Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
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TikTok sludge is overwhelming, uninteresting, and almost impossible to stop watching. How did a genre everyone hates take over the algorithm?
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Twitter: / lily_lxndr
Letterboxd: letterboxd.com...
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Sources:
Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer - The Culture Industry
Something Is Wrong on the Internet / something-is-wrong-on-...
New York Magazine - Inside the Strange and Slightly Creepy World of Surprise Egg Videos nymag.com/inte...
RUclips Kids availability support.google...
RUclips Kids manual channel approval: techcrunch.com...
RUclips’s Content ID
Meta’s copyright detection variety.com/20...
How the Framing In 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Keeps the Viewer Oriented in a Chaotic World nofilmschool.c...
In Her Own Time: An Interview with Chantal Akerman www.artforum.c...
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Media used (not an exhaustive list):
Opening Elsa animation • Queen & Princess Part ...
Surprise egg video • KidCity Opens Avengers...
Soap-cutting • 1 HOUR ASMR. Soap cube...
Minecraft parkour • 1 hour 20 minutes of r...
Cryptoland • Cryptoland [Original v...
Volksgeist’s video on Yeat (this is the original version) • The Insane Rise of YEAT
This Is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Massage • This Is Marshall McLuh...
How To Be Ninja • How to be Ninja
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)
Columbus (2017)
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"This is content production in the age of algorithmic discovery - even if you’re a human, you have to end up impersonating the machine." - James Bridle, "Something is wrong on the internet"
I have to say that I watched this on nebula and after about 15 minutes I had to physically block the left side of the screen with my hand to avoid sensory overload. Making the video itself sludge was an inspired choice that makes a deeply resonant point on its own
i found it more engaging for its sludgishness, funnily enough. very well put lily, making me reconsider my media habits yet again, thank!
Same, I had to intentionally look away because I don't find this type of content soothing or watchable or even ignorable at all, it actively upsets me!
Thank god I listen to this as background noise I'm pretty sure staring at that would have made me get a headache
i just think its weird like id not heard of this stuff til this video since i don't like tictok and its just weird and something i don't like its just uncomfortable
oh and its giving me a headache.
I feel like “channel surfing” was where this started. Growing up that was our “sludge” - flipping through cable channels endlessly for hours and hours, a couple seconds per channel, creating a completely random and incoherent sludge of video content - commercials, infomercials, news programs, soap operas, etc. There were plenty of people condemning it and saying it was destroying our brains. Pretty sure in hindsight they were right lol
Brilliant observation!!
Or watching the TV guide channel
The cause of channel surfing is advertisements. On PBS, no ads, no surf.
"content sludge is ai generated art that just happened to be made by humans" - nailed it!
I don't understand.
@@DavidSartor0 It's content that's aimless and vapid, like a lot of AI based stuff, but people have actually put time into it without any creativity or passion that makes human stuff worth it.
@@maxv9464 Thank you.
@@DavidSartor0 Yep!
I was looking for this comment to see whether I should make it myself or not.
This is why tumblr is such a good platform for art. It relies on reblogs. Basically, you only see content that a different human liked enough to save to their page
I joined Tumblr recently and honestly it has been a very good experience so far
as an artist, i really wish tumblr never fully died. there's no better social media platform for artists right now - but the career and commercial opportunity there is not ideal due to the lack of its popularity. Tumblr is the best formatted platform for discovery (talented artists rarely go unnoticed there) and for posting itself. gif support, grid layout image/gif posts(instead of carousels), minimal video/image compression, image size/ratio is up to the poster, audio only for musicians, text formatting, custom user pages, tags that actually work, lack of algorithm... it's optimal. I don't understand why we ditched it after porn was banned because it's not like the other major platforms allow porn... anyways, i miss it. even though I make fun of the tumblr era all the time, it was a blast.
@@coleydotmp4i really get what you mean, but also, I just recently joined, and its definitely not dead! And I feel much more comfortable than on other social media platforms
tumblr is great ^^ unfortunately the staff still suck hard
same principle with reddit upvotes and crossposts
This reminded me about something Hank Green said in relation to RUclips shorts vs RUclips videos. “The biggest difference between a RUclips Short and a RUclips video is one you decide whether to watch it. And the other you decide whether to keep watching it.”
Yes, I’m glad to see someone mention it! That was the first video to get me thinking about the difference
Oh my god, I never realized that but that makes so much sense! This puts it perfectly clearly the feeling of disgust I have every time I accidentally click the 'shorts' button.
I used a plugin to deliberately turn all shorts into standard youtube videos. I really do not like the shorts format, and I don't like auto-loading unless its a cued up playlist. It kinda freaks me out.
@@osakanone oh!! Whats the name of that plugin? I could really use that in my day to day life! My monkey brain loves shorts even tho they mostly make me miserable
Uhm wait a second, please explain, I'm a bit slow here... which one is which? A short is the one where you decide to watch it, because it's only 30 seconds long, and a video is where you decide if you keep watching because it's long enough that you start to wonder if you really want to keep watching this? (Even though you also decided to want to watch the video, when you clicked on it... I ... I don't get it)
I think what’s significantly worse about content sludge is that we KNOW that it’s concentrated brain rot. The amount of times my friends and I have joked about how we’re not “fully engaged” because there’s no Family Guy or Subway Surfers clip playing while we hang out is slightly concerning at this point lol
Even if people know something is not good or that it's normalized it still helps to keep criticizing it and breaking people out of the stupor, and telling people there can be better things cause some people say they didn't think there could be. Those things helped me. There's even channel names with names like "Trash", etc. Or negative or vulgar names. So even some channels flaunt that they're sludge. Yet they still get views. It's partly cause people tolerate it too much. But I'm glad some people are criticizing it. Tho it doesn't help that some critics go extreme. Like vilifying all of social media, the internet, art, modern art, or celebrities.
It really displays how insidious it is. The vast majority of people can see through the sludge, but we walk through it anyway.
Like boomers that can't have a cassual conversation during a family gathering if the TV isn't on
i actively avoid watching the sludge part of content
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c I mean, for those of us who lived full lives before social media existed, it might be a legitimate criticism rather than vilifying to say it's hurting society/us. To my view, people have definitely changed. Friends have disappeared, along with quality time. Social media is a part of a bunch of different influences we can't tease out from one another over that span of years, but if you asked me I'd be very happy if livejournal had stuck around and Facebook (or insert any engagement-focused platform here) had never existed, advertising hadn't been entrenched on the web, capitalism et. al. hadn't encouraged hustle culture, etc. Stuff has sped up unimaginably since the 80s and 90s.
the most infuriating part of the soap cutting videos is that they only ever cut towards themselves
I noticed that too and was very annoyed.
I cut myself doing that today. It sucked.
This is one life rule my mother and father somehow hardwired into my programming, and I have autonomically programmed into all my offspring. I cannot watch someone cutting TOWARDS themselves without reflexively reaching a phantom arm into the videoscape and saying “Stop that!”. Pretty effective behaviour modification I’d say, and I was built and programmed in the fifties! What is wrong with kids these days? 😝
also that all looks so careless tbh
just, looks dangerous
You can always see their hands are battered and cut up, too.
dont underestimate that feeling of not existing.
between all the fears and dejection doled out by of the real world, people are sometimes drawn in by the feeling of sitting to watch, think and feel essentially nothing. it's like instead of a high or low, you feel a medium just becuase its better than dealimg with anything substantial
In other words, (quasi-)Buddhist meditation without the hard work part?
@@ionescuflorin7307
basically. and instead of drawing closer to realization of self, you drift further away
you mentioned something in here that i haven't seen anybody talk about, but that freaks me out more than most things: the procedurally generated websites that pretend to be answering the question you searched for, but are actually just spitting out summarized versions of other people's answers. sometimes they even have contrasting answers on the same page. it's like walking into your house only to realize it's a fucking mimic.
