Introduction#
I have been thinking about this topic for a long time and have made several attempts to write about it, but I always felt that it wasn't the right time. As time went on, this matter became more and more complicated.
But regardless, I still want to write a little bit about it.
Successful Short Videos#
I started using short video platforms when they first came out, but soon I felt significant negative effects on myself and stopped using them.
Unexpectedly, over the years, these types of apps became more and more popular. From rural areas to cities, from children to the elderly, from mainland China to North America, from Douyin to... TikTok, the high user stickiness and time occupancy have made this business model hugely successful.
Despite Facebook's attempts to acquire various platforms, it was still overwhelmed by TikTok, forcing them to go all-in on the meta-universe. Weibo added a large number of short videos to its homepage to retain users. Even Zhihu, a platform that emphasizes information quality, started promoting low-quality short videos (which was the worst experience I've had since using this platform and led to me abandoning it). Even WeChat quietly embedded a short video creation platform and used a series of techniques to promote it in Moments.
There is no doubt that short videos have been very successful as a commercial product: high user count, high stickiness, good social diffusion, and extremely long usage time. After entering a mature competition stage, internet platforms hope that users will spend all their time on their own software because if users spend an extra hour on their own software, they will spend one hour less on their competitors' products.
Poor Short Videos#
However, for us users, the commercial success is not as important as our own experience and the impact it has on us. When we open a short video platform, it is obvious that we are not there for serious learning purposes, but rather to observe the world and relax.
So the question arises, does watching short videos really help us observe the world and relax? The answer is NO.
There are many problems with using short videos to observe the world: behavior pattern training, fictional cognition, and energy depletion, which are largely caused by advanced recommendation systems.
Recommendation Systems and Behavior Patterns
Let's first discuss the first problem, which is behavior patterns.
I have some understanding of the recommendation systems used by various companies and platforms. Most companies solve the cold start problem by using user profiles and then collect a large amount of user behavior data to enhance the preference of the recommendation stream.
In other words, when users first start using a product, the software will collect non-behavioral information about the user, including username, contacts, location, age, gender, education level, associated accounts and behavior on other platforms, and so on.
Don't doubt it, there are information interfaces and to some extent, communication between various platforms. This is why shopping platforms will promote products that you have seen or talked about on social platforms. To a large extent, this is due to real-name registration on mobile phones and the mandatory binding of social platforms to mobile phones.
Next, the platform will use this profile to start pushing some short video streams and then collect detailed user behavior, such as how long the user watched a video, whether they liked, shared, saved, or commented on it, in order to update the recommendation model and make the video stream better fit the user's preferences.
According to unreliable sources, the current recommendation models have become extremely sophisticated in data analysis: software can even collect users' movement information through gyroscopes and other hardware, and then combine it with time to determine the user's state. Is the user watching while commuting on the subway, during lunch break at work, browsing while in the restroom, or before bed in bed?
Such personalized recommendations naturally fit the user's interests extremely well and even train the user's brain to fit this preference curve. Originally, a user's preference for Topic X was 80 points, for Topic Y it was 60 points, and for Topic Z it was 20 points. After a series of preference-based recommendations, the system influences the user's behavior through the recommendations, ultimately training the brain to only be interested in X and Y, and more willing to spend 15 seconds watching X and quickly swipe past Y.
In other words, the short video recommendation system not only caters to our preferences but also influences our brain's patterns, or behavior patterns. I believe everyone has seen the GIF of a monkey endlessly swiping through short videos, which is a typical manifestation of a well-trained pattern.
Recommendation Systems and Fictional Reality
Are users only changed in terms of behavior patterns? Far from it.
Most of the short videos that can be pushed to the recommendation stream are well-produced. In other words, the scripts are carefully designed, and every line of dialogue accurately hits the user's points of interest. In other words, the series of short videos you see not only cater to your preferences but are also highly industrialized in terms of production.
If this were a movie, TV show, or stage play, it would undoubtedly be a good thing. But this is "momentarily recording life" short videos.
The filming locations of short videos are not in studios but in everyday life scenes. The people appearing in short videos are not actors or celebrities but ordinary people around us. The clothing in short videos is not futuristic or formal wear but everyday attire. All these details subconsciously tell the audience that everything they see here is the real world.
It is clear that a person who spends a long time browsing these content that matches their preferences, looks incredibly real and everyday, will gradually map this content to their perception of the real world in their brain.
For students who have not yet stepped out of the ivory tower, if all they see while taking breaks from studying are these video streams, they will naturally feel that the world is just like what they see in the short videos, where everyone is using the same popular phrases, consuming promoted products, and living a well-designed life.
Even adults who have experienced various things, especially in the current Chinese media environment where news media is almost completely dead, will gradually change their perception if they lack other channels to obtain information and are exposed to short videos.
Energy Depletion
Some time ago, while listening to the "Voice East, Strike West" podcast, a scholar introduced a result of interdisciplinary research between neuroscience and information science: when users watch short videos, it may seem like they are not moving or thinking, but their brains are highly active because watching short videos requires the brain to process a large amount of visual and auditory information, even if this information has high redundancy.
This explains the feeling of emptiness and exhaustion after spending a long time scrolling through the phone because the brain doesn't get any rest but instead exhausts itself by processing garbage, which goes against our initial motivation for watching short videos.
So when you need to rest, please put down your phone, take off your headphones, go for a walk, look at the scenery, and chat with family and friends, instead of endlessly scrolling like a monkey, indulging in false reality.
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Originally, this article was intended to discuss variety shows and short videos together, but now I realize that there are many differences, so I will leave that for future evaluation.