Fox News. Now he's hooked on Youtube conspiracy garbage. I'd be terrified if he ever became a QAnon type. We're dealing with literal internet cults becoming a mainstream phenomenon. We're nowhere near equipped for the mess we, the technologists, have made. You have Alex Jones out there claiming that an elementary school shooting didn't happen. You think these guys are going to trust encryption? Or anything that their Youtube priest tells them is a "hoax"?
Education would be the answer. But education is at war with engagement algorithms and attention spans.
This is a technique known as the Firehose of Falsehood:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
The goal is not necessarily to convince people of a particular claim, it's to levy so many claims and use the scrambling of media acting in good faith to vet those claims as an overloading mechanism to get regular people to tune out entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
The goal is not necessarily to convince people of a particular claim, it's to levy so many claims and use the scrambling of media acting in good faith to vet those claims as an overloading mechanism to get regular people to tune out entirely.
Also known as 'flooding the zone'. Like many political tropes, this originates in team sports which in turn is an abstraction of war. It's an awful lot easier to understand the media landscape if you consider it as cultural warfare with ideas and tropes as territory, although this is hard to visualize in spatial terms.
The answer to this (and the accompanying tribalism that pervades public discourse nowadays) is often said to be education and critical thinking, but that requires years of investment and often-unwelcome external discipline to internalize and actuate; it's a statement of what we would like to have instead rather than an actionable solution to its own absence.
Friendly emotional persuasion can work better as a de-escalation-bridging tactic, as suggested here: https://dr-gleb-tsipursky.medium.com/how-to-talk-to-a-scienc...
This is also helpful for gathering information to understand the dynamics and attractiveness of false information, even if no changing of mind can occur; think of it as the difference between carefully dismantling an unexploded munition in order to figure out how it works vs. a controlled explosion to minimize future risk at the expense of continued vulnerability.
Where conflict is unavoidable or deliberately fomented (eg people arguing in bad faith rather than sincerely believing falsehoods), an overtly hostile response imposes a cost on the aggressor, and when consistently and predictably applied it effectively alters the payoff matrix in an adversarial game: https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
Many people are aware of Mutual Assured Destruction as a kind of nuclear diplomacy, where you are deterred from nuking me because I've made it very clear that if you do I will take you down with me, leading to a heavily armed but uneasy peace. There are also lesser-known concepts like Power Transition Theory (about how wars originate from weaker countries challenging stronger ones) and nowadays scholars of international relations tend to adhere to Hegemonic Stability Theory (one very powerful country plays Teacher/cop) or World System Theory (every dog has its day). Developing familiarity with the broad concepts of interstate conflict (without going too deep down any intellectual rabbit hole) can be helpful in modeling smaller scale political conflicts, divisions in civil society etc.
The answer to this (and the accompanying tribalism that pervades public discourse nowadays) is often said to be education and critical thinking, but that requires years of investment and often-unwelcome external discipline to internalize and actuate; it's a statement of what we would like to have instead rather than an actionable solution to its own absence.
Friendly emotional persuasion can work better as a de-escalation-bridging tactic, as suggested here: https://dr-gleb-tsipursky.medium.com/how-to-talk-to-a-scienc...
This is also helpful for gathering information to understand the dynamics and attractiveness of false information, even if no changing of mind can occur; think of it as the difference between carefully dismantling an unexploded munition in order to figure out how it works vs. a controlled explosion to minimize future risk at the expense of continued vulnerability.
Where conflict is unavoidable or deliberately fomented (eg people arguing in bad faith rather than sincerely believing falsehoods), an overtly hostile response imposes a cost on the aggressor, and when consistently and predictably applied it effectively alters the payoff matrix in an adversarial game: https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
Many people are aware of Mutual Assured Destruction as a kind of nuclear diplomacy, where you are deterred from nuking me because I've made it very clear that if you do I will take you down with me, leading to a heavily armed but uneasy peace. There are also lesser-known concepts like Power Transition Theory (about how wars originate from weaker countries challenging stronger ones) and nowadays scholars of international relations tend to adhere to Hegemonic Stability Theory (one very powerful country plays Teacher/cop) or World System Theory (every dog has its day). Developing familiarity with the broad concepts of interstate conflict (without going too deep down any intellectual rabbit hole) can be helpful in modeling smaller scale political conflicts, divisions in civil society etc.
>People accepting everything at face value is not going to stay a thing when world+dog is going to abuse their new powers. Only fools would believe what they see after they've been fooled a few times and suffered the consequences
This seems overly optimistic, and requires people to themselves suffer unambiguously from the doctored evidence.
On an individual level, regular discovery of police and prosecutorial has not led widespread reform in those areas. And on a larger scale, even after things like the Gulf of Tonkin people largely accepted claims of WMD's in Iraq.
This seems overly optimistic, and requires people to themselves suffer unambiguously from the doctored evidence.
On an individual level, regular discovery of police and prosecutorial has not led widespread reform in those areas. And on a larger scale, even after things like the Gulf of Tonkin people largely accepted claims of WMD's in Iraq.
I think people got my point, but I somehow forgot the word "misconduct" after "prosecutorial."
I don't see how you can cryptographically validate much more than "this was validated by this source before this time", which doesn't seem to solve the problem stated by the parent at all.
Maybe you could have some DRMish thing where the camera signs it with a "secret" key, but this would be terrible for various reasons and also likely broken very fast.
I don't think so. You can cryptographically sign anything much like how SSL works now. You'll have to rely on certificate authorities to assign these certs, but it works.
Videos should be cryptographically signed, and verified once online. You can spoof certs but you can't really fake the cert authority
Videos should be cryptographically signed, and verified once online. You can spoof certs but you can't really fake the cert authority
But, signing some data with a certificate only indicates that a key belongs to a particular name. It doesn't tell you whether the person or organization with that name is trustworthy.
That's what I meant by "validated by this source". But unlike with CAs, where they're (meant to) just base issuance on the simple objectively testable criterion of whether you control the domain in question, an external authority cannot easily know whether a video represents real events, whatever that means.
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Maybe a service or a public blockchain where you send a hash of a digital artefact which is signed with a time constrained key. The signed hash is attached to the digital artefact and you can check the hash on the blockchain or on the api's service.
A blockchain is more wasteful, but a service requires a leap of faith in the provider.
A blockchain is more wasteful, but a service requires a leap of faith in the provider.
If you authenticate the video comes from a credible unrelated source, that would be different than if it came from a mysterious unknown source. Additionally if you have the chain of trust, you can interrogate every step manually for credibility and consistency.
Which is somewhat helpful, but also just pushes the validation work off onto large entities of some kind.
Yes, of course.
The value of it is that the legwork only has to be done once, instead of requiring everyone to independently do it (which would basically turn every accusation of crime into a DDoS against the accused).
The value of it is that the legwork only has to be done once, instead of requiring everyone to independently do it (which would basically turn every accusation of crime into a DDoS against the accused).
It's turtles all the way down :-)
If you have cameras that sign their video feed with some id; editing software where an editor signs off on any edits, peopling handling/validating the content adding their signatures, etc. you build a chain of digitally signed content based evidence that you can follow all the way back to the original recording.
Then you can get people into court testifying whether they used a given piece of equipment to film something, edit something, etc. and you can guarantee that you are watching the exact output of that chain of recordings, edits, etc.
As I said, not a thing right now. But also not that technically hard to build. Right now we're just trusting witnesses that might be lying through their teeth without us knowing or being able to prove otherwise. Once we had such capability; anything else would be inadmissible in a court and no self respecting journalist would touch equipment without this capability. Why would they?
A deep fake would look plausible but lack this chain of evidence.
Then you can get people into court testifying whether they used a given piece of equipment to film something, edit something, etc. and you can guarantee that you are watching the exact output of that chain of recordings, edits, etc.
As I said, not a thing right now. But also not that technically hard to build. Right now we're just trusting witnesses that might be lying through their teeth without us knowing or being able to prove otherwise. Once we had such capability; anything else would be inadmissible in a court and no self respecting journalist would touch equipment without this capability. Why would they?
A deep fake would look plausible but lack this chain of evidence.
This doesn't seem significantly better than just having the organization providing a video sign it as "authentically theirs", in cases where that's possible; if you mean some sort of thing where editing software and cameras will sign things as "not tampered with", then this is effectively a DRM system and subject to the excitingly wide range of issues affecting that. This would not work for many situations, particularly the ones SamBam describes (not least due to the anonymity thing), as it is unlikely that there will conveniently be someone there with chain-of-trust-capable recording equipment and software.
Even if I don’t have the private key to sign the video nothing stops me from sending the processing element of the camera the same signals as the photo array. Even if you encrypted the connection between the processing elements and the photo array. A photosensitive array is already an exposed die so I could easily just set some needles on a few internal traces and again do the same thing.
There is no known solution to the analog hole.
There is no known solution to the analog hole.
There are people who still claim in public to believe that the US election was stolen.
Acceptance of evidence is socially constructed. If it's politically convenient to go along with the beliefs of your faction, and you're rewarded for saying increasingly ludicrous things in public, then people are going to do it.
Acceptance of evidence is socially constructed. If it's politically convenient to go along with the beliefs of your faction, and you're rewarded for saying increasingly ludicrous things in public, then people are going to do it.