A lot of those are also written by humans, at least for now - a ton of copywriters pay the bills with those articles! That almost makes it worse to me, tho
It's incredibly easy to automate, lots are definitely ChatGPT or similar
@@lily_lxndr well played
@Lily Alexandre I think Parker means the kind that is just a copy-paste of the article you just clicked on before it. Or even a forum post in a lot of cases
@@saberchild Ohh I see, I might’ve misread
As a non-tokker, I remember being so confused the first time someone showed me a video that had what they called an "attention trap" in it. The content the trap sat beside was reasonable thoughtful and substantial. It really is gross to see the results of capitalism and consumerism in this area. These sorts of "maximising watch time" strategies frustrate me so much in a way that's really hard to describe.
It's almost like we need to evolve a new kind of neurotransmitter to deal with this. Something like mixes cortisol with dopamine overload, but nudges you to do something different. (Maybe ADHD?) I feel like other animals understand this on an instinctive level, like a mouse understands a snake will eat it (well, maybe or maybe not. A rat might know a snake is a predator.) even though it can be beautiful and overwhelming. Or we just need to lean into the feeling of healthy boredom. (The dopamine isn't dopamine-ing anymore.)
TikTok is a product of a communist country, so what is this about capitalism?
Why?
Like you said you saw thoughtful content.
More people watched and got something from that thoughtful content because of a dumb bit of visual stimulus.
Why is that a problem?
@@Iquey maybe instead of waiting for our brains evolve, there could be regulations keeping apps from being addictive? not by limiting speech or anything like that but by forcing the platforms themselves to be less addictive, idk how this would work though lol
@@MrCmon113 ok, what are your ideas for non violent solutions?
Also. . im a little confused,
why is it violent to want corporations to be held accountable for the influence they have over people?
Doing this with a projector (instead of doing it as a comp) made it magnificent.
Some real "Answers in Progress" vibes with it.
Yeaa I also thought that, its beautiful honestt
The thing about sludge that particularly frustrates me is it always feels like my intelligence is being underestimated. When I see a genuinly interesting topic or clip smashed together with sludge, all it says to me is that the creator thinks my human lizard brain can't listen to ANYTHING without being hypnotized into it. It's like if IRL, somebody felt the need to jingle their keys in my face while telling me a story as if I was a toddler. Like my brain actually DOES have a hard time focusing, but I don't want that fact shoved in front of my eyeballs you know. Hell I'd even argue the increase in sludge has only made my and my peers' attention spans worsen, which is a nightmare when you remember that we're artists and/or college students that have better, more important things to do with our time than mentally swim through sludge.
🫱🌱
I'm sorry but titling an article "Something Is Wrong On The Internet" is such a hilarious concept to me. That is SUCH an understatement. Everything is wrong on the internet.
And sometimes that is what makes it right.
I assume it's a reference to the popular xkcd punchline "someone is *wrong* on the Internet" but still, yeah.
I think Sturgeon's Law still applies to most things. In this case, 90% of the internet is excremental. The remaining 10% is generally not promoted or advertised in any way, of course.
well not EVERYTHING
just an incomprehensibly vast amount of things
Not everything is wrong on the internet. You're watching yt videos like Lily Alexandre or people on the internet calling out these terrible things on the internet. The internet has been helpful to people like me. I'm grateful. That doesn't mean I can't and don't criticize the bad parts too. I would rather more power to the people than only mainstream and expensive studios being about to make things for TV. They make some sludge too. And some of them practice nepotism. Social media helps people to be indie, poor people to do their dreams and get recognition, and talented and helpful people or niche hobbies to get noticed when they might not on the mainstream. I think I heard people say that mainstream award shows like the Emmys don't even recognize all genres. A solution is we need more good content creators. Not scaring them off by just saying social media or the internet is bad.
"Joylessly waiting around for nothing in particular" is such a solid summary of this content
It’s worse than Waiting for Godot, because that play makes you think
@@bookworm272was thinking of waiting for Godot too! Imagine if the whole play was them scrolling, occasionally showing one another a video and chuckling haha
the tartar steppe by dino buzati
I don't know if that was intentional, but "telling the viewer they can have a little bit of everything all of the time" was fucking genius, love this video.
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime...
Honestly even if local bands aren’t that good, it still feels awesome to be in the scene and be a member of your community. When I do go to stuff around my area, I always end up having a good time even if the quality isn’t revolutionary. That has made me more fulfilled than most stuff I see on TikTok and Instagram reels.
as a person IN multiple bands it is SO hard to go out myself and actually watch other musicians when I could stay home and watch youtube all night, but when I do go out its always memorable. we are on the brink of losing touch, but so far, luckily reconnection is usually right down town on a friday night.
Most people are exhausted and time poor, as well as actual poor. Going out to do stuff requores resources they dont have.
Something about the idea of “post human art” is that it is a process that’s been going on for a long time. I was reading a book on the history of art and it mentioned the way industrialization change who we view artisans as opposed to artist. They used this example: in centuries past architect didn’t just have to know how to draw up a plan, but they had to know every type of material, the places these materials came from, know how to build the structure, know how to supply for it; they had to know about every step in the process because that was how knowledge and ability was understood to best function then. After industrialization caused economic efficiency to drive the creation of most goods, the jobs and artistry became further and further segmented in order to increase efficiency. Capitalism acts to break everything down into its most basic parts. This effect hurts human creativity the most because it strips one’s connection to their choices and from their history. Clothing is an example of this. When those who design the clothes are different from those who dye the clothes are different from those that sew the clothes are different from those who tailor the clothes (or standard sizing is just used), then no one in that chain has any connection to each other. A culture’s rich history of design is locked to the few who can afford an education in it and the physical creation of the piece is “degraded” by its association with poverty and labor. Even now as computers are slowly getting better at mimicking the intelectual side of a creation, we are seeing that part being lowered to the status of “lesser work” just the same as physical labor.
Now what is left for humans to do but the most pure form of capitalism: ownership. The only part a human plays in its creation is owning it. That is the horror of post-human and “AI-Art” it turns creativity and culture into commodities to be bought and sold simply because they resemble the form of human creation.
Idk these are just my thought.
The book is called “The Invention of Art”
This is put so well. Thanks for the book recommendation as well, it seems like a fascinating one and I'm going to check it out
this reminds me a lot of something one of my lecturers said in my art history course back in college. He said that the future of the artist was shifting towards having ideas rather than being skilled (craft-wise). He pointed to examples of many renowned and successful fine artists and explained how they had the idea of an artwork, but hired many other skilled laborers to construct the artworks. This was a very controversial idea for my classmates and I remember it being probably the biggest point of debate in the class that semester. It's a scary thought to me, as an artist who is mainly a skilled laborer, and this predicted future of "ideas only" artists is starting to creep into my job and workplace as well. I don't think that it's wrong for artists to be the creator of a work in concept only, but with the dawn of AI artwork and how it's been used recently it makes me question why we are trying to automate the parts of our human experience that automation is supposed to allow us to enjoy. You want machines to do the hard, tedious, or boring things so that you can focus on the fun or creative things- so why are we making the computers do the creative part, too?
@@SusannahGraceMusic if your wanting to buy the book, then I suggest buying used. It can be quite expensive bought new.
i'm saving this comment, i'm gonna keep it copied somewhere on my phone, this should be immortalized.
You reminded me of why I hate modern house design. One artist draws plans for a house and that house gets built 150 times in the same area. People buy that house but have no time to personalize it because they spend all day working and only come home to sleep. Not to mention that personalizing the house is discouraged because it might lower the property value. People don't buy houses to live in them long term. You buy a house with the expectation that you will sell it in 10 to 15 years. You can always tell when you enter an older/wealthier neighborhood because the houses will actually look different.
