Tag: Big Tech

Tik-Tok & The Tale Of The Female Phenotypes


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really don’t want to believe the technology exists to read our minds via our cellphones. That’s just a bridge too far for me at this point. I will admit that I vacillate conspicuously and wildly on this blog between suggesting that is possible and dismissing it.

But here’s the latest eerie example of SOMETHING going on.

I can think of two examples off the top of my head where Tik-Tok pushed me a video of a woman with a certain phenotype that is identical to the late Annie Shapiro. The women look so much like they could be her sisters.

This does not, in itself, prove anything. It could just be that relative to their “algorithms” people like me who watch the videos I watch like women who look exactly like a dead woman who changed my life while I was in Seoul. I mean, it’s not like they would have the means or interest to do that, right? That’s just crazy talk.

What The Fuck Is Tik-Tok Up To?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Tonight, I was repeatedly pushed eerie videos on Tik-Tok. Given that I had a long and interesting conversation about Tik-Tok’s ability to push “eerie” content to me with someone today, it’s almost like the service is taunting me at this point.

Here’s what happened.

I had a wide-ranging conversation with someone today over beer and pizza and at one point he mentioned how an online friend he met in person was “tiny” compared to what he expected. Well, lo and behold, what happens today, but I get pushed a video about that exact fucking thing — how tiny another woman was!

Then, I’ve been pushed what seems like six or so videos about elevators, of all things. And what did I think about intensely in the last 24 hours since I’m living in a hotel this weekend?

Elevators!

What the fuck is going on? How could the Tik-Tok “algorithm” figure out that I, specifically, was thinking about elevators a lot in the last few days. Or, more specifically, if you follow the logic that what I’m seeing in aggregated assumption about people like me, then why would there be a few thousand people like me who the “algorithms” thought would be interested in elevators of all things. I have no written about the situation with elevators. I have not spoken to anyone about it. The only metric by which elevators have come into my life at all has been in my thoughts.

I’m still not prepared to go full crank and actually believe Tik-Tok can read our minds, but…I dunno, man, something spooky is definitely going on.

The Curious Case Of Tik-Tok Pinning Down My ‘Type’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh, Jesus, this shit with Tik-Tok gets weirder and weirder. Now, Tik-Tok knows me so well to the point that it’s not only pushing me content from a woman who looks identical to a dead woman I think about a lot, it now is pushing me videos of women I definitely would date.

Now, I’m totally willing to accept that they have me figured out because of their mysterious, all powerful “algorithms.”

And, yet, they know my exact type of woman so well, to a subtle granular level, that it’s very, very spooky.

It definitely would innovative if Tik-Tok branched out into being a dating service since it was, like, fucking reading our fucking minds.

Wink.

An Old Struggles To Understand Bella Poarch’s Tik-Tok Superstardom


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m an old and I use Tik-Tok all the time. One of the mysteries of the service is why some people become superstars. One of the really surreal Tik-Tok stars is Bella Poarch.

Why is this woman famous?

She’s an attractive, apparently personable person who can sing.

But exactly why she, of all people, is so popular on the service is something of a mystery to me. She doesn’t really do anything. She has a very expressive face? She’s a hot brunette? She taps into the browning of America?

If you wanted to get all conspiratorial about it, you could say that Tik-Tok is now in the business of making Gen Z stars out of whole cloth through the manipulation of its famous “algorithms.” I only suggest this because a number of other Tik-Tok insta-stars have mysteriously faded of late.

That’s definitely a scenario ripe for being turned into a novel or movie — the personal consequences when a Gen Z’s stardom mysteriously fades when their video app moves on and they don’t. I guess that sounds more like a Black Mirror episode.

Tik-Tok, The Stripper, The Soft Singularity & Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only keep harping on this because of how often it happens and how it jiggles my sense of reality. I don’t like the idea that I’m seeing something surreal that is real and yet everyone else is too busy watching Tik-Tok videos to give my fears much bother.

But Tik-Tok AGAIN pushed me something pretty eerie.