Isn't this what Adobe is trying to do? [1] It was posted on HN a few times but never started a discussion that I saw. Personally, I'm scared of it although I can't put my finger on why.
1. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/11/04/content-authent...
1. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/11/04/content-authent...
> But basically it calls for chains of evidence that are cryptographically tamper proof
JusticeCoin ICO when??
JusticeCoin ICO when??
Just because some opportunists did a few ICOs does not mean all crypto is bad. Without crypto there would be no online banking, or any form of digital security, secure logins, etc. Crypto is a useful tool. Blockchains are a tool. And so are digital signatures. If you combine those tools, you can do some useful things like creating tamper proof audit logs documenting where information came from all the way from the sensor to your eyeballs. It's just a chain of digital signatures.
I tried hard to avoid using the word block chain in the original comment to avoid exactly this kind of knee jerk response. But yes, kind of an obvious tool to use to record chains of evidence in a tamper proof way. Glad you jumped to that conclusion as well.
Contrary to the popular belief, not every block chain based thing has to be an investment scam. I don't think we need a separate coin for this; just a shared repository of truth and fact with full auditing. Blockchains are kind of designed to be that. If you know a better way, please provide it.
And just to pre-empt it, obviously my preferred flavor of block chain for this would be miner free proof of stake rather than proof of work.
I tried hard to avoid using the word block chain in the original comment to avoid exactly this kind of knee jerk response. But yes, kind of an obvious tool to use to record chains of evidence in a tamper proof way. Glad you jumped to that conclusion as well.
Contrary to the popular belief, not every block chain based thing has to be an investment scam. I don't think we need a separate coin for this; just a shared repository of truth and fact with full auditing. Blockchains are kind of designed to be that. If you know a better way, please provide it.
And just to pre-empt it, obviously my preferred flavor of block chain for this would be miner free proof of stake rather than proof of work.
You jest, but distributed publicly verifiable proof that a certain piece of information existed, and was cryptographically signed at a certain date and time, and has not since been modified, is basically the only thing blockchains are actually useful for. And that sounds much like what we need here.
Even then it's not required, because it's overly distributed. You only need one copy of the Merkle tree (+ backups as necessary); to verify it hasn't been changed you don't need everyone else to copy the whole thing, just random samples of it to verify it hasn't been rewritten recently.
Deid solves this. Couple of projects are building this on various blockchains.
Lying is not a new phenomenon. Whether or not it's useful or good is a philosophical question with many answers which don't matter because if it becomes possible we will (have to) adjust and there will always be some upside if you want to see it.
Today, lying with video is really expensive, but if in the future everyone is able to do it and everyone knows that it's possible then we're back to he-said-she-said, which is how society has worked since the beginning, except the last 200-ish years. I can easily lie and say I saw Bill Clinton murder someone in 1990. Maybe in the future I'll be able to generate fake video evidence of it just as easily as I typed out that sentence. If everyone has a feel for how easy it is, then so what?
The danger is in the transition, when lying using video is affordable by a select few, and not everyone knows about it. Then it's powerful. If you're worried about that then we need to develop and teach this technology as quickly as possible. We can also do something fun like collect a time capsule of important videos before this becomes easy and timestamp it in a verifiable way (by posting the hash to a blockchain or some authority for example).
Today, lying with video is really expensive, but if in the future everyone is able to do it and everyone knows that it's possible then we're back to he-said-she-said, which is how society has worked since the beginning, except the last 200-ish years. I can easily lie and say I saw Bill Clinton murder someone in 1990. Maybe in the future I'll be able to generate fake video evidence of it just as easily as I typed out that sentence. If everyone has a feel for how easy it is, then so what?
The danger is in the transition, when lying using video is affordable by a select few, and not everyone knows about it. Then it's powerful. If you're worried about that then we need to develop and teach this technology as quickly as possible. We can also do something fun like collect a time capsule of important videos before this becomes easy and timestamp it in a verifiable way (by posting the hash to a blockchain or some authority for example).
Very good post. Another factor to consider is that a technology can be powerful when everyone does know a bit about it, but the perceptions of around it can be manipulated.
To stick with your 'Bill Clinton murdered someone in 1990' example, if you are Alex Jones and you say that then I will be skeptical gien Alex Jones' serial unreliability. But if you deepfake yourself to resemble a (hypothetical) real person called Albert Johannsen who died in 1995, and manipulate the video to look like old VHS, then the authentic-seeming testimonial can be 'discovered' by someone clearing out an attic or storage unit, and then merely publicized by you-as-Alex Jones, who merely reports the claim of the discover (actually a collaborator of course).
There is an endless variety of of applications, eg you have really committed a crime and video exists, but you produce a deepfake of yourself committing the same crime multiple different ways or the like, such that everyone thinks You Did It but nobody can agree about exactly how or to what extent and you escape justice due to the ambiguity (albeit with diminished future prospects).
To stick with your 'Bill Clinton murdered someone in 1990' example, if you are Alex Jones and you say that then I will be skeptical gien Alex Jones' serial unreliability. But if you deepfake yourself to resemble a (hypothetical) real person called Albert Johannsen who died in 1995, and manipulate the video to look like old VHS, then the authentic-seeming testimonial can be 'discovered' by someone clearing out an attic or storage unit, and then merely publicized by you-as-Alex Jones, who merely reports the claim of the discover (actually a collaborator of course).
There is an endless variety of of applications, eg you have really committed a crime and video exists, but you produce a deepfake of yourself committing the same crime multiple different ways or the like, such that everyone thinks You Did It but nobody can agree about exactly how or to what extent and you escape justice due to the ambiguity (albeit with diminished future prospects).
There are old examples with photos including newspapers/TV that used faked images, so it not something new. If there is a big punishment for intentionally faking videos and presenting them as true similar like for official documents or impersonating officials then this technology would be used a lot less in the countries where this laws apply.
But its not about evidence. Its about shifting public opinion. There is and most probably never will be a law that prevents people from sharing/liking/commenting or otherwise trigger the algorithms to spread something based on the fact that it is fake. Media also fakes stuff by simply not providing context. It need no "active" image manipulation. cutting and embedding it into other content works fine since years and apparently there is very very little that can legally be done against this. The fact that the original is out there is also rather meaningless. take for example the very popular "very fine people on both sides" quote, nothing stops you or me to listen to the full conversation. But even today from random people on the street who recognizes the quote probably 50% do not know the real context. Most probably because they simply dont care enough. They involuntary heard the quote but they will not involuntary hear the context, because one goes viral the other does not.
I was thinking at some tabloids, sure some anonymous can post fake stuff but if a journalists creates the fake image/video or documents then there should be more consequences. Also I am not from US so I am not targeting a specific camp, when I was watching news (I stopped years ago_ a lot of energy was spent on discussing insinuations, fake stuff or trivial things. I realized that politicians know how to throw the media some delicious bones to keep them busy with whatever they want.
Its called "accountability", something mainstream journalism doesn't seem to have in most places. Its just a fact that biased "news" get more clicks and thus more money. Its hard to define when "faking" starts and where its is just non-neutral reporting.
Convincingly faking photos was, until recently, pretty damn hard.
This is currently possible by just using a screenshot from a game and an app from the AppStore: https://twitter.com/nillxzero/status/1369452664979943427
This is currently possible by just using a screenshot from a game and an app from the AppStore: https://twitter.com/nillxzero/status/1369452664979943427
I think people's ability to detect fake photos have increased over the years. Consider the Cottingley Fairies photos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies), to my modern eyes, the fairies are unmistakably fake: the lighting is wrong, the resolution is wrong, the texture is wrong. However there were people who were convinced that these were real photos of fairies back then.
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> Convincingly faking photos was, until recently, pretty damn hard.
Stalin did it nearly 100 years ago.
Stalin did it nearly 100 years ago.
> it adds plausible deniability to anyone caught on camera doing anything.
I see this concern brought up frequently but I don't really think this is a big deal. In the grand scheme of things, ubiquous availability of video cameras is a fairly new development. Video cameras themself are a fairly new development.
We had a functional society before video evidence and we will have a functional society after video evidence.
There was a very short window of time in which we had somewhat reliable video evidence but it is now coming to an end and we will manage.
I see this concern brought up frequently but I don't really think this is a big deal. In the grand scheme of things, ubiquous availability of video cameras is a fairly new development. Video cameras themself are a fairly new development.
We had a functional society before video evidence and we will have a functional society after video evidence.
There was a very short window of time in which we had somewhat reliable video evidence but it is now coming to an end and we will manage.
Functional? perhaps, but I would say that if one peer into history, what one finds is suspects convicted on evidence that would seem flimsy by today's standard, and so will the future look at us.
I would think that the number of false positive convictions declines with the advancement of new technology, and that this is perhaps a temporary setback.
There was a time before fingerprints and d.n.a. evidence as well, both of which have been very helpful not only in convicting the guilty, but in exonerating the innocent, and if ever come the time that it be feasible and affordable for a layman to plant fake d.n.a. evidence and fingerprints, that would be quite a setback for criminal forensics.
I would think that the number of false positive convictions declines with the advancement of new technology, and that this is perhaps a temporary setback.
There was a time before fingerprints and d.n.a. evidence as well, both of which have been very helpful not only in convicting the guilty, but in exonerating the innocent, and if ever come the time that it be feasible and affordable for a layman to plant fake d.n.a. evidence and fingerprints, that would be quite a setback for criminal forensics.