I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but I deleted TikTok about two years ago because I disliked the way it held onto my attention without me getting anything out of it. But now it seems like ANY social media or entertainment I want to use works on the same principals, and I get sucked into RUclips shorts and Reels in the same way… I don’t intend to, it always feels like it inevitably happens, or I want to watch ONE short and it becomes a spiral. There is something about how that concept hacks into your brain and doesn’t let go, the infinite digestible content is just irresistible. I wish I would get rid of it permanently, or that RUclips could give you a setting so that you don’t see shorts- I just want it off. I want to watch things that make me THINK.
Strange how much more I get from a longer (and therefore usually more high quality) YT video but a bunch of smaller ones put together being twice as long doesn't make me feel satisfied in the least.
This. Every single platform just wants to commit artistic suicide for corporate greed. Fuck life right? why enjoy it when we can just be advertised to buy things we never use anyways because we are busy looking at more ads. Fucking retarded.
Yeah, that’s modern social media for you! It’s been a slow change but a change that’s impacted a lot of how we think and create, it’s so strange. Because these “brain hack” videos have been apart of my life since forever basically, and have unironicly caused me to have a crippling addiction to RUclips. (Yeah surprisingly not TikTok?? I casually use it every once a month or 3 times a week if it gets bad. It doesn’t hold me in the same power trap, RUclips is really goddamned addictive.)
Yes CRIPPLING, I put off work I put off life I just didn’t do anything outside of watch RUclips. So I think that counts as an addiction, and it’s been a problem for MANY MANY MANY people for like 10+ years. It’s this power imbalance with the viewer where everything is going “KEEP WATCHING” and you can’t escape it, it gets its hooks in you and then you can never leave!
You know how many times I’ve tried quitting this hellsite??? 70+ times, it’s coming on a 100+ times. I can quit TikTok that’s not the problem I don’t really care about it, but this website? God I’m stuck here forever, but that’s how it’s always been.
So idk, it’s a really really big problem that I don’t think anyone will be fighting soon.
Hope you have a wonderful day! :>
This is why I don't engage with any of that stuff at all. I use RUclips just for music. Obviously, I will occasionally click on videos such as these--but never to watch them, just to check the description and see what sources the videomaker cited, so I can read those instead. I also enjoy reading comments such as yours, although don't expect me to ever reply to anything you say to me, I probably won't see it...
The thing is, you can get a whole lot more out of people's personally run webpages, and a good book, than you ever will out of hours of social media. Those guys aren't working towards an algorithm.
YES this is exactly what i experience 2 i realy struggled with it but ultimately the only solution that worked for me was deleting the youtube mobile app from my phone no yt = no shorts i can still watch in my browser but that takes a little more effort so i only do that when im looking for something specific
i only watch youtube on my pc now and 0 shorts :))
Hope this isn't weird but I would 100% listen to an audiobook you narrated. You have the voice for this stuff nailed down
That’s not weird at all - Im actively looking for that kind of work! Thank you :)
in the middle of watching this video i deleted a fuck ton of apps from my phone, started researching on my athletic hobbies and started cleaning my room. this is not to say that your video didn’t hold my attention, only that it motivated positive change in my actions even if only for today.
“What’s being watched is secondary to the ritual of staring at a screen” is going to stick with me. I despise this trend of content sludge and just mindlessly watching things and while I actively don’t participate in it, I’m terrified of the trajectory of media in general. Thanks for yet another incredible video. Can’t believe the song at the end though. Unforgivable.
this is me in the youtube comments, endlessly scrolling for nothing. social media is the back rooms.
I uninstalled tiktok after months of being addicted to it, and im not saying all of my problems stem from tiktok, but i feel so much better- having the ability to watch a movie without my phone in hand, to sit and wait somewhere and allow myself to be bored without automatically feeling understimulated, the ability to watch a 20 minute youtube video or read a book. I cannot believe I lost that, even for a few months. The algorithm and the sludge content are seriously horrifying, and the best way to go about it is by ripping the bandaid off.
my life became so much better when I stopped watching instagram reels late at night and started reading books instead. It's like I can think again. I was really turned into a zombie, mindlessly scrolling, unable to think for myself. It's like waking up from a coma.
FR!
a couple of months ago i started a habit of reading at night. it's been one of the most life changing things especially considering how little time it takes (about half an hour each night)
recently deleted instagram too.
books are great
One thing that doesn't necessarily fall under sludge but can is that a lot is done to purposefully make the content worse to increase engagement. Movie clips will end fairly randomly or cut off the real final punchline. Not including the movie title so people have to ask or make jokes about giving the wrong title. Another thing I've seen is educational content cut up on tiktok randomly, making it extremely confusing for people (leading to more comments) because they haven't seen the conclusion or background information on the problem. And then some educational content is just wrong for engagement.
My gosh, this might be one of the best written video essay channels I've seen. At 18:03, that sentence is just fantastic: "It offers us a chance at *pure* consumption, where what's being watched is secondary to the ritual of staring at a screen."
I can't think of a better way to write that
As a professional juggler born into a family of jugglers 6:16 is absolutely hilarious to me especially because i was literally practicing as i listened to this.
That’s INCREDIBLE
Secret’s out!
knowing that somewhere out there there is a family of jugglers makes me happy, i don't know why but thanks for the info!
@@altertopias aw that’s really sweet :) there’s more of us than you would think. Also a surprising amount of queer jugglers lol
@@DraconiaDrawing didn't expect it, but in hindsight, our history has never shied aways from circuses now that i think about it
I hadn't heard about this. The more I learn about tiktok the happier I am I stay away. It's a shame though, because some really cool stuff comes out of there. It's just buried in so much junk.
Thank you. I don't like how some people go to extremes and just vilify social media or the internet either. That's what I think makes the bad parts worse is that it buries good, talented, and helpful content. Instead of just stereotyping it's all bad, people should use the good parts to emphasize why the bad parts are horrible in burying the good parts. A solution is we need more good content creators. Not scaring them off by just saying social media or the internet is bad.
I really really disagree.
TikTok is the only decent social media platform I have ever used.
It has good deep conversations and provides a platform to the marginalized.
It's taught me about myself and about the cultures of the world.
You have to learn to curate your feed but that's how it is on all websites just on TikTok every action you take is part of that curation.
@@donov25 sounds like Tik Tok is making you do free labor to curate your own feed
@@XxCorvette1xX sure and I wish they gave me more tools to directly do it.
Why would I not want to put effort into maintaining a good feed instead of mindless glubglogabgalab style consumption?
@@donov25 ... because it's pointless extra work? It's like drinking tap water without a cup, when you've got bottled water available a few steps away.
The scary thing for me personally, is that, in my teens, when I started warning people about this 15 or so years ago, people called me a dramatic edgy hipster, and now that it's come to full fruition, people are still calling me that.
The gaslighting is real.
Very true, I was saying this back when websites with endless scrolling became common.
"content sludge is AI generated art that just happens to be made by humans" my favorite line. sums up the uncanny valley of the sludge
Kids like me who grew up with this contant are both at the most and least risk of falling into sludge video rabbit holes. We've grown up consuming abysmal amounts of media all at once, so while we know *why* and *how* the videos are made, and why it's bad, it gets difficult to consume any other type of content. It's not as easy to digest if we aren't multitasking hard enough for the constant input to wash over us, allowing us to snatch small bits of infomation whenever we want to tune back in to a piece of content.
While watching this video, even with the clips in the background, I still periodically had to browse discord, go through emails, or play a few songs to retain my attention. School feels pointless because it's so difficult to pay attention to teachers in such a stimulus-free environment, not to mention actually doing the work. I don't mean to speak for everyone, but even with heavy restrictions since my youth, the internet still ruined me, and it's probably ruined most other kids my age.
