The lack of trust on the internet is exhausting.
This morning I read this piece in the New Yorker about the 23 year old Youtuber Nick Shirley who went viral a few days ago after posting a video in which he visited a variety of daycare centres alleged to have committed fraud. The tone of the NY piece is understandably defeatist, if you go to the video there are thousands of comments praising it, commenting on how it's the future of journalism and how we should be applauding this young man for breaking this major story. Of course, the story had been broken and many of the claims are outright false, there are barely any sources, there are ai generated images spliced in and the whole thing is fairly obvious ragebait.
The thing is, when searching for answers on this topic, which admittedly is a complex one, you can't trust anything on Reddit or god forbid any other social media, there are obvious bad actors everywhere (on both sides!). What stuck out for me is the sense of confusion and lack of trust I had on any source in regards to this story wasn't a new one, it's something I've had been feeling for years now, and a feeling not just relegated to news.
Here's another strange example, I'm into my photography. I take a lot of pictures and I always have, I also love the hardware part of the hobby. I understand that gear only gets you so far, but I'm interested in both old and new digital cameras in the way old men who stand with their hands behind their backs peering into construction sites are - I just want to know what's going on. There are a few Youtube channels I'll go on to use as a sort of newsfeed for camera stuff, comfort watching or I'll occasionally search a model number of one of my cameras to see if I can find anything new about it. What I've noticed is that camera youtubers, like all youtubers, are trapped by the algorithm. This was made blazingly obvious to me when I noticed that so many of them have a video that looks a lot like this.
To be clear, each of these videos is nonsense, the 'film' look these guys talk about is always super vague, in a way that fits with the images that whatever camera these guys are talking about produces. To get the 'film' look with a digital camera, turn up the iso, spam the flash and learn the basics of color grading and the tone curve. These things take time to learn, and well, don't make for very fun videos to watch. The problem with clickbait-y videos like this on these channels is that they erode trust, how am I supposed to take anything these people say seriously now when I know they've just hopped on a silly little trend for the sole purpose of attracting eyeballs to make number go up?
This gets me to my main point. Here on bear, and on the indieweb in general, we don't really have this problem. People post mostly for themselves, and yes there are people trying to gain large followings, but they aren't playing to an algorithm that values attention and engagement over everything, they're trying to get there by offering something unique to their readers. When I browse the discover and the new sections my mind doesn't go to that doubting, cynical state straight away. Instead, I read posts. Either I have no idea about what I'm reading, in which case I get to learn something new, or someone is posting about something they're incredibly passionate about, in which case, great I love that too! In both cases I know that the post was written for them first - I'm just a bystander, watching with my hands behind my back, before moving on to the next one.