I think it's even simpler -- liars attracting any degree of press attention won't be able to get away with it.
"That picture was Photoshopped" doesn't work as a defense because it's not too difficult for experts to tell a Photoshop from a genuine image, nor to interview someone at the scene of an alleged event and learn the truth.
The same will be true with deepfakes, only much more so, because there are so many more ways to give away that it's a deepfake. Video adds new dimensions of scrutiny like how well the fake face tracks the head, matches lighting and expression, etc. Deepfake detection is in its infancy but you can bet it'll be even more accurate than Photoshop detection.
"That picture was Photoshopped" doesn't work as a defense because it's not too difficult for experts to tell a Photoshop from a genuine image, nor to interview someone at the scene of an alleged event and learn the truth.
The same will be true with deepfakes, only much more so, because there are so many more ways to give away that it's a deepfake. Video adds new dimensions of scrutiny like how well the fake face tracks the head, matches lighting and expression, etc. Deepfake detection is in its infancy but you can bet it'll be even more accurate than Photoshop detection.
"If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous (...)"
Did we not see enough fake stories about US presidents already? The DeepFakes are not really needed to falsely accuse a politician, or to wash away the compromising material. The media can use anonymous sources to claim anything bad about any public figure without consequences. Also, they can ignore and diminish any compromising material, effectively shielding the subject. It is all about who controls the media and subsequently the narrative. DeepFake may or may not be used in court though.
This isn't much different than the problem we've had with internet for many years, from inflammatory headlines with no substance in the story on down.
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain
>pedant alert<
"...there exists a family of expressions contrasting the dissemination of lies and truths, and these adages have been evolving for more than 300 years. Jonathan Swift can properly be credited with the statement he wrote in 1710. Charles Haddon Spurgeon popularized the version he employed in a sermon in 1855, but he did not craft it. At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill." [0]
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
"...there exists a family of expressions contrasting the dissemination of lies and truths, and these adages have been evolving for more than 300 years. Jonathan Swift can properly be credited with the statement he wrote in 1710. Charles Haddon Spurgeon popularized the version he employed in a sermon in 1855, but he did not craft it. At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill." [0]
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
I like to look further into the past for ruminations that, while not as concise, explore the same territory. A passage from the Aeneid says -
Rumour the swiftest of all evils. Speed lends her strength, and she winds vigour as she goes; small at first through fear, soon she mounts up to heaven, and walks the ground with head hidden in the clouds. Mother Earth, provoked to anger against the gods, brought her forth last, they, say as sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and fleet of wing, a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many watchful eyes beneath – wondrous to tell – as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth, she flies through the gloom, screeching, and droops not her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on guard on high rooftop or lofty turrets, and afrights great cities, clinging to the false and the wrong, yet heralding truth.
Rumour the swiftest of all evils. Speed lends her strength, and she winds vigour as she goes; small at first through fear, soon she mounts up to heaven, and walks the ground with head hidden in the clouds. Mother Earth, provoked to anger against the gods, brought her forth last, they, say as sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and fleet of wing, a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many watchful eyes beneath – wondrous to tell – as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth, she flies through the gloom, screeching, and droops not her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on guard on high rooftop or lofty turrets, and afrights great cities, clinging to the false and the wrong, yet heralding truth.
There's plenty to worry about with deepfakes. They enable what amounts to a man-in-the-middle attack in real life. Imagine an AI able to break into the conversation and maintain two different communication threads with each party.
Imagine what happens when you present someone with the voice and/or image of their loved one and pitch a product, plant an idea, or execute fraud? What happens when an emotionally unstable person is harassed by the voice of their lover or even a deceased relative.
Now imagine that you could rent some computing power and perform a million of those frauds in parallel. Psychological warfare will never be the same.
When people tell me the robots are going to kill us someday, I always reply that they won't have to, they'll just need to convince us to kill ourselves.
Imagine what happens when you present someone with the voice and/or image of their loved one and pitch a product, plant an idea, or execute fraud? What happens when an emotionally unstable person is harassed by the voice of their lover or even a deceased relative.
Now imagine that you could rent some computing power and perform a million of those frauds in parallel. Psychological warfare will never be the same.
When people tell me the robots are going to kill us someday, I always reply that they won't have to, they'll just need to convince us to kill ourselves.
If we had video footage of, say, a politician doing something clearly illegal on camera, then it's simply the word of the politician against the word of the source -- the latter of whom may need to remain anonymous.
-- How often are politicians caught on camera doing illegal things now? I don't recall this happening very often. The bad behavior on camera I remember from way bad when ("Abscam") was an FBI entrapment scheme so you have more than just the video as testament.
-- The most common "guilty by camera" situation in recent years have been cops and when a scene from an event where other facts are known gets filmed, you need far more than face manipulation to make a fake that's going to be plausible.
-- How often are politicians caught on camera doing illegal things now? I don't recall this happening very often. The bad behavior on camera I remember from way bad when ("Abscam") was an FBI entrapment scheme so you have more than just the video as testament.
-- The most common "guilty by camera" situation in recent years have been cops and when a scene from an event where other facts are known gets filmed, you need far more than face manipulation to make a fake that's going to be plausible.
Related:
Chinese deepfakes are going viral, and Beijing is freaking out
https://www.protocol.com/china/chinese-deepfakes-regulators-...
Chinese deepfakes are going viral, and Beijing is freaking out
https://www.protocol.com/china/chinese-deepfakes-regulators-...
I'm comforted by history. Shopped photos don't mean we distrust photos entirely, but we're now generally "herd immune" to silly things in a photo because we all know that it came from somebody's edits.
This will hold true for deepfakes. It means that we might start judging the character of a person, their surrounding information (e.g., who they know who vouches for them) instead of the core information itself. It'll be a bit like how cybersecurity involves trusting the trust of trustworthy sources: not perfect, but doable.
This will hold true for deepfakes. It means that we might start judging the character of a person, their surrounding information (e.g., who they know who vouches for them) instead of the core information itself. It'll be a bit like how cybersecurity involves trusting the trust of trustworthy sources: not perfect, but doable.
Personally I think this might be a good thing. The alternative is a squeaky clean politician that has no character, mistakes, or experiences.
> I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.
By the time this becomes possible, it will be widespread knowledge that deepfakes exist.
> I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.
By the time this becomes possible, it will be widespread knowledge that deepfakes exist.
It's already possible. Look at the Tom Cruise deepfakes. It just requires the power to get a great actor of similar build, and lots of processing power, both of which are within the reach of a state, easily.
And I don't think knowing the deepfakes exists will convince everyone. Plenty of fake photos already get passed around on Facebook and what-not, even though Photoshop has existed for decades.
And I don't think knowing the deepfakes exists will convince everyone. Plenty of fake photos already get passed around on Facebook and what-not, even though Photoshop has existed for decades.
Even with widespread knowledge that deepfakes exists, you can still make credible videos of people that damages them.
For example, picture a video of Trump saying in private committee 'I want to fuck that nigress'. That would be extremely heinous, and probably be a fake, but can you be 100% sure from a president that also said 'grab them by the pussy' ?
The line between real and fake news is becoming more and more tenuous.
For example, picture a video of Trump saying in private committee 'I want to fuck that nigress'. That would be extremely heinous, and probably be a fake, but can you be 100% sure from a president that also said 'grab them by the pussy' ?
The line between real and fake news is becoming more and more tenuous.
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Wait till we have real-time deep fake video and audio. That will twist the world, especially the remote work/schooling/presence one.
So we'll return to how guilt or provenance were determined for thousands of years. We've only had "reliable" non-human witnesses for a few decades.
And even with deep fakes, we'll still have fingerprints, DNA, phone and car tracking, facial ID systems in public places, etc.
And even with deep fakes, we'll still have fingerprints, DNA, phone and car tracking, facial ID systems in public places, etc.
The problem is much bigger, i can now use deep fake to present myself in a very relaxed way with a lot of confidedence and great facial expressions. Now i can deliver video presentations like a champ, just improve myself. Its me and not me.
Machines that write believable stories can fabricate entire realities. The deepfake stuff is just a very small part of it. How much of the information we use to make our daily decisions on come from unverified sources on the internet? How many of the "trusted" sources are just paid PR for the rich and powerful?
The deepfake stuff can be solved with public/private key crypto anyways.
The deepfake stuff can be solved with public/private key crypto anyways.
How do you solve deepfakes with asymmetric cryptography, without just trusting the person the videos purport to be of to say (cryptographically) whether something is real or not (which is not a good solution)?
How will the adversary get the deep fake into circulation? If it suddenly appears on social media from some sketchy account, and in the meantime the White House press pool points out that they were with the President in a completely different place, it will blow up. And it would have to be technically perfect or it would fall apart on analysis.
The plausible deniability of camera footage always existed, even in the film days. There are lots of tricks to fake things on camera. Neural networks do make it much easier, but it's not new.
That said though, make forging evidence a crime of the utmost seriousness. Also, /more/ cameras always makes deepfaking harder.
That said though, make forging evidence a crime of the utmost seriousness. Also, /more/ cameras always makes deepfaking harder.
Would better cameras circumvent the issue?