I relate so much! I only really got acess to social media in middle school, and now i don't even question that i can only motivate myself to do anything creative if i watch a show and read emails at the same time.
I'm seriously scared of how the young children that are now growing up with sludge content pumped into their brains fron day one are going to cope with school, teachers are already noticing how attention spans have been gett worse
An interesting self-reflection. Do you think it's because this type of content gives some sort of endorphine drip infusion, permanently giving you instant gratification? Something like that?
Please know millennials want to stop this shite but the onslaught is so heavy and we have so little power. I hated thinking my parents didn't "do anything" to stop the stuff that hurt me when I was young, and I know your friends and yourself may end up feeling the same about your experiences on the Internet later on, but with how quickly this happened, I promise we didn't know what was going on until it was way too late. And I wish we didn't have to rely on bullshit like Zuckerberg to make decisions for us.
Not sure how old you are, but I'm 22, and I want to just let you know that that was incredibly insightful. I was born with a childhood of late 90s remnants still hanging around and a non-capitalism-optimized internet, and social media picked up around the time I hit puberty. Sludge videos only started hitting my feeds around my early college years and it's still so enticing, and the literal attention deficit thing, having to switch between tasks and barely being able to pay attention if you're not being stimulated enough, is something I feel SO HARD.
I'm feeling a lot of the same feelings you are right now, and I can't even imagine what it must feel like to be inundated with all this crap from as far back as you can remember AND KNOWING that it's crap but not being able to look away. At least I have a part of me that remembers what the internet was like before giant social media companies and content optimization, and even before we even gave that much of a shit about using the computer for an extended amount of time anyway.
Seriously, I feel for younger Gen Z. Y'all have all the access to be as smart as you want, so you know what's being done but being unable to stop it anyway because it's all you know. (REALLY hope this doesn't come off as patronizing or offensive.)
18 year old chiming in. I can totally relate to this. I'm not sure I should have been given a tablet at such a young age.
something that i think is kind of insidious abt the algorithm-centered state of art online is that it’s kind of weirdly manipulative? the only sort of movement you as a consumer will make is a move towards liking the content that the algorithm likes. it’s frightening to think of how these platforms mold and change u into someone that is easy to market to. great video as always, got a lot to think abt now!!!
Oh it's not just weirdly manipulative. It's entirely manipulative, the goal is to get you to spend more and more time on the platform for more of a payoff for them, completely uncaring of what that does to those watching
What I think needs to change is us 1. getting into technology with an Ethics-First mindset. 2. getting into politics/activism to purge the toxic capitalist culture that’s consumed our society. 3. Be willing to fight the billionaire class to the bitter end.
Yes and no. I’ve found that even if I scroll past each video they still find their way back. It’s awful.
The "ten minutes of silence" thing hits me SO CLOSE. I can't bear silence, yet I crave it, I crave silence deeply, but being all alone, in a house without anyone near making any noise ? That's terrifying. Silence is terrifying
Stop being scared
Not for me, it's peaceful
Nah silence is great, expecially when you come out of the shower and the sound of nothing is more loud that normal, top 10 perceptions fr
silence is one of the most effective tools to induce a sense of unending unease. i always love when it's properly used in various mediums
Just taught a lesson that used excerpts from this video to get high school students thinking about their (social) media diets and it was a hit! Minds were blown and critical thinking occurred, huge W. Thanks so much for your thoughtful work, Lily
This is an old comment but thank you for being a class act!
I don't even have the words to describe how profoundly this video resonates with me. I didn't even know that people used the word 'sludge' to describe this content but that's just . . . perfect. For at least a few years now, I've quietly described my experience *to myself* of just being alive a 'pushing through sludge.' I constantly feel like I have to force myself up a river a sludge to do *anything*, from schoolwork to showering to exercising to visiting a friend to LITERALLY PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. Aren't video games supposed to be the thing you use to procrastinate on other work? Part of the experience for me is definitely some ADHD "wall of awful" procrastination garbage but sludge content makes this experience so, so much worse. RUclips Shorts (I haven't touched TikTok and don't intend to start) are incredibly insidious because I don't even realized I've been sucked in until it's been an hour or so and I realize I'm not even enjoying the experience.
You describe sludge videos in terms of a food metaphor but I'm not eating the sludge: I'm being smothered by it.
If you're trying to get out of that habit, the block tube add-on/extension's got an option to completely remove shorts from your home feed and search results, and I think also an option to convert them to the regular video URL so you don't get sucked into an autoplay hole.
In case you were looking for a way to at least filter your experience to make it easier.
Also in my case I don't see games as something to procrastinate with but as a rewarding activity just like reading a book or watching a movie, so I constantly have to fight with the "but I didn't achieve anything today i don't deserve the fun" response I'm still trying to unlearn, so games aren't always the procrastinating thing.
Also, as someone with depression, are you sure your sludge surrounding is your ADHD and not depression, or both ADHD and depression? I'm concerned that you might be approaching it from an ineffective angle, I'm sorry if you already checked that possibility off and it didn't improve anything
The most disturbing part about short form video content is that every platform tries to push you into it. Reddit and RUclips both try to bring you into the shorts feed-- on Reddit, scrolling down on any video will scroll just like TikTok, into another popular short video. On RUclips, not only are shorts listed on the front page with no way to turn them off, sometimes *the RUclips app opens directly into a short*!
I’m sorry that life feels like pushing through sludge to you but it’s nice to know that I’m not alone
Yeah, I also like and think it's fitting that some people named a certain kind of poor entertainment Trash, ragebait, clickbait, clout, grifting, etc too.
God, the mesh of ADHD paralysis and addictive short form content is SUCH a hole. I have genuinely screwed up important life things because of my difficulty pulling myself away from technology. it's really hard to realise that prevention is sometimes the only solution, i often don't have the presence of mind to act while I'm in the middle of scrolling.
I'm blown away by how you can take a topic that seems super vague and disjointed, and make it so cohesive and interesting!
This reminds me of the novel "Mockinbird" by Walter Tevis, where he describes this dystopian future that nobody can read and there is no content with narrative, only color flashes and naked bodies in videos. Also nobody dreams or love. The book is wonderful and all the "strange" features of that society are slowly getting real.
As a person who guiltily deletes and re-downloads TikTok every few weeks, this video was the push I needed to never go back. I can’t waste my life drooling over a screen.
did you redownload? 😅
This is your reminder to delete tik tok! (If you so happened to give in again)
you've made the longest sludge video ever, congratulations. I'm gonna send this to my friends with low attention spans
This video was fantastic and I'm in awe at the use of the projector. Also that project you talked about near the end seems pretty interesting, I'll have to check it out when it comes out!
Omg thanks stranger 🥰 it’s always great to meet a fan 🤝
Your point about filler vs nourishing is very salient. Where I am, Suburban culture reinforces a sense of personal control over the world that doesn't exist. Streaming services and social media offer "entertainment," but I think that everyone is screen-fatigued and hungry for something fulfilling
The content sludge phenomenon really reminds me of how, as a child, I used to compulsively watch Top 10 videos. I would click on every enticing thumbnail, be disappointed when the video didn't live up to the title, rinse and repeat. I'm glad that I caught on to the game, albeit after some time, and I'm glad that the algorithm, per chance, happened to lead me into higher quality educational content. To this day, I've retained a lot of media skepticism from this very formative experience. I wonder whether others in my generation or the coming generation will necessarily have similar experiences. I, for one, was at least lucky enough to have not had access to RUclips as a literal toddler.
to me, this was what og corecore was trying to express in the begining. post-human art is such an acurate way of putting it. amazing video as always.
