Hi Adam, thank you for this short essay. I have to say, though, I think this is the first time I actually disagree with your conclusions.
You argue that algorithmic measurement only works as long as there is something "objective" to the content, and that platforms become blind to the emotional message of words like "clavicular" (a word I'm honestly seeing for the first time, though I've had the misfortune of meeting Ballerina Capuccina and Ohio rizz), making it a blind spot in their commodification of everything, even though they can still serve and monetize it.
My perception of the algorithms has been that for a long time already, nothing is measured on the objective level anyways, and all that matters is screen time and engagement. And these are (at least I thought) understood to be caused much more by emotions, than the tangible value of the content. That's why we see polarising content on our feeds. And it's a well-known "feature" of TikTok that it's able to guess user's current mood just after a few scrolls, which, I suspect, has nothing to do with the objective meaning*. Thus, the user feeling "inundated" with a brainrot word is exactly something that the algorithm is trained to extract from our interaction signals.
This makes me conclude anything but what you say. Getting framemogged by clavicularity is not a radical act - it's exactly what the algorithm is supposed to do, and we're just losing the last bits of human touch by removing any curiosity and intellectual message from the content.
However, I would be surprised to see this omission in your work, which deals with social media algorithms all the time, so I suppose you must have considered what I'm saying - so I would be interested to hear why you came to your conclusion.
By the way, a fun (or distressing?) place where I really started seeing this "emotion > content" dynamic for myself are those "friends' likes" bubbles on Instagram. I noticed they really reflect on what terms I'm talking to different people and how I feel about them at the moment. And this is happening even though no "objective" signals on this can be found in the online world - only my engagement with content where I see their likes, which has increasingly little to do with the subject of the reels.
I love this post. I’ve been seeing a lot of (nonsense) discussions about AI essentially revealing the ability of language to generate itself from nothing but itself. These people argue that LLM’s are proof humans essentially do nothing more than unconscious token generation when speaking about things. I think you hit the nail on the head here by pointing to semantic satiation as evidence that language itself contains no meaning outside of what we see into it. AI is only able to consistently produce text we interpret as meaningful because it was and is trained on meaningful and CURRENT data. If we downloaded all the current LLMs right now and locked them away for a thousand + years and then pulled them out and tried to ask them a question, our use of language would have changed enough to render our question invalid to them, their response nonsensical to us, and or likely both. The idea that language is literally self propagating outside of a human context is baffling to me, but some people take it seriously. I’ll stop ranting. Great piece!
(PS - wouldn’t calling it “semantic cessation” make more sense than “satiation”? I said it incorrectly like this for the longest time and when I learned the actual phrase I was more confused).
Isn’t the algorithm itself devoid of meaning? Does it actually understand the content of discourse- or does it analyze words as units of data which occur at predictable intervals? Brainrot words seem like the most commodifiable text there is, like they speak the language of the algorithm. Maybe using them is a critique in that it exposes the algorithm’s meaninglessness?
I love this piece so much and think it’s so poetic and beautiful. The loop of wondering about this created another loop of questioning in my brain - is it underlying nihilism that fuels the emergence of concepts like this or the emergence of concepts like this that fuels nihilism?
I think though in some contexts, neurodivergent ones mostly, a lot of words can just be stimulating. Phrases, too, where people just have certain phrases they can't get out of their head and repeat them vocally, a vocal stim. Lotta people on TikTok nowadays are misinterpreting what vocal stims are, but they can be without meaning and just be there because it Feels Good To Say, the vibrations in your throat hitting all the right marks. Or because it's funny Sometimes a vocal stim is a vocal stim because it makes you giggle and that's the way you're stimulating yourself.
So like, what crosses the line between what is neurotypicals repeating a funny phrase and autistics taking something and running with it? I think there is something to be said about the way neurodivergency can affect how one's speech patterns are picked up on, I find that a lot of my and my peer’s conversations will just have a lot of repeated phrases and quotes, and we will just repeat the same thing to each other. You know how the algorithm is encouraging/pushing “autistic” behavior as something that is trendy? With so many people misusing/misinterpreting terms familiar with the autistic community, or general behavior exhibited from them? (And how this can also be seen with the way people are picking up on AAE because it is humorous to them without exactly understanding just what it means?)
Also, a lot of the incel men on 4chan are just autistic. Like, A Lot. So many. I’d be led to believe even that all the lingo from there were originated from autistics who categorized everything that way, who became fixated on that categorization system. I think that's something worth mentioning/to think about, they're just my own observations.
We humans do much to dull our senses, to find ways to escape the misery of our banal and meaningless lives.
Permanent intoxication with ethanol and other toxic, recreational substances rot the brain.
The stupor of social media, watching sport, participating in organised religions, first dulls then rots the brain.
In the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, the process of decay is accelerated by the heat, humidity, solar radiation, salt, microbes and fungi, termites and ants.
The poles of my beloved timber home were rotting away, eaten by two different species of termites, several species of fungi. Likewise so was I rotting away, eaten up, spiritually, mentally, and physically. My brain was rotting because of the lack of mental stimulation that came from living in a community where formal education, critical reading and thinking were eschewed in favour of watching the footy and quaffing enormous numbers of ice cold stubbies.
Now back in South East England, existing not living, my body including my brain continues to rot. I am surrounded by feckless fools and craven knaves. Humans are a species of predatory yet gregarious apes. If we cannot commune with others, if like Punch we are rejected by our troupe, then slowly but surely we go into decline. Our brain rots away, along with everything else.
Hi Adam, thank you for this short essay. I have to say, though, I think this is the first time I actually disagree with your conclusions.