Sure a deepfake is convincing on a low resolution compressed video, but what about a 4k or 8k video where lens distortion and fine details are everywhere? I don't have a lot of confidence that facial pores could be convincingly simulated.
Sure a deepfake is convincing on a low resolution compressed video, but what about a 4k or 8k video where lens distortion and fine details are everywhere? I don't have a lot of confidence that facial pores could be convincingly simulated.
Generating those low level feature is actually a much easier problem. Here is an example I found using a google image search for "upscaling":
https://copyrightimage.com/2018/05/09/better-image-upscaling...
This is from 2018, which is an eternity for machine learning research.
https://copyrightimage.com/2018/05/09/better-image-upscaling...
This is from 2018, which is an eternity for machine learning research.
But those kinds of things also could reveal the fraud - adding a blemish where the real person doesn't have one, features that move around frame by frame in a video. The difference is things which look believable might be details which are trivially verifiably false - sure you can simulate my face and my voice, but can you accurately simulate every pore on my nose.
Here's a random example:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6619284
They can detect a persons pulse from tiny variations in head movement, I'd like to see a deepfake simulate that! And it's not about this one thing, I'm sure you could design against these tiny measurements one by one... the key is that there are a lot of them and a deepfake is going to have to simulate an enormous amount of data in order to pass what will become trivial tests for realism. This is made a much easier weapon against deepfakes when you have progressively better videos.
Here's a random example:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6619284
They can detect a persons pulse from tiny variations in head movement, I'd like to see a deepfake simulate that! And it's not about this one thing, I'm sure you could design against these tiny measurements one by one... the key is that there are a lot of them and a deepfake is going to have to simulate an enormous amount of data in order to pass what will become trivial tests for realism. This is made a much easier weapon against deepfakes when you have progressively better videos.
But are most secret camera recordings using high-res cameras?
Let's say there was video recording of a politician in a hotel in Russia, to pick a random example. We would already expect it to be low-quality video even if it was real.
Let's say there was video recording of a politician in a hotel in Russia, to pick a random example. We would already expect it to be low-quality video even if it was real.
>Let's say there was video recording of a politician in a hotel in Russia, to pick a random example. We would already expect it to be low-quality video even if it was real.
But why? The cheap last-gen iPhone in my pocket can take 4k videos, almost everybody has something like it in their pockets. Quality is cheap and will continue spreading, fuzzy video that looks like it was taken on a 90s camcorder will itself seem suspicious.
But why? The cheap last-gen iPhone in my pocket can take 4k videos, almost everybody has something like it in their pockets. Quality is cheap and will continue spreading, fuzzy video that looks like it was taken on a 90s camcorder will itself seem suspicious.
A single video itself would not meet a preponderance of evidence required to secure a conviction.
Also,as most states are 2-party consent for video recording the scenario you described would have a huge evidentiary rules hurdle regardless of the deepfake capability.
Also,as most states are 2-party consent for video recording the scenario you described would have a huge evidentiary rules hurdle regardless of the deepfake capability.
"News" organizations already edit video to maximize emotional impact to viewers, often in misleading ways.
I don't see this as a paradigm shift as much as a continued slide down the slippery slope of normalized propaganda.
I don't see this as a paradigm shift as much as a continued slide down the slippery slope of normalized propaganda.
It also has the potential to devalue real evidence in the form of existing compromising material unless people have done things like adding cryptographic hashes to immutable public records with attestations.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Having so much on video in the first place is a pretty recent phenomenon. 30 years ago, politicians had a very low chance of being caught on camera at all.
It comes to min that I know of few politica scandals that were revealed by anyone caught on camera.
Any evidence relied on in court needs a chain of custody, and pictures and videos are no different. It's why screenshots are generally inadmissible in court: anyone could have edited them.
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More megapixels!
I used to be more worried about this, but one of the things Trump proved is you can have unquestionably authentic video evidence of lies and many people won’t care.
The people that care about figuring out the truth and critical thinking will probably still figure it out.
Others will believe crazy things for stupid tribal reasons despite contrary evidence.
The people that care about figuring out the truth and critical thinking will probably still figure it out.
Others will believe crazy things for stupid tribal reasons despite contrary evidence.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog [ 1993 ]
[ 1993 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
[ 1993 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
[2021] On the internet, it doesn't matter that you are a dog
Thanks goodness. I was getting nervous. Have a good Friday everyone, I'm feeling a little shaggy, so I'm off to the groomer, er, barber.
> [2021] On the internet, it doesn't matter that you are a dog
Wishful thinking. A cursory glance at twitter or facebook will show you that it very much matters what tribe you're from.
Wishful thinking. A cursory glance at twitter or facebook will show you that it very much matters what tribe you're from.
Reminds me of a mousepad my dad received as am early customer of Amazon.
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
There should be a Catfishing award created and given to this guy. His motives were really very innocent, which adds to the beauty of the ruse.
It is catfishing if it's not done to get something out of a specific victim?
In this case it’s attention.
If using a filter to improve your looks to gain attention is categorized as catfishing, then suddenly every single celebrity and model is in that category.
The guy changed his looks using a filter, it’s nothing that haven’t been done to death by the kardashians. The novel element here is just the sharp contrast between his before and after personas.
The guy changed his looks using a filter, it’s nothing that haven’t been done to death by the kardashians. The novel element here is just the sharp contrast between his before and after personas.
It's more than just enhancing appearance for the heterosexual males who watched his content...
Everything in the photo is real except for the facial appearance. This is simply a bike rider and his bike travelling across Japan while taking selfies. Mistaking it for a bike rider and her bike should not change much.
If an heterosexual man pleased himself while watching that totally safe for work content, it's on him and no one else. The body did not even change and the photos are not suggestive at all.
If an heterosexual man pleased himself while watching that totally safe for work content, it's on him and no one else. The body did not even change and the photos are not suggestive at all.
If he actually catfished I don't support it, but I feel like if he was doing it only for attention it's not such a bad thing.
After all yes if you're an old guy people will discriminate against you in who they follow, and among other things, he just exposed that fact for the world to realize.
After all yes if you're an old guy people will discriminate against you in who they follow, and among other things, he just exposed that fact for the world to realize.
Reminds me of Gay Girl In Damascus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gay_Girl_In_Damascus
Fun fact, the lesbian girl who outed him also turned out to be a middle-aged dude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gay_Girl_In_Damascus
Fun fact, the lesbian girl who outed him also turned out to be a middle-aged dude.
NEO: Right now, we're inside a computer program?
MORPHEUS: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different, the plugs in your arms and head are gone, your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call 'residual self-image'. It is the mental projection of your digital self.
NEO: This... this isn't real?
MORPHEUS: What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know.
MORPHEUS: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different, the plugs in your arms and head are gone, your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call 'residual self-image'. It is the mental projection of your digital self.
NEO: This... this isn't real?
MORPHEUS: What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know.
Ignorance is bliss.
The rise of normies on the internet has shown that they have forgotten the cardinal rule of the internet. No one is who they say they are.
With this clear example of separation between individual and identity, it calls into question the need for real celebrities. What difference does it make if you're watching/following someone real/digital?
https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/lil-miquela-digital-avatar-in...
https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/lil-miquela-digital-avatar-in...
Iirc Gorillaz and Vocaloids were massively successful experiments in this domain.
I think some of the critique in the former was lost (i.e. Weezer), but it definitely opened the gates for popular digital avatars.
I think some of the critique in the former was lost (i.e. Weezer), but it definitely opened the gates for popular digital avatars.
There is a streamer who has a very expensive live tracking setup who actually streams entirely from inside (what is basically) a game emulating a stream room. The content itself isn't really my cup of tea, but the visuals are already beyond the uncanny valley.
https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/who-is-code-miko-the-virtual-s...
https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/who-is-code-miko-the-virtual-s...
"Hololive" is another example. They're all real people, but using digital appearances and personas.
He’s got great hair.
Not very hackery - but that was my prominent thought at the end of the article.
I mean maybe there is a tech point, that hair has historically been a pretty hard thing to model, so I'd presume hard to correct with a filter - so maybe its his luscious locks that helped sell the ruse (and I'll need to wait another few years to have my hairline pseudo-restored)
I mean maybe there is a tech point, that hair has historically been a pretty hard thing to model, so I'd presume hard to correct with a filter - so maybe its his luscious locks that helped sell the ruse (and I'll need to wait another few years to have my hairline pseudo-restored)
FaceApp also has a hair filter. You can change the color, make it curly, longer, etc.
In fact, it's popular in the transgender community. People can experiment with their new gender identity with a few clicks. You can transform a bald masculine figure into a soft model with long hair that retains some of your bone structure (and vice versa). Here is a tweet of one such transformation done on an actor using a stack of FaceApp filters: https://twitter.com/KaiqueBanks/status/1276185681660968961
Here's the ad for the hairs feature: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=600497397462983 (Apologies for linking to Facebook, it seems that they only advertise features there.)
In fact, it's popular in the transgender community. People can experiment with their new gender identity with a few clicks. You can transform a bald masculine figure into a soft model with long hair that retains some of your bone structure (and vice versa). Here is a tweet of one such transformation done on an actor using a stack of FaceApp filters: https://twitter.com/KaiqueBanks/status/1276185681660968961
Here's the ad for the hairs feature: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=600497397462983 (Apologies for linking to Facebook, it seems that they only advertise features there.)