There's something so deeply miserable lurking beneath the thin layer of numbness I feel while watching sludge content. I usually get South Park and Surfers sludge but i genuinely cannot remember a single scene from what I have watched and I've found myself getting genuinely addicted to it, like, enough to procrastinate my usual procrastination tools. Luckily I noticed this and decided to open myself up to the real world, so I joined a queer gallery group which has got me to visit places I would never think to on my own and now I'm having eurovision party with them, wow who knew the boring solution worked!
You'll hopefully be happy to know that I am able to remember pretty much any of your videos that I've watched, and I come out of them feeling something more than I did going in. I really distinctly remember a unbearably boring workday where I put on your kiss between two women video and it helped me feel more attached to reality!
Also as an aside the Nigahiga part had me feeling some feelings, I genuinely cannot believe I grew up on that era of youtube compared to what I'm looking at now
U r very cool, thanks 😎
I've grown to loathe RUclips's Shorts page, because it's FULL of sludge, though mine is less internet clips played over Subway Surfers and more text-to-speech voices reading Reddit posts over Minecraft parkour footage. And yet, every time I see it I feel the urge to click on it. It's genuinely disturbing how I go in feeling bad, come out feeling worse, having gained absolutely nothing and wasted my time, and yet I still come back for more. At this point I feel like I need a browser extension that just blocks me from accessing the Shorts page at all, because I can feel it actively rotting my brain.
why do you watch it "sludge content"?
i feel like i'm old enough and "nerdy enough" that i never got sucked into facebook, instagram or tiktok (just grew up on the wild west of the late 90s world wide web).
when myspace died, that was like the end of my "normie days" (excuse my language, i'm sure you'll understand my reference).
@@transsexual_void_fairy because it's addictive... the internet has warped itself in such a way that attention spans have been lost and I can't watch a 30 minute video anymore, but I can waste 'a few minutes' watching insta reels that eventually divulge into sludge content. I need to have insta to keep in contact with my friends so I can't delete it... none of my friends are on Facebook (I'm 21) but even Facebook video now has sludge content. One mistap on an app and I lose three hours, and I can only fix it if I lose all my friends...
@@goldstarsforall hah, yeah, i can't relate to young zoomers at all.... y'all grew up when web 2.0 was alive and kicking.
You have to quit it like a drug. My RUclips recommendations are good, even the Shorts, because I never ever watch this sort of stuff and tend to go for the video essays. If you can make the initial push to change your viewing habits, eventually the content algorithm should actually make it easier for you.
"Joylessly waiting around for nothing in particular" is a pretty good summation of life in the Hyper Content Zone
15:28 - I don't watch "content sludge," but do watch YT videos one after another and for hours and it's absolutely to feel like I don't physically exist. Definitely a depression thing.
Fortunately, I don't seem to have sunk low enough to watch just anything put in front of me though, lol. It's all stuff that at least mildly interests me. But I do seek it out in an almost panicked way, like if I run out of stuff to distract me, it will just be me and my thoughts and that's something I just can't deal with anymore.
i had no idea this genre of video existed, and I'm honestly kind of terrified by it. you made some really concise points in your essay, and stylistically this might be my favourite video of yours yet. looking forward to your future endeavours! :)
It takes you into a trance and it's hard not to fall into, it's deeply terrifying
It's not terrifying.
It's actually helps keep your attention on things.
In my FYP I have never once seen it paired with a clip from a movie.
I see it paired with academic lectures.
@@donov25 And how much information have you retained from those sludge academic videos? The only time splitting your attention in half isn't also splitting your retention capabilities is when you're doing something entirely mechanical (doodling, driving the same road everyday etc.) - essentially going on autopilot.
With these types of videos, both sides are actively fighting for your attention. You might think you're focused and listening, but - funnily enough - if you pay attention to your information intake, you'll most likely find that you were kinda just drifting in and out of focus and well, not remembering all that much.
I know that watching 'intelectual' content makes people feel good and smart but like - if you're not retaining any of that information, it's not actually giving you those brain boosting gummies you so desire lmao
@@donov25 also (and I don't mean it in any negative way, just food for thought relating to the vid!) it might be a good thing to ask yourself - why is my attention span getting so low, I can't watch this short lecture without some colorful video playing beside it?
@@mydzy I have ADHD it's not a mystery. And your wrong visual information and audio information are processed separately.
I listen to podcasts while working and playing video games. I retain information from that why is this any different truly?
I think this is an overreaction to seeing a tool used poorly.
It's not scary or concerning. It's just a tool that can in fact be helpful to retain attention.
It can be used poorly it can be used well.
It's so hard to socialize or pull people away from sludge content when we're hanging out. TikTok sludge is just more engaging than other humans. It sucks. This is especially true for my neurodivergent friends :/
They days of enjoying eachothers presence are over. It's really sad.
@@ryno4ever433 1800s no one wants to talk anymore they just read there newspapers all in the same room!
1920s no one wants to talk anymore they just listen to the radio all day!
1950s no one wants to talk anymore my family just sits in front of the TV and stare
1980s no one wants to talk anymore now they just play on their computers
2020s no one wants to talk anymore now they just watch tiktok sludge contents on their phones
It hurts sometimes to want to spend time with someone they get on TikTok like we aren't even in the same room with anything else to do. Doesn't help that the app is absolutely GRATING to my mind.
Makes it sounds worse when it's exploitive of neurodivergent people, kids, or sad empty people. I really don't like the exploitive factor.
This is part of the reason I've stopped enjoying hanging out with my friends. Don't get me wrong, they're still my dearest group of people and I wouldn't trade the world for them. But when we're not doing anything together, instead of conversation a good chunk of them start sitting on their phones and I can hear that they're on tiktok. And I know they're not gonna remember any of it, and it's upsetting to see they'd prefer that over connecting with who they're in the same room with.
But how do you begin to solve that problem? It's like pulling a junkie away from lines of cocaine.
I have to say, comparing myself to a brain-dead toddler mindlessly watching weird elsa videos and toy unboxing might be the best way to fight my short content addiction. Telling yourself you're being cringe can really be a saving grace.
I'm not a tiktok user so I barely had exposure to this genre, and had no idea what it was named, so it was a greatly informative essay.
Just found out this channel. Thanks!
Christ I have to shut myself in my room and think about this for at least 24 hours. You really conveyed how mesmerisingly mind-numbing the experience of sludge content is, to the point where I feel I need to wash my brain out lmao. Also, how dare you for covering *that* song at the end (it was beautiful tho)
I don't understand how this is soothing for people! I find it extremely upsetting and anxiety inducing for some reason. Great essay!! I listened to it like a podcast
Same here. Unfortunately I have the problem of needing subtitles to focus on what's being said because of auditory processing difficulties, so it was a question of do I want to get anxious or do I want to risk not understanding anything if I just listen to it as a podcast.
Props to Lily for the artistry in this video (as always), though sadly I couldn't fully enjoy it.
me too, it’s overwhelming to me and i feel my consciousness being taken by something else, it makes me feel really disgusting, like there is a bad smell near me or that my body is dirty. i quit tiktok at the beginning of 2020 and ever since never went back. i’m glad this video was created
I wish I could avoid it. I always hate how my mind just disables after I don't think twice and click on a YT shorts thumbnail, just to stay there for 30 mins straight. It just makes me scared of the future.
It makes me mad, because I can feel what it's trying to do to me. I do NOT understand how anyone can willingly watch any type,of content like this
I can't stand it either, it's overwhelming and irritating, I don't even know how people can multitask like that. When I do something, whether watching, playing video games, reading, or anything else, I do one thing at a time. I hear so many people say they have ADHD nowadays, I'm thinking it's not innate but instead cultivated by media and how people engage with it.