You argue that algorithmic measurement only works as long as there is something "objective" to the content, and that platforms become blind to the emotional message of words like "clavicular" (a word I'm honestly seeing for the first time, though I've had the misfortune of meeting Ballerina Capuccina and Ohio rizz), making it a blind spot in their commodification of everything, even though they can still serve and monetize it.
My perception of the algorithms has been that for a long time already, nothing is measured on the objective level anyways, and all that matters is screen time and engagement. And these are (at least I thought) understood to be caused much more by emotions, than the tangible value of the content. That's why we see polarising content on our feeds. And it's a well-known "feature" of TikTok that it's able to guess user's current mood just after a few scrolls, which, I suspect, has nothing to do with the objective meaning*. Thus, the user feeling "inundated" with a brainrot word is exactly something that the algorithm is trained to extract from our interaction signals.
This makes me conclude anything but what you say. Getting framemogged by clavicularity is not a radical act - it's exactly what the algorithm is supposed to do, and we're just losing the last bits of human touch by removing any curiosity and intellectual message from the content.
However, I would be surprised to see this omission in your work, which deals with social media algorithms all the time, so I suppose you must have considered what I'm saying - so I would be interested to hear why you came to your conclusion.
By the way, a fun (or distressing?) place where I really started seeing this "emotion > content" dynamic for myself are those "friends' likes" bubbles on Instagram. I noticed they really reflect on what terms I'm talking to different people and how I feel about them at the moment. And this is happening even though no "objective" signals on this can be found in the online world - only my engagement with content where I see their likes, which has increasingly little to do with the subject of the reels.
I love this post. I’ve been seeing a lot of (nonsense) discussions about AI essentially revealing the ability of language to generate itself from nothing but itself. These people argue that LLM’s are proof humans essentially do nothing more than unconscious token generation when speaking about things. I think you hit the nail on the head here by pointing to semantic satiation as evidence that language itself contains no meaning outside of what we see into it. AI is only able to consistently produce text we interpret as meaningful because it was and is trained on meaningful and CURRENT data. If we downloaded all the current LLMs right now and locked them away for a thousand + years and then pulled them out and tried to ask them a question, our use of language would have changed enough to render our question invalid to them, their response nonsensical to us, and or likely both. The idea that language is literally self propagating outside of a human context is baffling to me, but some people take it seriously. I’ll stop ranting. Great piece!
(PS - wouldn’t calling it “semantic cessation” make more sense than “satiation”? I said it incorrectly like this for the longest time and when I learned the actual phrase I was more confused).
Isn’t the algorithm itself devoid of meaning? Does it actually understand the content of discourse- or does it analyze words as units of data which occur at predictable intervals? Brainrot words seem like the most commodifiable text there is, like they speak the language of the algorithm. Maybe using them is a critique in that it exposes the algorithm’s meaninglessness?
I love this piece so much and think it’s so poetic and beautiful. The loop of wondering about this created another loop of questioning in my brain - is it underlying nihilism that fuels the emergence of concepts like this or the emergence of concepts like this that fuels nihilism?
Are you Buddhist and/or do you know Sanskrit? :o
why are incels so good at coining words?
Interesting
Gotta find your SX session!!
Do you have a discord?
haha :-) - nice vignete, I imagined 5yo automaton 'gumica, gumica, gumica, ...'
67
bro go do a pushup or two jfc
I think though in some contexts, neurodivergent ones mostly, a lot of words can just be stimulating. Phrases, too, where people just have certain phrases they can't get out of their head and repeat them vocally, a vocal stim. Lotta people on TikTok nowadays are misinterpreting what vocal stims are, but they can be without meaning and just be there because it Feels Good To Say, the vibrations in your throat hitting all the right marks. Or because it's funny Sometimes a vocal stim is a vocal stim because it makes you giggle and that's the way you're stimulating yourself.
So like, what crosses the line between what is neurotypicals repeating a funny phrase and autistics taking something and running with it? I think there is something to be said about the way neurodivergency can affect how one's speech patterns are picked up on, I find that a lot of my and my peer’s conversations will just have a lot of repeated phrases and quotes, and we will just repeat the same thing to each other. You know how the algorithm is encouraging/pushing “autistic” behavior as something that is trendy? With so many people misusing/misinterpreting terms familiar with the autistic community, or general behavior exhibited from them? (And how this can also be seen with the way people are picking up on AAE because it is humorous to them without exactly understanding just what it means?)
Also, a lot of the incel men on 4chan are just autistic. Like, A Lot. So many. I’d be led to believe even that all the lingo from there were originated from autistics who categorized everything that way, who became fixated on that categorization system. I think that's something worth mentioning/to think about, they're just my own observations.
I was not expecting buddhist shlokas by Adam 😭😭😭
Great post, Adam!
We humans do much to dull our senses, to find ways to escape the misery of our banal and meaningless lives.
Permanent intoxication with ethanol and other toxic, recreational substances rot the brain.
The stupor of social media, watching sport, participating in organised religions, first dulls then rots the brain.
In the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, the process of decay is accelerated by the heat, humidity, solar radiation, salt, microbes and fungi, termites and ants.
The poles of my beloved timber home were rotting away, eaten by two different species of termites, several species of fungi. Likewise so was I rotting away, eaten up, spiritually, mentally, and physically. My brain was rotting because of the lack of mental stimulation that came from living in a community where formal education, critical reading and thinking were eschewed in favour of watching the footy and quaffing enormous numbers of ice cold stubbies.
Now back in South East England, existing not living, my body including my brain continues to rot. I am surrounded by feckless fools and craven knaves. Humans are a species of predatory yet gregarious apes. If we cannot commune with others, if like Punch we are rejected by our troupe, then slowly but surely we go into decline. Our brain rots away, along with everything else.
Be gay do language crime?