Perhaps he's been using Christopher Walken's technique of pulling on your own hair for five minutes every morning to encourage blood circulation in your scalp? :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czK6ReYbaTk (Conan, 1m43s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czK6ReYbaTk (Conan, 1m43s)
I've seen also very realistic wigs in a Japanese video so it could be fake too.
The only Instagram influencers I follow are people I know in real life. So I know that the people are real. But even then, the content they post is often framed in an unrealistic way and sometimes outright fake or edited. I know this because I've traveled with them, and seen the real side of all of the same things that they post about.
I can understand why people find Instagram influencers entertaining, especially the ones that appear to be attractive women. It's obviously entertaining enough that it's a realistic career option for many attractive women. But to me, believing that what you see on Instagram is real life is like someone in the 90s believing that tabloid newspapers at grocery store checkout aisles were real life. We should all know better.
I can understand why people find Instagram influencers entertaining, especially the ones that appear to be attractive women. It's obviously entertaining enough that it's a realistic career option for many attractive women. But to me, believing that what you see on Instagram is real life is like someone in the 90s believing that tabloid newspapers at grocery store checkout aisles were real life. We should all know better.
It seems like his motivation was primarily increased online engagement.
As human socialization occurs increasingly in digital spaces, will be interesting to see if there is a rise in trans people who only wish to transition using technology without wanting to change their own analog physical appearance.
Similarly, I wonder if there are remote workers who use filters like these to consistently present an idealized version of themselves professionally.
I predict within the next 20 years, having an avatar that is more attractive than your true physical form will become normalized. Perhaps some middle aged people will only present as their 20 year old selves online. I'm sure transracial avatars will be a controversial issue.
Maybe I should short cosmetics and go long on GPU manufacturing.
As human socialization occurs increasingly in digital spaces, will be interesting to see if there is a rise in trans people who only wish to transition using technology without wanting to change their own analog physical appearance.
Similarly, I wonder if there are remote workers who use filters like these to consistently present an idealized version of themselves professionally.
I predict within the next 20 years, having an avatar that is more attractive than your true physical form will become normalized. Perhaps some middle aged people will only present as their 20 year old selves online. I'm sure transracial avatars will be a controversial issue.
Maybe I should short cosmetics and go long on GPU manufacturing.
> Perhaps some middle aged people will only present as their 20 year old selves online.
Oh, this for sure is already happening. A lot of people's profile pictures (for example on twitter) are frozen in time some 10 years ago.
Oh, this for sure is already happening. A lot of people's profile pictures (for example on twitter) are frozen in time some 10 years ago.
> I predict within the next 20 years, having an avatar that is more attractive than your true physical form will become normalized.
That's already pretty normalized looking at how even a lot of older generations are carefully curating their social media presences to make them look as perfect and impressive as possible.
That's already pretty normalized looking at how even a lot of older generations are carefully curating their social media presences to make them look as perfect and impressive as possible.
Maybe it's the power of suggestion, but the photos looked instantly fake to me.
In any case, it seems fair that a person represent their online image any way they like. Who's to say how this man 'identifies'? He does.
In any case, it seems fair that a person represent their online image any way they like. Who's to say how this man 'identifies'? He does.
If you're on IG and TikTok regularly, it might be harder to tell. Pretty much everybody is using filters. Even heavy filters that basically change how you look aren't a breach of etiquette, since it's all 'just for fun'.
Agreed, I just don't see the problem here.
Even from the perspective of, "he's just doing this to get more clicks," who cares? I just don't see how it's a problem for him to present himself however he wants to present himself.
At some point for some people "digital avatar" became a dirty word, and I don't understand it. I don't think he owes anyone online his real-world face. He doesn't owe them some kind of disclaimer either. If people online are following him because they think they have some kind of parasocial relationship to a girl, that's a personal issue they should think about on their end. And in any case, everyone online already has a persona they project; I have a persona and a set of characteristics and attitudes I project when I post on HN even though I don't hide my real name or identity. Knowing me on HN is not the same thing as knowing me in real life; if I'm allowed to do that, why can't he?
So he extends that to his face. Maybe he(she) is a woman but hasn't chosen to let people know yet. Maybe he's genderfluid in different places. Or maybe he just wants to have a woman avatar on social accounts for whatever reason. None of that is a problem.
This is fine even though he seems to identify as a man outside of the Internet; he doesn't have to identify as a woman to do this. Unless he's running around doing something genuinely harmful or trying to troll women, then let him choose how he presents himself online regardless of whether or not it matches his normal day-to-day gender identity.
"Getting more clicks on Instagram" isn't a horrible crime or deception that we should be concerned about.
Even from the perspective of, "he's just doing this to get more clicks," who cares? I just don't see how it's a problem for him to present himself however he wants to present himself.
At some point for some people "digital avatar" became a dirty word, and I don't understand it. I don't think he owes anyone online his real-world face. He doesn't owe them some kind of disclaimer either. If people online are following him because they think they have some kind of parasocial relationship to a girl, that's a personal issue they should think about on their end. And in any case, everyone online already has a persona they project; I have a persona and a set of characteristics and attitudes I project when I post on HN even though I don't hide my real name or identity. Knowing me on HN is not the same thing as knowing me in real life; if I'm allowed to do that, why can't he?
So he extends that to his face. Maybe he(she) is a woman but hasn't chosen to let people know yet. Maybe he's genderfluid in different places. Or maybe he just wants to have a woman avatar on social accounts for whatever reason. None of that is a problem.
This is fine even though he seems to identify as a man outside of the Internet; he doesn't have to identify as a woman to do this. Unless he's running around doing something genuinely harmful or trying to troll women, then let him choose how he presents himself online regardless of whether or not it matches his normal day-to-day gender identity.
"Getting more clicks on Instagram" isn't a horrible crime or deception that we should be concerned about.
Agreed. And honestly as a trans woman I hate seeing this kind of thing. The only reason people are paying attention to this is that society has turned the idea of men (ie assigned male at birth) identifying or representing themselves as women into a joke. The amount of random strangers who laugh at me on a daily basis is absolutely disheartening, it's really an awful thing to have to deal with (same with being threatened, assaulted, denied service which I have no legal protection against, not being able to use public restrooms)...
If you're interested Netflix has a wonderful documentary called Disclosure [0] about the media's portrayal of trans people, women in particular. I highly recommend!
0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8637504/
If you're interested Netflix has a wonderful documentary called Disclosure [0] about the media's portrayal of trans people, women in particular. I highly recommend!
0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8637504/
Wouldn't stuff like this make it less likely for people to be shocked by gender nonconforming folks?
I don't really buy that these stories help. The article plays this off as a surprising, weird event that people should be surprised by.
And while I'm assuming the person in question identifies as a man based on what he says, he(she) might not, and might just be in the closet saying the right things because he knows the environment he lives in. If that's the case, the article might even be harmful since it reinforces that this is a persona and never even touches on the idea that it might be a representation of his(her) actual gender identity.
But in either case, the big thing to me is that the article is harmful because it makes it everyone else's business. It creates this world where people are expected to validate that avatars online match physical bodies. Another way of looking at the question of whether or not this person is in the closet is that none of us know this person in real life, and it's kind of messed up that we're jumping behind the veil he put up so that we can validate whether or not he's transgender or nonbinary or what.
He doesn't owe us any of that. He doesn't owe us coming out of the closet, or staying in the closet, or explaining whether or not there is a closet, or justifying what he's doing. Even in the real world when we see nonbinary people, we're not owed some kind of explanation of their entire world; not unless that's something they want to share. So the article turns something that should be a personal decision into a curiosity that needs to be explained, to the point where the media actually tracked this person down for comment rather than just leaving him alone.
An article that talked to someone like this and (consensually) explored his motivations on his terms might be normalizing, but to me this comes off as the opposite -- it comes off as reinforcing that people should be shocked by gender fluidity.
And while I'm assuming the person in question identifies as a man based on what he says, he(she) might not, and might just be in the closet saying the right things because he knows the environment he lives in. If that's the case, the article might even be harmful since it reinforces that this is a persona and never even touches on the idea that it might be a representation of his(her) actual gender identity.
But in either case, the big thing to me is that the article is harmful because it makes it everyone else's business. It creates this world where people are expected to validate that avatars online match physical bodies. Another way of looking at the question of whether or not this person is in the closet is that none of us know this person in real life, and it's kind of messed up that we're jumping behind the veil he put up so that we can validate whether or not he's transgender or nonbinary or what.
He doesn't owe us any of that. He doesn't owe us coming out of the closet, or staying in the closet, or explaining whether or not there is a closet, or justifying what he's doing. Even in the real world when we see nonbinary people, we're not owed some kind of explanation of their entire world; not unless that's something they want to share. So the article turns something that should be a personal decision into a curiosity that needs to be explained, to the point where the media actually tracked this person down for comment rather than just leaving him alone.
An article that talked to someone like this and (consensually) explored his motivations on his terms might be normalizing, but to me this comes off as the opposite -- it comes off as reinforcing that people should be shocked by gender fluidity.
There's nothing in this article that talks about gender non conforming people an the issues that affect us.. unless I'm missing something. People who aren't already educated are just going to have a laugh and leave with the same preconceived notions that they came in with. This person is being portrayed as someone who is misrepresenting themselves, not someone who identifies as female, and in fact that's what he says he's doing.