Thank you for giving me the language to explain to people why I don't use Tik Tok. It is the adult equivalent to Elsagate baby sensory videos and I am direly afraid of messing with my brain chemistry in that way.
you aren't reaching by bringing up trauma. i was re-traumatized last year and switched to a flip phone a few months ago because i felt social media and this kind of content specifically sedated me so intensely and truly made the rest of my life even more unbearable. i'm doing a whole lot better now, not just because of my flip phone - got therapy, got to a safe environment, etc - but it really, REALLY helped
I have done a lot of experimentation with different tik tok accounts to try and dig into how the algorithm works and I think there's a couple of important points on top of everything mentioned in this video.
First, tik tok's algorithm heavily favors whatever the popular sounds happen to be, probably too much. So the same loud sound over and over and over again is going to get people to get off the app if it gets to be too much, so there needs to be content that isn't tied to those repetitive loud sounds. But as you mentioned ~10:00, people just talking tend to be terrible at getting to the point, so unless a specific type of person is using tik tok, the algorithm usually doesn't push the talking videos too hard.
The reddit stories read by AI and tv clips of low energy animated shows with their consistent cadence and predictable payoff then become the perfect candidate videos for the breath between the noise, if that makes any sense.
Then the purpose of the subway surfers or minecraft parkour animations within sludge content is more nuanced than this video gives it credit for, because you're not supposed to watch it for the duration of the video. When made properly, the correct 'sludge' format has the digital parkour content take up exactly as much space as the comments.
The animations on top of the sludge keep people from scrolling away, then the main content is all available on the top of the screen while people have the comments open, and tik tok's algorithm heavily favors comment participation. The sludge format (whether the creators know it or not) is to incentive comment engagement above all else (including just reading the comments, which can keep people on a video far longer than the content itself).
This also reinforces the earlier point, scrolling through tik tok is the same loud sounds over and over again, so pausing a video to read further accomplishes 'breath between the noise', and if the algorithm is pushing the sludge content, it is likely that the person scrolling has been scrolling for some time.
Unless you're a person who heavily engages with sludge content, it is never the first thing tik tok shows when the app is launched, because while no one person planned it out, the collective purpose of sludge content is to provide a visually engaging but relatively quiet breather for people who are subconsciously primed to leave soon if they don't get a break from the noise.
Holy crap!!! I think you nailed it on so many levels. This is so well thought out and makes perfect, terrifying sense.
this makes a lot of sense
Wow
that is a terrifying and well thought out theory, man..... I keep thinking that genuine quality curation of the flood of media we're surrounded by will be the next big service
@@Bo-kq8tn when it comes to music, using spotify's "radio from a title" is great at curating music... as long as you have good "root songs". For that you should ask friends, like you ask your rocker friend for a couple of rock songs, your hip hop head friend for some hiphop, etc.
Good mix of connecting with real people and using an amazing piece of modern tech.
I keep thinking we already all the "next big services" we need, it's more about "chill the fuck out and enjoy what we already have" wave i'm hoping for
The queasy feeling I got watching this realizing that I couldn't tear my eyes away from the projected footage...
Also never feel bad about whipping out McLuhan haha, I'm convinced "The Medium is The Message" is a foundational concept for even being able to remotely understand digital media.
Another thing that I’ve noticed that I believe is tangentially related to sludge videos are videos with purposeful errors in them. I’ve seen tons of viral videos that are otherwise your run of the mill viral video except something is wrong. Like the audio is played backwards or so slowed down and distorted that it sounds otherworldly. Or maybe a movie clip where the captions are purposefully wrong during crucial parts of the scene. Then, under every single one of these videos, half of the comments are something like “lol wtf is with the audio tho” or people just pointing out the captioning mistake for the Nth time. This does nothing but boost engagement as everyone and their mother is commenting to point out the thing that everyone else already did.
as someone who is currently watching this with adhd medication in their system right now, the amount of sludge content is making me feel im being subtly brainwashed, but im liking it. my eyes were being so overloaded with visual stimulus, that i tried not looking at my screen at all and just focusing on your voice (which shook off the feeling of being hypnotized, weirdly enough).
10/10 video, would subject my friends to watching this to see it holds all their attention for all 23 minutes.
Loved the "Little bit of everything all of the time" bo burnham reference just after you point out the interaction between creator and viewer in slower media ^^ lovely demonstration!
what a lovely video, even if I only glanced at the screen a few times, treating it more like a podcast. While I'm a boomer, and therefore unaware of "sludge"- I can relate it to something in my life- see, "care taking" has been a role I've fit at several points. First, in college, I volunteered at an AIDS hospice service ( it being the late 1980's, this wasn't institutional, much more informal and community organized), then, later, I worked in Group Homes for kids who were impossible to place in Juvenile Detention, or in Mental "care" facilities, but could qualify for both. These days, I'm taking care of both of my very elderly and dying parents. In between these things, I read a few articles about Roky Erikson- a semi famous rock musician who was institutionalized for long stints, first by the State, then by his mother. So, finally, here's the thing: Roky was noted for having multiple TV sets and radios going on all at once. This caught my attention, as I'd seen similar with some of the folks dying of AIDS. So, maybe I was primed to notice it with the Group Home kids, or maybe it really was a thing- but seeing both of my nearly bed-bound parents doing similar, often enough that I've had to up their internet to accommodate each of them running 3 or 4 devices at the same time ( eg, as I type, Mom has a Kindle, Laptop and PC running, while Dad is watching a streaming movie, with RUclips running on a tablet, and another tablet open, not currently engaged) I'm not prepared to state why, but your video hints at some possibilities. So, thanks!
This is insane to me, I need need need to know what this phenomenon is called! Thank you for this comment
@@FranK-cn1fy I wish I knew a term for it. I've never seen a formal study, or anything- but there's an opportunity, I guess- someone like you could name it. Heck, if I were ambitious enough, I would have submitted a peer review paper, but (Obviously) I haven't.
@@mattvanmantgem8600 it sounds like escapism into a media collage
This is such a genuinely fascinating comment. Perhaps it has something to do with escapism through keeping the mind too occupied? I have ADHD, so I usually need a higher level of baseline sensory stimulation (fidgeting with a pen, listening to a podcast or radio drama, music, chewing something, etc.) and these videos feel like what i can only imagine doing crack is like, in the worst way possible. You really do get sucked into it, even if you aren't entertained- i'd even say that it's like an "ADHD simulator" for people who don't have the condition.
I'm young- gen z or "zoomer" to be specific. (But like, the older half. Bordering on being a millennial lol) so I definitely don't have the experience you have, but I figured i'd offer the information i could in case it's helpful in any way. ^_^
Edit: as per the other responses, there's another comment in the comments section mentioning it could have something to do with the extreme fear a lot more people are experiencing nowadays due to societal circumstances. And if the circumstances of the people you mentioned are also fear-based- it seems to certainly line up.
@Employee 427 I'm prone to the hyperfocus part of the equation, myself, though never DX'ed " ADHD"- ( I'm not shy about it- I'm diagnosed as Bipolar 2, if that illuminates) so, I have constantly policed myself against getting into too deep of a rabbit hole- meaning that I can see the utility of the " fear" hypothesis- bad things happen when we lose control. But, control always seems to be an illusion, at least for me. Still, I think again that y'all are on to something. I hope it helps...
I've been training myself to be more contemplative and stop rushing though things, the essay Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han helped me a lot with that, it made me realize that doing a lot all the time is most of the time not a good thing, there is a point where he says multitasking is not something new but a primitive adaptation and gives the example of an animal trying to drink water from a river while looking for predators and carring for it's offspring. That animal is multitasking but has no time to contemplate, to have higher ideas of to enjoy the water it is drinking.
I feel this kind of slidge videos are a little like that, trying to avoid boredom is it was the plage, but patience an boredom are important to be able to understand things and create new ones.
