Fairly recently I used to follow a YouTube channel called Apex Psychology. Granted, it is border-lined just another AI slop channel, but this one at least seemed like it had a knowledge human behind the wheel. This person seemed to genuinely care about sharing perspectives and understanding from our world’s brightest minds about how they currently believe the human brain thinks, processes and handles events around it.
The subjects were so well explained that many things that I’ve struggled to understand started to make sense. It was actually kind of creepy. It put to words things I just kind of know how my brain works but struggled to explain. Any person behind it, also seemed to genuinely engage with viewers and commenters. As I mentioned above, whoever or whatever was behind it sounded as they actually cared and truly wanted to explore the concepts with people, not at them.
Then the channel started becoming popular. Of course it became popular because many of use would faithfully watch every video. Even if the subject didn’t seem to be about how our brain currently thought, each one still explored fascinating facets (what an odd term) on how a brain adapts and becomes one that thinks in a different way. Being someone who’s always been interested in such things, it was hard not to be eager to learn from the next episode.
Now, what made it border-lined AI slop is that it was obvious animated by AI with how often new videos were released; someone was just feeding scripts into a machine that generated the video; otherwise, there would be a team of enslaved artists forced to work non-stop. Heck, there’s channels out there where it’s obvious the script was AI generated, the voice acting was AI generated, and the video was AI generated. At that point, why even have a person. An AI system could just become rich and powerful on their own by just programing humans to act or think a certain way. Think about it … think about it … nightmare fuel.
Back to this channel mentioned above, as the number of its subscribers and views rose, and in broke into numbers that make money, the channel began experimenting with different interactions, then came the rules, rules about what you could and could not discuss about the video or it’s content. Then came the deleting of comments, even old comments, and the deleting of comments about why they deleted a comment.
It should be an understood aspect of the social contract, that if you ask for someone’s opinion, that opinion will not be yours, it might even be critical of yours. But some feel they must shape the narrative to only pat themselves on the back. However, that’s not what promotes growth. Conflict promotes growth. Debate promotes growth. Talking with someone different promotes growth.
There are too many echo chambers in our “modern” world, we sure don’t need more. Now, where I once found genuine dialogue about an interesting subject, I find only censorship.
To hazard a guess, if there is a human behind that channel, the fame they found quickly became too much to keep up with and they brought on another person to help manage at least the YouTube channel and fan interactions.
It’s a current belief with such moderators that they must remove anything critical. The result is yet another echo chamber. No one is exposed to an alternative view, and one who has a different take just has their speech deleted as if they are not important, they don’t matter, they shouldn’t exist. Now, there’s some harm that risks fueling another fire. In what manner will it result, there’s no telling: suicide, mass shooting, domestic abuse, bomb threat, self harm, destroyed personal value. It could be myriad things. But the one who added another straw onto the camel already struggling to carry a load, that person doesn’t care, they won’t believe they’re responsible, they believe they are doing good.
“Treat others how you wish to be treated.”
So simple. So hard. So important. So often ignored because we simply refuse to like people enough to extend this courtesy if that person risks harming our opinions.
I wonder how long we, as humans, have been doing this. Why has evolution either kept or developed this trait? Seems to be of no benefit, but maybe there is, or at least, it could be a side effect of a different trait that is beneficial. Maybe I’ll learn that one day, but I can say I won’t be learning it from that YouTube channel because I don’t wish a follow a channel that actively participates in one-sided censorship.
P.S. I was have asleep when I typed this, so much of the structure is odd, I know. <sigh>
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