There are some face-adjusting filters that make people "prettier" on both instagram and snapchat that immediately make them look like recognizable-looking aliens to me, but they're common enough that I could see people missing that it's actually a more extreme change in this case.
Everyone big on instagram is fake. But people assume it's large asymmetric women faking, not men.
Nobody cares about the fact pictures are fake. 90% of instagram pictures are fake.
The only problem is he/she is not "real" woman. This person is clearly presenting themselves under different gender, and here is large number of people harassing them/her/him.
The only problem is he/she is not "real" woman. This person is clearly presenting themselves under different gender, and here is large number of people harassing them/her/him.
This goes to show how dangerous deep fakes can be when people are willing to believe. Several people had called him out already, and they had provided evidence, but thousands of people still believed he was a young woman.
It's only "dangerous" if being a young woman is somehow an intrinsically important transactional part of following the account -- if the followers feel like they're being defrauded or something.
But honestly, the people who have that association or who view following an account as some kind of relationship should be taking a look inward about why the physical characteristics of a biker are so important to them in the first place. I don't feel a huge need to make it easier for people to do something that I feel like they shouldn't be doing in the first place.
Down that road lies the segment of the Internet that gets mad when they find out a woman streamer is married because "she should have been upfront about it." And I just don't want to touch that part of the Internet with a 10 foot pole. I'm not worried about their ability to form unhealthy, one-sided relationships with people they've never met.
But honestly, the people who have that association or who view following an account as some kind of relationship should be taking a look inward about why the physical characteristics of a biker are so important to them in the first place. I don't feel a huge need to make it easier for people to do something that I feel like they shouldn't be doing in the first place.
Down that road lies the segment of the Internet that gets mad when they find out a woman streamer is married because "she should have been upfront about it." And I just don't want to touch that part of the Internet with a 10 foot pole. I'm not worried about their ability to form unhealthy, one-sided relationships with people they've never met.
So? That's the point. He is what he represents himself to be. Not what we want him to be.
> The man reportedly said that nobody wants to see an "uncle", and so, he turned himself into a "beautiful woman" so that his photos would be popular.
He self identifies as a 50 year old man. He admits that he just did it for attention near the end of the article.
He self identifies as a 50 year old man. He admits that he just did it for attention near the end of the article.
So? He wanted to make a point, or he wanted attention, what did anyone lose by him pretending to be a young woman and get attention?
Instagram biker chicks might be annoyed because he's a competitor, but anyone else?
Instagram biker chicks might be annoyed because he's a competitor, but anyone else?
I assume all the instagram biker chicks are no turning off their filters and removing makeup, right?
I'm not going to assume anything about this person's gender, but I think it's worth mentioning that the Japanese government uses violence to erase transgender existence [1], so it may not be a safe place to be non-cisgender.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/9ef16f52e9b94b9a838b17a63c6c1e8d
[1] https://apnews.com/article/9ef16f52e9b94b9a838b17a63c6c1e8d
Unfortunately, there are quite a few things Japan has tried to erase through history, with varying degrees of success. "Silence" is a pretty good novel that touches on one of those things (beware of descriptions of torture / extreme violence).
He self identifies as a 50 year old man who identifies as a young beautiful woman, not just as a 50 year old man.
Why does anyone care
I hope there's a young female Japanese biker using a 50-year-old man's face on their instagram posts.
That is a fun take on "projection." :-) I expect to see a lot more of this with the wide availability of GAN driven image networks that can change faces/voices etc. Its like autotune for looks. Given how he was found I expect a software update that removes an person image in a mirror making them effectively vampires :-).
For the youngsters in the crowd, we used to have these phone numbers you could call where you could be connected with a "sexy woman who would talk to you and fantasize with you." Guess what, the only requirement for the job was "sexy voice" not actually being all that sexy. Poor chaps paying $1/minute to have phone sex with 45 - 50 year old women who not only have sexy voices but know a thing or two about sex.
"Influencers" are, as a money making entity, in the same genus as phone sex, product salespeople, and actors. They are there to create an attractive illusion that increases sales/market activity around an attached product.
For the youngsters in the crowd, we used to have these phone numbers you could call where you could be connected with a "sexy woman who would talk to you and fantasize with you." Guess what, the only requirement for the job was "sexy voice" not actually being all that sexy. Poor chaps paying $1/minute to have phone sex with 45 - 50 year old women who not only have sexy voices but know a thing or two about sex.
"Influencers" are, as a money making entity, in the same genus as phone sex, product salespeople, and actors. They are there to create an attractive illusion that increases sales/market activity around an attached product.
> Guess what, the only requirement for the job was "sexy voice" not actually being all that sexy.
As I remember it, not even that was a requirement. In Germany a lot of these services ran the ads in a dual way: The big number advertised was for men to call and cost money, and then somewhere in the corner was a number that was free to call for women.
They didn't really screen that women number, teenage boy me had no problems at all getting connected to poor guys paying per minute, anybody could just call there as long as their voice sounded high-pitched/female enough.
As I remember it, not even that was a requirement. In Germany a lot of these services ran the ads in a dual way: The big number advertised was for men to call and cost money, and then somewhere in the corner was a number that was free to call for women.
They didn't really screen that women number, teenage boy me had no problems at all getting connected to poor guys paying per minute, anybody could just call there as long as their voice sounded high-pitched/female enough.
Counting 215 comments and nobody quoted Neil Stephenson yet. The books are worth reading, dear young ones.
"The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. ...
Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these."
"The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. ...
Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these."
I'm hoping it ends up the 50yo is also a fake ...
I'm not saying I wouldn't be fooled, but the female face looks too smooth to me, not in a make-up way but in a post-processed separately to the rest of the image way (doesn't appear to have the noise that the rest of the image does?).
I'm not saying I wouldn't be fooled, but the female face looks too smooth to me, not in a make-up way but in a post-processed separately to the rest of the image way (doesn't appear to have the noise that the rest of the image does?).
That’s how most of Snapchat/Instagram and other selfies look to me. I assume whatever app people are using are all creating “fake” pictures smoothing their skin and whatnot.
A lot of phones now come with this feature in the default camera app. I had a family member uploading group photos that all had smoothing applied to our skin. They said it made us look better. I found it offensive.
Especially since it just makes you look "worse" by comparison in real life. I've actually had this happen to me: meeting a friend I've only seen online for the better part of 10 years. My brain stalled upon seeing them because I knew who they were, but they just look so much worse than their pictures.
Lots of people post-process their photos, especially female influencers who use their beauty to attract subscribers.
Nobody's surprised by that anymore though; skin care and makeup hides a lot of sin, and photo filters are commonplace. /r/instagramreality has a LOT of that.
Honestly, good for him. I don't see any reason why the whole influencer culture should be dominated by specific people just because they're lucky to have the prerequisite looks.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-int... - "there are no girls on the internet" meme/trope dates back to Usenet 1992
[then again, why believe that 50 year old man photo is the person's real face or hair? Surely media photos have been Photoshopped since long before face-swapping apps?]
[then again, why believe that 50 year old man photo is the person's real face or hair? Surely media photos have been Photoshopped since long before face-swapping apps?]
it is damn nice hair for a 50 year old...
The only thing that worries me about all this is that so many people have thought that those photos were real when they are clearly false, they have many symmetrical and light imperfections. It worries me how people are losing perception and can't tell the real from the unreal. Those filters aren't that perfect yet.
Can’t say that thread is missing the point, but he doesn’t look like a young girl, because what you see is not a young girl either. It is a simulation of what a young girl would look like if she applied a ton of made up makeup (hence the word) to look attractive.
If you’re asking yourself why females tend to have more followers than males, and males get more followers when disguised as a female, remember that the “attractive” part is neither female nor male, not even human. It is our notion of perfect attractiveness that is completely made up and females exploited that since forever because sexual behavior asymmetry (women attract, men approach).
In a world without makeup, uv filters, clothes and odor deception, almost everyone is a red uncle biker.
If you’re asking yourself why females tend to have more followers than males, and males get more followers when disguised as a female, remember that the “attractive” part is neither female nor male, not even human. It is our notion of perfect attractiveness that is completely made up and females exploited that since forever because sexual behavior asymmetry (women attract, men approach).
In a world without makeup, uv filters, clothes and odor deception, almost everyone is a red uncle biker.
A great freedom :). Reminds me of harroway's cyborg manifesto. It's not an exact match, but interesting to read along this phenomenon:
> Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.
He of course chose the goddess, but still breaks the gender dualism and got rid of his age.
> Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.
He of course chose the goddess, but still breaks the gender dualism and got rid of his age.
This meaning of "uncle" should make it into mainstream english.
My cynical take on this is that eventually ageism in tech won't be a thing with the combination of wfh and everyone being a young 20 something tech person online.
Ah, Japan, where even middle-aged men want to be cute girls. I'm reminded of a few years ago when a popular "female" Vtuber let his motion capture software slip and accidentally revealed his face as that of a middle-aged otaku. Since then I guess there's been an acceptance of kayfabe among Vtuber stans.
Hololive seemed to have completely bypassed the problem by creating completely fictional characters voiced by... someone.
Great idea for an A/B test.