That being says it is still comfortable to have some visual or tactile stimuli while hearing or watching something, in a way some people may say that looking at my hands and nails or scratching my beard while hearing a podcast is some kind of sludge too. I think is totally debatable. Another example is that I really enjoy repairing stuff and some of those videos have the person repairing talking about something tangent to the repair it self while working and that is enjoyable too.
Well, those are my random thoughts for now, this is the first video I watch from you and it was quite enjoyable, I think it helps that I don't use tiktok, so it was one of the first times I saw soap being cut or that slime thing being manipulated (I guess is the best way to describe it), so it was like looking though a window to a world I know little about.
Just found this in my recommended, and it's an incredibly insightful and well-made video. As someone who's neurodivergent, sludge content is one of the worst trends I've ever seen in recent memory. I actively avoid it like the plague and don't even have TikTok downloaded for the sake of my mental state.
A few months ago, a friend of mine was binging sludge videos on TikTok and showing a few of them to me, and all I felt was my brain rotting in the process as I noticed my eyes moving towards the soap bar being shaved with a knife. It's frustrating to see what short form content has become.
Personally, I enjoy content with lots of effort and soul put into it, which is why I watch gaming and music related content that's usually 15-20 minutes minimum, and even reaching an hour at times. It actively keeps me engaged and makes me want to talk about it after it's over. Content that's this rewarding and full of effort should be what's raking in the cash, not sludge "content" that makes you forget what the video was even about in the first place...
(Side note: I'm glad you mentioned music websites like RYM. I'm an AOTY user and have found loads of incredible music I never would've discovered otherwise.)
As a local musician, I can confirm we would love it if you showed up. And usually local bands play at places where they have beer and/or food so even if we aren’t very good you can at least redeem the experience with some nachos. 😂
As someone who was obsessed with hypnotism from the ages of 16-19, I think these sludge videos are a form of hypnosis. It's like troll net fishing. You get people distracted by the high stimulus video, while the actual content (the narrative podcast or movie) gets hijacked into your brain. It's the new nasty form of commercial or propaganda. Almost like overly intimate. To use less kind language, like eye-molestation.
when you describe it like that Im kind of left wondering about some 'other dangers' from this content; maybe medical conditions that we wont find out about until much later. (besides brainwashing)
Brain-molestation, not eye.
These videos definitely induce hypnotic trances. You could combine them with propaganda to increase people's familiarity with extreme statements, without ever needing to have an actual dialogue or persuasive argument. That is dangerous
Well sure that sort of stuff can have an effect propaganda/commercial wise it's the "common-sense" stuff that if someone were looking directly at no distractions they wouldn't see the problem that ultimately causes more harm and proliferates more
I know I've already commented- but content sludge reminds me of something oddly specific. It reminds me of the clip "The Trial" from Pink Floyd's The Wall. So much going on at once, so many images rapidly changing, so much to keep up with, and the themes of both losing your mind and hiding away from the world, putting up emotional walls until you're forced by reality to tear them down. Your video is fantastic.
I normally hate when i see these attention trap memes but there was one that was played next to a scene from My dinner with Andre that really nailed in a point from that movie.
The scene shown was specifically when Andre is describing the systemic nature of boredom to Wallace
"as big as a kinda small grape" is a bewilderingly expressive description of size and i don't know why it caught in my craw so tight.
It's not a small grape, it's a "kinda small" grape. Important nuance.
same
It’s honestly TERRIFYING how often I found myself “focusing” on the sludge and had to cover half the screen or close my eyes to bring myself back to reality
I’m hoping that the sludge helps to shoot this into the stratosphere and have lots of others go through this video, this experience, and come out more aware at the end
I think this new “tiktok NPC” trend could also be considered sludge content. Besides the fact that it could be sexual and people do it for the money, in my opinion, it is similarly addicting to watch while having nothing of value to even say. Just instead of visual stimulation (sludge) it’s more auditory stimulation (sludge).
I get a lot of sludge-esque visions whenever I go deep with psychedelics. It's usually an overwhelming flurry of things in my life, mashed into an incoherent mess of stimulation and reflection. I usually get stuck there for a while, seeing the sheer amount of sludge that fills my life and asking myself, "how is anyone suppose to clean this up?" My question remains unanswered to this day, but the sludge flows in full force.
embrace the sludge
I smiled at the ending. Why would I want to remove a smile from the world.
I knew of this style of content, but I don't use TikTok so I've never been exposed to it. After watching this I can totally get why people watch it. It made this 20 minute video feel like 5
There’s a very significant moment in this video where she mentions how her attention span has been destroyed by always needing to have something on in the background, because of trauma. “10 minutes of silence will send me into a tailspin.” I think this is the root cause of a TON of this stuff; nobody is forced to watch sludge videos, just as nobody needs to have reality TV or Office reruns playing constantly throughout the day, but so many people CHOOSE to be perpetually distracted precisely because they don’t want to think - thinking makes them anxious, because they have unresolved emotional trauma. They avoid their own thoughts. So they continue to watch sludge videos, which only perpetuates this content while conditioning the brain to be content with vapid stimulation.
Basically, people need therapy.
I always have low-level music playing in my headphones. Because if it's quiet, then I'm alone with my thoughts. And my thoughts are often not kind to me.
Honestly I don't know if this is the case for most people but I can attest that this is my problem, I have bad depression and untreated anxiety, so I tend to surround myself with noise and Visual stimuli to avoid thoughts.
I can be watching a video, playing a game and reading all at the same time just to avoid thoughts
Bigger picture; we're not supposed to be washing dishes alone. We're communal animals. A lone human is dead. We seek the sound of other people around us. Before tv it was radio, and before that we had eachother
this video has such a particular vibe. the combo of the low projector noise, the constant running videos and the minimal editing. i dont know how to describe it but i love it.
I saw those sludge and quick cut videos some time ago on Instagram, and I didn’t know what they were back then. I couldn’t watch them because they were visually overwhelming, causing sensory issues, and I had to turn away from them. Thanks to you, I know now what they are.
right?!?! i was so confused when a video i was trying to watch was cut in half by something so inane. thankfully, they first started as family guy clips and i am a family guy Hater and so whenever i would see a family guy clip, i would scroll past because there were times in the past when i’d watch the clip to see if the show ever had any funny jokes and noticed just watching the video through made the algorithm put more clips on my feed. so when the sludge videos arrived cut with family guy clips, i scrolled right past. then, they started cutting the videos with minecraft videos but it would always be the videos where an ai voice would read out reddit posts which i occasionally like to listen to. but i remember a time when those reddit videos didn’t have anything else on the screen except the words and the confusion really set in. not long after more of those videos started cropping up did i start hearing people joking about the brain rot of the “subway surfer/minecraft/family guy videos”
now i make an active effort to scroll past no matter what is in the video
i am literally blown away by the curation, thought, artistry, and intention behind the making of this video.
This reminds me of RUclips commentary videos from channels like Leafy, Birdman, or Optimus where the host talks about a certain topic but the visuals are of Call of Duty or Overwatch or CSGO or something. I’ve also noticed that as I’ve grown I used to play competitive video games with my friends, now I listen to podcasts and play more passive games just so I have something to stimulate the intellectual and visual parts of my brain in order to not face the persistent abyss that is living an aesthetic life.
that solo at the end was so good it made me half cry
It's as if you've taken all the incoherent half-thoughts I've had and the mix of feelings (awe, discontent, curiosity, etc.) toward post-human art that I've felt as I watched the internet grow in the past ten years... and you put them into words: genuine, meaningful, and informative words. It's remarkable! I'm gonna share this with so many people and be extremely annoying about it! Thank you sm, please keep making more videos!
I escaped content sludge and my need for it... Rather strangely.. thanks to mushrooms?