This time, it was a video of a woman who looked identical to a stripper I talked to recently. We had a lovely talk for about an hour and two things are true: I thought about her really intensely and we both use Tik-Tok and had our phones on us.

So, if you absolutely don’t believe there is any chance Tik-Tok can read our minds, then, yes, you could say that Tik-Tok used the location information from both our phones to figure out what to push me. But the implications of even that are pretty staggering — that definitely sounds pretty soft Singularity to me. That a company like Tik-Tok has it within its means to take location data to push me a video of a woman who looks just like the woman I was sitting for a while recently is pretty mind boggling.

What’s more, just within the last 48 hours, I’ve been pushed ANOTHER video of a woman who looks identical to my romanticized memory of the late Annie Shapiro. That’s pretty deep. I don’t have any pictures of her anywhere for even me to access — I just have the imagine of her stored in my mind.

So, we could go through a rather elaborate — but no less rattling — sequence of events where by Tik-Tok isn’t reading my mind, or we cut the shit and say: Tik-Tok is reading our minds.

But I still don’t have any proof. Claiming that Big Tech has the ability to read our minds sounds like something a crank would believe. So, for the time being, I just have to assume all these “spooky” things I’m being pushed by Tik-Tok have some other explanation than the one I think is the answer.

A Former Blab User’s Observations For Tik-Tok


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The video conferencing service Blab may one day be looked back upon as the Amiga of such things. It was way ahead of its time and it definitely gave a sense of the community building potential of video conferencing when combined with discovery.

On paper, at least, Blab was a multi-functional platform that could have been used for everything from a “video Reddit” to online dating to a robust podcasting platform, to you name it.

But the very thing that made it so great — it’s very cool discovery feature — was ultimately its downfall (in a sense.) Once hateful trolls got a hang of the service — and were willing to be on camera — that was the end of Blab at least from the community standpoint.

I use Tik-Tok a lot these days and occasionally — when I’m not worried the service is, like, fucking reading my mind — I wonder if they could somehow crib the best bits of Blab and give Facebook a run for its money.

The answer is I don’t know.

The reason is, Tik-Tok is a handful as it is. Throwing in four way video conferencing with discovery would face the exact same problems that Blab had. So, on paper, yes, adding Blab features to Tik-Tok would probably take it to the next level and make it potentially a Facebook killer.

But, in reality, you would have to be a lot and I mean A LOT smarter than me to figure out how to cherry pick Blab’s best bits without it slamming into the bonkers troll problem that Blab experienced. So, in the abstract, yes, it would be great for Tik-Tok to bring the Blab experience to the masses but it would be seriously playing with fire on a practical level.

So, I don’t know. I do think there is a way that Tik-Tok could grow as huge as Facebook under the right conditions — Facebook is a utility that is hated by a huge swath of if its user based. Whenever we move from Web 3.0 to Web 4.0 everything will be “disrupted” again and new titans will arise. It may be that we skip the video and VR phases altogether and go directly to MindCaps.

Or something.

Anyway, I miss old Blab. We hardly knew yuh.

How Tik-Tok Might End Facebook


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A few years ago, I was really into a video service called Blab. It had a lot of technical problems and obviously was simply a vanity project for the guy who was funding it. It featured four live video boxes for a video conference experience and, most of all, it featured discovery. In hindsight, it’s discovery feature was both a boon and an existential bane.

The reason is — there came a point when the very thing that attracted me to it, the ability the randomly meet new people, was also it’s biggest flaw. The reason: trolls were using the discovery feature to randomly destroy things and make life hell for other users.

And, yet, looking back, it is becoming more and more apparent that the Blab project was far more prescient than one might otherwise imagine. With the rise of Tik-Tok among GenZ, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where Tik-Tok could crush Facebook if it added some sort of four-box social aspect to it, maybe even with discovery.

But Tik-Tok would have to be very, very careful about how they implemented this. It’s possible to do, but they would have to roll out the ability for four people to talk to each other live on video via a video conference very slowly and deliberately.