Why just A/B?
Could generate trees of filters applied to your content, with a separate channel output on each leaf.
Breed the filters that work, kill off the ones that don't get the clicks. SEO for your appearance.
Could generate trees of filters applied to your content, with a separate channel output on each leaf.
Breed the filters that work, kill off the ones that don't get the clicks. SEO for your appearance.
At that point you'd be better served using generated humans https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/digital-humans
I approach the Internet as - you are all digital humans. You've passed, but not all digital humans have passed the Turing Test.
I'm not buying it. Notice that the girl's hair covers her ear in different ways each time, so it can't be her hair and ear, it has to be his.
But her hair doesn't actually match his hair. So that's not it, either.
These shows are all about shock, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were fooled as well.
But her hair doesn't actually match his hair. So that's not it, either.
These shows are all about shock, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were fooled as well.
I wonder too - last time I tried faceapp it did a very convincing gender swap on me, but the face changed significantly with every photo I took - depending on angle, lighting, who knows? I began to suspect to wasn't making 'me' into a woman at all, just superimposing a female face that fit. (One of the best transforms actually looked like my wife, which was a moment for Freudian reflection).
Anyway, unless faceapp has improved a lot, I'm sceptical this guy was always able to show as the same 'person'.
Anyway, unless faceapp has improved a lot, I'm sceptical this guy was always able to show as the same 'person'.
faceapp has improved A LOT. also there is a paid version with more functions
The faceapp thing does hair as well though. It's probably less jarring if it has 'close' hair to work with to begin with.
Maybe the "reflection" they used to catch him was the fake, and all the others are real.
Male or female, if you're very good looking, you probably could achieve some degree of success as a social media "influencer" these days.
As people have said, thus is human nature since forever.
With the rise of digital avatars that are testing the limits of photorealism, I'm wondering if your actual physical appearance starts to become less of a limiting factor for things like this though.
Heck, there is now an entire K-pop idol girl group launching composed entirely of digital characters. While not 100% perfect, I'm shocked at how realistic they look and act:
https://www.koreaboo.com/news/ai-kpop-girl-group-deep-real-a...
With the rise of digital avatars that are testing the limits of photorealism, I'm wondering if your actual physical appearance starts to become less of a limiting factor for things like this though.
Heck, there is now an entire K-pop idol girl group launching composed entirely of digital characters. While not 100% perfect, I'm shocked at how realistic they look and act:
https://www.koreaboo.com/news/ai-kpop-girl-group-deep-real-a...
This is probably tied to his sexuality.
Not sure if the Woke crowd have organised an outrage yet.
But it's something to think about. Woke people are evil which unfortunately means we've stopped a lot of forward or intelligent thinking, which we shouldn't do.
I think when you publish publicly you lose certain rights. And that's what Twitter users are, mini newspapers. So I don't mind him/her, him and her, being outed. But it's also interesting to think about. Avatar rights and our relationship to our avatars.
It's hard to understand yet what all this means. Or what's going on here. Maybe it was for money.
If you like reading fiction, Claire Norths 'Touch' really makes you think what is life without a body. Her stuff is quite novel.
Not sure if the Woke crowd have organised an outrage yet.
But it's something to think about. Woke people are evil which unfortunately means we've stopped a lot of forward or intelligent thinking, which we shouldn't do.
I think when you publish publicly you lose certain rights. And that's what Twitter users are, mini newspapers. So I don't mind him/her, him and her, being outed. But it's also interesting to think about. Avatar rights and our relationship to our avatars.
It's hard to understand yet what all this means. Or what's going on here. Maybe it was for money.
If you like reading fiction, Claire Norths 'Touch' really makes you think what is life without a body. Her stuff is quite novel.
There's an interesting train of thought that could follow from this. I've been trying to figure out what could eventually enable people to realize that most of what they see on the internet is entirely made up (or could be). Perhaps nothing would make this more clear than considering that literally any face or persona you see on social media could be entirely fictional. For example, in light of this Japanese biker uncle story, how could you ever really feel confident about dating online? And if you didn't, what's the alternative? Well, if you still trust your own eyes, there's always the physical world.
I feel like dating online is a blind shot in so many ways. Good news is that if the person lied about their looks, then you know it’s not a match!
Did he want to make the promotion of bikes and biking at any cost?
I have to testify that in Japan there is a wave of fashion and TV celebrities affecting a public discourse of "oh no the Japanese industry will be soon dying because of the push for electrification of all vehicles!".
Also, most of the loud (and very suffocating, when they zoom past you) bikers near my home are either old men (like this man) or in some cases their children.
Was this Youtuber trying to do his best to save the youth's interest in motorbikes?
I would really like to see these kind of bikes fade into oblivion, instead of being promoted to youngsters through "deep fake young idols" Youtube channels.
I have to testify that in Japan there is a wave of fashion and TV celebrities affecting a public discourse of "oh no the Japanese industry will be soon dying because of the push for electrification of all vehicles!".
Also, most of the loud (and very suffocating, when they zoom past you) bikers near my home are either old men (like this man) or in some cases their children.
Was this Youtuber trying to do his best to save the youth's interest in motorbikes?
I would really like to see these kind of bikes fade into oblivion, instead of being promoted to youngsters through "deep fake young idols" Youtube channels.
At some point soon(ish), deep fakes like this are going to end the porn industry, including Only Fans, in its current form.
Is going to be replaced at by computer-rendered photos/videos, some voice actors and a group of interns answering the chat.
Is going to be replaced at by computer-rendered photos/videos, some voice actors and a group of interns answering the chat.
Wow leave the guy alone. Is this any different from ‘exposing’ a cross dresser etc?
I think this is pretty awesome. He was able to create a real avatar and go out there doing something he loved and share it with the world pseudonymously! Identity in our increasingly virtual reality can take on many turns.
This guy is a Prometheus. He deserves to star in many future cartoons and memes.
It's worth noting that crypto-signed images have been around for a long time, just in specific professional cameras: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3146736527/canondvke2
I imagine, as this sort of thing becomes more common, we'll see image "verification"/signing being a feature on all cameras, and eventually extend to mobile phone cameras for photos/videos as well.
I imagine, as this sort of thing becomes more common, we'll see image "verification"/signing being a feature on all cameras, and eventually extend to mobile phone cameras for photos/videos as well.
And once it has been shared, screen-shotted, re-shared, compressed, phone taking a picture of it on a monitor etc
Sure, if you want to use it to try and prove you did take/create an image of something, but it doesn't help prove you /didn't/
Sure, if you want to use it to try and prove you did take/create an image of something, but it doesn't help prove you /didn't/
IMO this would just help someone prove that a certain original image was made with a specific camera in regards of IP and to protect themselves at court against claims of having tampered with an image.
What we see on the web are mostly resized and heavily compressed images. Not sure how such a cryptographic signature could work in such cases.
What we see on the web are mostly resized and heavily compressed images. Not sure how such a cryptographic signature could work in such cases.
Perhaps the publisher can provide a collection of signed versions of the image with a variety of file sizes / resolutions.
I think there would be some potential for an photo-based journalism platform that only publishes crypto-signed geo-tagged photos. It seems that stock photos, and even fake photos are the norm on mainstream news sites these days. It's very hard to get verified photographic evidence of news stories.
That's cool, but it seems like building a trusted chain of custody from source/capture, to editing (where lots of assets will be combined/composited together), to distribution will be tricky.
Plus, how does one guarantee that light hitting the camera sensor hasn't already been manipulated?
Plus, how does one guarantee that light hitting the camera sensor hasn't already been manipulated?
If this man was creating 3D anime girls and had a 3D anime girl account, would it be really any different? An old man creating a fantasy for young men, either way.
Honestly, this man is brilliant. He's old, leaving this world soon, and is capitalizing on what people want to see. I commend this man. That said, I think cat-fishing is not cool if you're actually playing with people's hearts. If he's DM-ing people wanting to meet up, then it starts getting weird.
Honestly, this man is brilliant. He's old, leaving this world soon, and is capitalizing on what people want to see. I commend this man. That said, I think cat-fishing is not cool if you're actually playing with people's hearts. If he's DM-ing people wanting to meet up, then it starts getting weird.
Almost to the point were this is not newsworthy. As in its so common, expected, and not novel. Like it’s not a major story when someone is found driving without insurance.
Isn't there already controversy if this is being currently used in the Biden administration. The guy hasn't been seen with reporters. The last time he answered questions the microphone seemingly passed through his hand. And there's also a video of his election victory in front of a parking lot of staged cars. With a screen playing his address, while the podium is empty. He's getting the nickname C.G.I Joe.
get help
You are implying someone is mentally ill which I believe is against HN's rules, and in any case is a failure on your part. Watch the video before making immature comments, then decide:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099
Watch the light grey mic - Biden's hands can't decide if they want to be behind or in front of the mics. There is clearly editing going on.
We aren't talking about reptilian aliens running the government - video editing is not some supernatural phenomenon.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099
Watch the light grey mic - Biden's hands can't decide if they want to be behind or in front of the mics. There is clearly editing going on.
We aren't talking about reptilian aliens running the government - video editing is not some supernatural phenomenon.
I'm not saying they are mentally ill. I'm saying they seem disturbed, and would probably benefit from some kind of counseling and staying away from Internet discussions and politics.
