I'm reading "He Was a Top Lawn Care Influencer on YouTube. Then Everything Went Haywire.
Many people think Greg Chism is a freak — or worse. He says he was just following the incentives of the platform" (NYT gift link).
Read the whole amazing story of a man ruined by YouTube. It's adapted from a new book called "The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men" (commission earned). The author is Jon Ronson.
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13 comments:
Hortatweekerist?
There is a lot to unpack in that story (I read the entire thing). Mixed bag. Honestly, I don't know what I think yet.
I am considering buying the book.
If you want to briefly capture what's wrong in current-day America, "Lawn Care Influencer" would certainly fit the bill.
People will see me and cry (Fame)
““I was destined to be at one. But in my lifetime, all but one of the factories closed. My father lost his longtime job making car frames and hot-water heaters when the plant moved to Mexico.” Like many men of his generation, Greg was left adrift, with few of the structures that guided his parents and grandparents.”
Trump is trying to bring manufacturing back to the US, but for that effort “he’s a threat to democracy.”
So much schlock...
His content. The nyt article. The Bronson boy milking recycled baby grrl content for a buck. Allegedly educated old grrls like annie lapping it up -- and promoting it! -- in their pensioned leisure...
How far America has fallen in the 21st century. Will we indeed welcome our overlords??
The You Tube algorithm definitely hooked me. In my search for meaning in the universe, I got into particle physics. You Tube kept feeding me videos of how to understand quantum physics. SPOILER ALERT: You can't.......Anyway it's my understanding that observing a particle changes the very nature of that particle. Something like that seems to be going on with You Tube influencers. There was one woman who posted videos about particle physics. She was kind of attractive and, as her videos progressed, she became blonder and more attractive. I think there was more decolletage but that may have been my fevered imagination..........From my research, it seems to me that the cosmos and quantum physics just exists and we are never really going to understand very much about it and that existential dread is more palatable when enunciated by attractive females.
Doesn’t Meade qualify as a lawn care influencer?
For that matter, the Prof is a law care influencer….CC, JSM
Breaking! YouTube has become a cistern of AI slop —Most people don't know this.
"Anyway it's my understanding that observing a particle changes the very nature of that particle"
It's easier to understand when you know the definition if a "measurement." Basically every time a particle interacts with another particle, the result of that interaction "measures" it. So measurements are going on by the googolplex, even in remote and completely uninhabited galaxies. Use of the term "observation" introduces the confusion that the measurement must be observed by a conscious being. Although it's only a measurement if the state change lasts beyond the interaction and can be "observed" outside the system in question, once again, don't assign the need for consciousness to the term "observed," it's just the possibility of another quantum "measurement" as defined above.
As for the rest of quantum theory, you are on your own, but the biggest hurdle is reasoning by analogy from our world, So in our world, Shrodinger's cat is alive or dead before you open the box, for example, but this "obvious" reasoning doesn't work in the quantum world, so you have to abandon the logic that applies in this world that has worked for you your whole life.
As a lawn care influencer I highly recommend electric lawn mowers. They are super light and easy to start. You can use the same batteries for the weed eater.
I hated small engine repair. Now that is no longer a problem.
William said...
The You Tube algorithm definitely hooked me. In my search for meaning in the universe, I got into particle physics.
Be very careful of anything youtube physics in the last year.
People are using AI to make videos of famous people in Physics to put out some egregiously wrong material that sounds good.
"For that matter, the Prof is a law care influencer"
My approach to lawn care — at least in the shady backyard — was to watch what happened and to think about why it is good.
All is for the best in the best of all possible backyards.
There was an era when violets took over and I believed that was for the best.
I remember when I encountered a dead crow. I just stayed out of the backyard, perhaps for years. It was never seen again. Not by me, not by anyone.
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