You can absolutely escape it without, but it's really hard. Mushrooms on the other hand helped take me out of that mindset needing constant stimulation. Even for weeks after my first trip I felt that way.
Idk if this is something that might help other people, but it'll be interesting to see the changes psilocybin makes on society as it continues to be more accepted, studied, and decriminalized. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I kinda think this might change our world for the better. Lord knows we need a societal shift towards living more in the moment and away from screens.
I just watched this video with a cold and now my head feels like sludge. It's a really interesting topic that's worried me a lot to be honest. It worries me because I can melt my brain on Tiktok for 10 minutes and not touch the app again for a month because I realise it's 90% garbage but the amount of people who lap it up is scary. I don't wanna be a "Tiktok is ruining everything" guy but it's hard to deny its not dumbing people down at a crazy rate.
seeing anything close to sludge content feels like a sensory overload except it’s like I’m in one every day and now the feeling of being overwhelmed has slowly mushed at the point it becomes normal for me.
As I watched this video, I expected to play it in the background while I played a game. Its what I usually do, but as I watched the video, and really focused on the message, I could not in good conscience give in to the brain rot that permeates sludge content. Now I don't go on to tik tok or really any conventional social media, but I do scroll through reddit. Reddit, as I am now recognizing, has a similar scroll formula to tik tok just less egregious because of the emphasis on sub-communities and discussion. But when you scroll the front page, that hypnotic affect grabs you. Watching this video was hard because of the sludge content you showed through the projector. The sheer amount of stimuli kinda hurt, not just my eyes but I had a legit physical repulsion. My eyes hurt and I had to look away like fucking Dracula from the sun. My body was just telling me, "This is not okay. NONE OF THIS IS OKAY!" Now I do suffer from sensory issues and can experience sensory overload so that could explain it, but for people are numb to this content and whose attention spans have been so broken that they can consume it normally, that's scary. The anecdote about the 2 year old, that's fucking terrifying. I'm not even that old yet the internet progresses everything so fast that just 5 years ago, 2018, the internet felt like a whole different place. Capitalism is truly sinking its claws into everything. It will not stop until it has monetized every human interaction. Put every human experience in the language of finance and transactions. And as I watch on in horror, that part of my brain keeps telling me, keeps inundating me with this awful feeling, "THIS IS NOT OKAY!"
What you said about "hypnotized..." I have a very low level knowledge of hypnotism, but one of the things I've seen repeated a lot is that trances are a perfectly normal part of everyday life, and that media (books, TV, games) is a notable thing that induces them. It seems like these "sludge videos" are optimizing for... Well, being "entrancing" over being enjoyable. I don't have a lot of experience with sludge videos in particular but with other Content[TM] that's trying for retention over anything else, yeah, I could say it's VERY comparable to being hypnotized.
I myself built a game for engagement over "fun" (it was an experiment with, again, hypnosis) a little over a year ago, and... Now that you point it out, "playing" it does feel kinda like Subway Surfers... Although I think I'm getting off into the weeds here.
(Very tangentially: Something about the way you sometimes draw out the last word of a sentence reminds me of the way some hypnotists talk.)
Yes, trances are a normal part of waking life, it's mostly a byproduct of attention mechanism. "highway hypnosis" is well studied
i literally cannot tear my eyes away from the screen. i usually put on a youtube video in the background while I do other things but I couldn't look away, well played.
I've never used TikTok myself, but RUclips has exposed me to a lot of TikTok content, and I gotta say...these sludge (hypermedia? hyperstimulation?) videos are kind of terrifying. When you had them going on the screen, I was totally put into a trance. This is mind-hacking for sure. x_x
I have recently been “watching” videos on my phone as I work- it’s somewhere I can see it but I rarely look at it. Mainly I’m listening to the audio as I focus on other things. And I’m only a few minutes in, but as you’re playing the sludge content on the wall behind you I find I can’t…. Stop….. looking….. it really does work just like you say.
this video made my night! that last part about the importance of having a long attention span influenced me and i took a long walk, collected some pinecones, and buried a squirrel. twas pretty cool. awesome video as always, thanks!
These Images of children with eyes opened wide from shock, or crying from extreme distress or sharp knives cutting through soap (which could be your skin) are so dangerous for a child's mind.
UGH the editing choice of having constant sludge in the background is equal parts genius and equal parts aggravating-I find myself struggling and to avert my eyes from the Minecraft parkour, subway surfing, etc.,
ended up having to hide the tab after having to go back several times to hear what you said because i was already too focused on the clips oops
BUT that final message of YOU choosing what content you watch, not the algorithm, that really struck me ((ESPECIALLY since ive just been scrolling on youtube the past few days watching the same videos i know ive seen before OVER and OVER)) so i think i just kind of really needed to hear that and actually DO something!!
i DO think most sludge are easy to ai. you just need to have a couple different scraping algorithms for the different content, a text-to-speech, and combine. it's actually trivial to create -- ive seen some upsetting stuff get past the human filter because of it
Doing this over a projector instead of a greenscreen or a facecam so you literally can't look away from the sludge is brilliant.
This vid (and sludge in general) puts so much strain on my eye that I had to put my phone down and listen to it like it were a podcast.
I think tiktok is great at faking community. Everything except the basest features try to convince you you’re part of some niche. Replying to comments creates more of a link between creator and viewer, hiding view counts makes it seem like a smaller audience than it is, and even the meager ‘creator fund’ makes artists seem smaller than they are, because they make less money and so can afford less production quality with the same audience. They want you to think that everything interesting is on tiktok, and you’re special for finding it(being served it by the algorithm).
Yep and its working :(
People are feel so proud and special based on what TikTok gives them. I‘ve seen too much of „Look how quirky and silly I am, my fyp gave me a video with this sound, which only has 7 videos“ and you check and there is already 7000 TikToks saying simular things. It happens everytime remixes with some meme go viral. Also not related but damn some of these memes turn remixes sensations are for sure marketing strat
Lmao i love the look of casual disdain in the thumbnail 💜🏳️⚧️
I dig this new format of lily standing in front of a blank wall with the media projected behind and on top of her, good vibe
Great video, I had never heard of "sludge" but the term perfectly describes the direction that media has been going, and at an ever increasing rate, with sludge content tiktoks looking like the algorythmically boiled down to its essence, final form.
Would be interested to see someone chart the rise of sludge from proto-sludge like clickbait articles and mass produced junk cinema like Marvel, to tiktok sludge and onwards to the AI future where nothing but sludge is everywhere.
One half of the recipe is the production of sludge but the other half is what seems to be a growing lack of discernment amongst the audience who seem more than happy to be rebranded as "content consumers".
Also, I'd probably watch Akerman sludge. I subscribed for the playing.
I've seen those kinds of videos on Instagram and always found them super offputting. I block each page that gets recommended to me because the videos feel so spammy. The worst is the ones with the random Minecraft hopping and some reddit thread of comments being read by a computer voice. I hadn't really thought about them in-depth enough to realize how messed up they are as a concept.
I had not heard the term "content sludge" before, but it is a good one. You do a wonderful job exploring this stuff in a way that keeps me thinking about the subject long after the video is finished.
It's always wonderful when I stumble across a really great video essayist with a whole catalogue I haven't watched. Some top-tier video essays!
I listened to this video while driving to the ER after my brother’s car accident. Your point about how content sludge appeals to a need for noise resonated with me, especially after trauma. When you’re in crisis mode, you’re told to find comforting media (a favorite TV show, a familiar book): so why do we emotionlessly scroll when we’re suffering? I wonder how common it is to use this content(?) for dissociation. It erases the viewer, but maybe that’s why I seek it out. Sometimes it’s agonizing to be in the moment.
My brother is fine btw, that time just felt relevant to my experience of this topic.