Look into it. The guy was just steps away from being a ghost today. Is he really senile enough to be at these events without a little CGI magic help between naps. The last few months have been more than bizarre.
Well there goes celebrity news sites like TMZ.
Maybe it is good thing , remember that song from a few years bacl "it wasn't me" is now a rather a plausible excuse.
Maybe it is good thing , remember that song from a few years bacl "it wasn't me" is now a rather a plausible excuse.
Any guesses if FitGirl is also a 50-year old guy (or two) that's just very much into compression/repacking? :)
This is awesome. Just imagine how many radio stars wouldn't have been killed by video if this were around in the 80s.
Seriously, the world is full of talented performers, but they lack the look or image that the entertainment industry demands. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.
Seriously, the world is full of talented performers, but they lack the look or image that the entertainment industry demands. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.
The real singularity will be when one can have realtime deepfake video of themselves making trap porn.
FYI, you've used a slur -- Tr*p is a slur for transgender folks often used in association with porn. You may want to either clarify your meaning (in case you are using the word in a different meaning) or choose a different word.
I am specifically referencing it in the porn fetish context which is accurate, especially when identifying the logical evolution of faceapp.
I would not use this word in any other context, and in fact, cannot use another word in the porn fetish context because there are no non-offensive words to describe the fetish which I am aware of at the current time. Apologies to anyone who may have felt offended, this was not my wish and there is a very clear difference between a person and a fetish.
I would not use this word in any other context, and in fact, cannot use another word in the porn fetish context because there are no non-offensive words to describe the fetish which I am aware of at the current time. Apologies to anyone who may have felt offended, this was not my wish and there is a very clear difference between a person and a fetish.
My wife owns a wedding dress shop. She uses up to 25% of her time to produce content for social media.
One day she decided to mix/merge her face with Jennifer Aniston's and that was a game changer for the business in terms of audience engagement.
One day she decided to mix/merge her face with Jennifer Aniston's and that was a game changer for the business in terms of audience engagement.
what app did you use to change it?
FaceApp
Here is a sample. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMKWQ6QFH6a/
Here is a sample. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMKWQ6QFH6a/
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Brilliant, I dont see nothing wrong with this, he just gives the people what the people wants to see, its like getting mad that some tv shows are fake, its all entertainment folks. The steak is virtual and its tasty :)
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I'm just here for the two stroke that we never got in the states. :(
Interesting phenomena. I don't see any issues with it really. Many influencers do plastic surgery and other modifications to themselves to be more popular, this is a healthier alternative
Makes sense. It's a performance. I don't get upset that Sir Patrick Stewart can't actually telepathically communicate with all of Earth.
The latest state of the art convolution networks can fully handle occlusions as well as reflections. FaceApp needs to upgrade their tech.
loud auto-playing audio as soon as you open the site
So, essentially he catfished 16,000 followers.
How is this different from the entire Japanese mediascape? 50 year old men paying young women to say their words.
I wonder what happens when an update changes the filter and the person couldn't generate the same face again.
You will soon need a computer science degree with a major in deep fake detection to use online dating safely
I'm starting the .true TLD. Everything else on the Internet should be considered fantasy.
Likes are more important than the fact of sharing your experience, therefore tricks are used
You're not sharing your experience if there's no-one to share it with.
this story is very cute as are cute both of the ladies. interesting she has been depicting such a character and sure many followers where intrigued by it. i hope she did not run into problems for such innocent play.
Maybe the first casualty of AI is Instagram influencers and nude models.
He's definitely prettier as a girl.
He actually has pretty good cheek bones
Have you all been following the green screened Biden interview? Watch the light grey mic - Biden's hand can't decide if it wants to be in front or behind the mic. Something weird is going on:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099
An army of "fact checkers" has been dispatched for damage control.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099
An army of "fact checkers" has been dispatched for damage control.
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i am not even mad. this is amazing. now i’m gonna follow the dude. deal with it :))
catfishing to a whole new level
50? Sure bro :) another level of fun.
:shrug:...would still hit
There is a closing window of opportunity to make bank creating machine-learning generated girls and a farm of onlyfans accounts. Plenty of young (and not-so-young) men are paying to simulate even the slightest semblance of a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. In 10 years or so when distinguishing fake from real will be almost impossible expect the value of those accounts to plummet and a return to more ancient forms of transacting beauty and sex for money.
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The discussion here is a lot about 'deep fakes' and where will we be if we can't distinguish fake from real, but this is so obviously fake that I fear we might not care at all.
Even if it were a real young woman, why would anyone look at those obviously fake images? It is like someone from the 90s used paint to paste a random image on some random biker's head.
Also, why go through the trouble of having that hair and a real bike to begin with if the audience's sense for what is real is so low? You might as well take random images of empty parking lots and copy paste random bikes with random bodies and a young Japanese woman's face on them and it would look the same or better.
Even if it were a real young woman, why would anyone look at those obviously fake images? It is like someone from the 90s used paint to paste a random image on some random biker's head.
Also, why go through the trouble of having that hair and a real bike to begin with if the audience's sense for what is real is so low? You might as well take random images of empty parking lots and copy paste random bikes with random bodies and a young Japanese woman's face on them and it would look the same or better.
They look convincing enough to me. And if I saw one while scrolling Instagram, where I see ~3 images a second I definitely wouldn’t notice.
This is just plain transphobia.
Person used filters and makeup to make themselfs look better and younger. This never ever happened before! OMG, call the police!!!!!
Person used filters and makeup to make themselfs look better and younger. This never ever happened before! OMG, call the police!!!!!
How is this transphobia?
Genuine attempt to answer: It's seen as humorous or weird that a man would want to appear to be a young woman. It's unclear in this case whether the person being photographed is trans.
This article is not a tech demo or deep dive, it's gawking at a man "pretending" to be a woman. It reinforces the idea that trans women are just men "pretending" to be women.
It's not too many steps removed from something like Ace Ventura, which went out of its way to explicitly frame trans women as "gross". Yes, over time media has gotten a little less explicit about this, but there's definitely a long tail of media that's like, "Look at this weird trans/trans-adjacent person over here..."
This article is not a tech demo or deep dive, it's gawking at a man "pretending" to be a woman. It reinforces the idea that trans women are just men "pretending" to be women.
It's not too many steps removed from something like Ace Ventura, which went out of its way to explicitly frame trans women as "gross". Yes, over time media has gotten a little less explicit about this, but there's definitely a long tail of media that's like, "Look at this weird trans/trans-adjacent person over here..."
Are you serious? This man used an app to digitally transform his face into someone entirely different. Equating the reaction to this as trans-phobia is probably the single dumbest thing I've read on HN. If I use a filter to make myself look like a dog, am I offending people who identify as dogs? The lengths certain people go to whine and cry victim about everything is really sad.
I think the number of people out there who see this and relate it to trans people is vanishingly small.
Is that due to education? Lack of understanding of the trans experience? Given that the number of trans people out there is already fairly small (single digit percentages), I wouldn't expect trans awareness to be wide. Especially internationally.
Well I'm never going to understand any mental state that I don't explicitly live in. I don't understand why someone flips their lid and murders someone, and no amount of education changes that.
I don't understand how someone who wins the lottery feels, and no amount of education will change that either.
At some point we need to realize that it's not someone else's job to validate whatever feelings and internal shit that we got going on in our heads. At the end of the day, it's not anyone else's job to "identify" with your preferences, and if someone thinks that your sexual preferences are gross, that's actually OKAY.
I think many people assume that everyone needs to be okay with everyone else's preferences, but not only is that totally unrealistic, but what does it accomplish? You're not going to rid malice and evil from the world by accepting everyone's preferences, so what are we trying to solve by "educating" everyone about transgenderism?
I don't understand how someone who wins the lottery feels, and no amount of education will change that either.
At some point we need to realize that it's not someone else's job to validate whatever feelings and internal shit that we got going on in our heads. At the end of the day, it's not anyone else's job to "identify" with your preferences, and if someone thinks that your sexual preferences are gross, that's actually OKAY.
I think many people assume that everyone needs to be okay with everyone else's preferences, but not only is that totally unrealistic, but what does it accomplish? You're not going to rid malice and evil from the world by accepting everyone's preferences, so what are we trying to solve by "educating" everyone about transgenderism?
Yes, it is tiny tiny minority, and we can safely ignore them...
I already made an answer, but it got flagged.
Problem is the double standard.
If 50 year old woman presents herself younger, it is not big deal. We see it every day in celebrity magazines.
So this person presenting themselves under different gender, is the only reason people talk about it.
If 50 year old woman presents herself younger, it is not big deal. We see it every day in celebrity magazines.
So this person presenting themselves under different gender, is the only reason people talk about it.
Exactly. How is this any different than any Instagram filter that many influencers of any gender use to make themselves look younger?
I think this was only a news story in Japan because feminism / LGBTQ rights in Japan have a long way to go before people feel comfortable being themselves in public.
I think this was only a news story in Japan because feminism / LGBTQ rights in Japan have a long way to go before people feel comfortable being themselves in public.
The majority of “influencers” are young women, and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old uncle. I don’t think there’s much we can do about it, it’s human nature. It does however limit the diversity and world views people are exposed to and sometimes it’s nice to see the world through the eyes of a 50 year Japanese biker.