If you threw it some sort of discovery, there are a number of different ways Tik-Tok could destroy Facebook. One, people could make a lot of new friends via the discovery feature as random people appeared in one of the four video screens. You could have ad hoc dating services added. The list goes on.

And, yet, at the moment, this only works in the abstract. As my personal experience with Blab proves, people are assholes and in practice rolling out any Blab-like features would likely only destroy Tik-Tok.

It’s fun to think about, however.

Is Tik-Tok Reading Our Minds?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m going to keep writing these posts until someone, somewhere takes notice and decides to look into it for me — I’m so frustrated at this point I’ll even take a malignant ding-dong like Tucker Carlson doing it for me.

So, there I was just a moment ago, using Tik-Tok when I was pushed a video about a woman who asked a Tinder match what time he was born. This stopped me cold — I’ve been thinking about that specific thing for some time now because of the novel I’m working on.

I’ve been thinking about that literal thing — the idea that if you were into astrology you would ask someone what time of day they were born.

Now, before you think that Tik-Tok is monitoring my novel writing some way and that’s how it knew that I was interested in such things — I haven’t gotten to that part of the novel yet. I’ve just been thinking about it. I’ve not written anything anywhere — or even spoken about it to anyone. The only person who knows that I’m interested in that particular part of astrology is ME.

I have no proof — none — that Tik-Tok can read our minds. But I do know the technology to do so was patented by Facebook some time ago and, apparently, Facebook is on something of a quest to figure out how to do just that.

The point is — I really need someone at Vox, or Wired or, hell, even New York Magazine to explain to me what I’m seeing on such a personal, specific basis. What other option is there? Sure, you could say Tik-Tok’s algorithms are now so advanced, so powerful, that they have me specifically figured out. But how would such an algorithm be able to seemingly root around in my mind and push me a video about a specific concept that I’ve been thinking about a lot — but haven’t done anything at all outwardly to indicate this is happening?

How? How? How?

Another Spooky Tik-Tok Experience


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yesterday, I was listening to “Born in The USA” by Bruce Springsteen on Spotify and for a moment, I weighed the significance of the song in American politics over the years.

Well, guess what — just now I was using Tik-Tok and, lo and behold I was pushed a video that posed that very same question: “Is Born In The USA a patriotic song?”

Spooky.

Now, the case can be made that this one is pretty easy — Tik-Tok simply monitored my listening to Springsteen in general and pushed that particular video for that reason. What makes this spooky is that the video itself was about the specific thing I thought about, literally.

But, as always, I’m reluctant to believe that Tik-Tok can literally read my mind. In this specific instance there is a non-kooky explanation — Tik-Tok knew in general that I was listening to Bruce on Spotify and it just so happened that the video about him was about the very subject I listened to. The nature of Born In The USA is pretty mainsteam.

It’s still pretty spooky and intrusive, no matter how Tik-Tok figured it out.

The NSA Reading Your Emails Is So Cheugy, Tucker — You Need To Rant About Big Tech Reading Our Minds


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When it comes to the idea that Big Tech can “read our minds,” I think of what we know and don’t know about UFOs right now. We know something weird is going on in our skies, but we don’t know what. The same with my unease about any possibility of Big Tech to read my mind. I know they have a very, very spooky ability to know extremely-specific-to-me things that have be rolling around in my mind, but I don’t know how.

So, if Tucker Carlson is going to lie about cheugy shit like the NSA reading his emails, of all things, at least he could up his game and lie about Big Tech being able to read our minds. That would make the Deep State sit up and take notice, now wouldn’t it. Wink.

I’ll even go on Tucker’s show to talk about my fears. Now THAT would be interesting. I promise I won’t say “babba booy” once. Of course, there’s a very easy way to check this out — have three different people use Tik-Tok, for a few hours, then switch phones and have them think about something REALLY HARD to see if they get pushed content relative to what they thought about.

But, let me be clear — I don’t really think Big Tech can read our minds. I do think, however, that something spooky is going on that is difficult to understand given what is known. I would even go so far as to say something akin to a “Soft Singularity” may have occurred in the last few years and Big Tech is keeping this information to themselves.

Lulz no one listens to me.