The last all-ages social media site
Monks, nip nops, cyberpunk carnivals, metaverse Coke and crisis actors
Hi friends. Today is April 15, 2022.
And the last all-ages social media site is apparently … YouTube.
Almost every Zoomer in a 2021 Pew Research Center survey said they’d visited in the past year. Users in their 30s, 40s and 50s weren’t far behind that, either. These data are a year old, at this point, but it’s never too late to read too much meaning into generational habits! — also, I only recently encountered them, via this cool graphic:
The YouTube numbers surprised me in two respects. One: The youth, with their dances and their traumas and their unflattering ‘90s fashions, are widely purported to favor TikTok — which here, more than half say they don’t even use. Two: Boomers have, as a group, historically congregated on Facebook, LinkedIn and the under-moderated comments sections of local newspapers.
But boomers have for *years* been YouTube’s fastest-growing demographic, the company says. In a 2020 trends report, Google also reported a worldwide uptick in “boomer-age creators” during the pandemic.
What are these boomers creating?, you ask. Personally, I am partial to a genre of middle-aged travel vlog focused on the author’s lavish and varied retirement diversions (... of the type my generation will never know!). Equally interesting are the channels that Google says appeal most to viewers ages 50 to 64.
In addition to Star and Fox News — which okay, of course — this demographic is also reportedly fond of a mis-capitalized six-year-old channel called watchJojo. Imagine the tropes of Upworthy, plus the over-enunciated narration style of local TV news, plus an unfathomable amount of bad stock footage and a penchant for stories about loving senior couples.
In other words, the most popular channels on boomer YouTube look … a whole lot like your newsfeed did when you started accepting older cousins’ friend requests. The boomers have famously annexed Facebook. Maybe YouTube’s next!
If you read anything this weekend
“The Franciscan Monk Helping the Vatican Take On — and Tame — AI,” by Madhumita Murgia in the Financial Times. Paolo Benanti is a *truly* fascinating engineer, ethicist and priest who advises Pope Francis on everything from algorithmic bias to biotechnology. He also meets regularly with executives from Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which hasn’t softened his concerns about the social consequences of their evolving AI systems: “Algorithms make us quantifiable … if we transform human beings into data, they can be processed or discarded.”
“House-Flipping Algorithms Are Coming to Your Neighborhood,” by Matthew Ponsford in MIT Technology Review. Zillow famously bought up thousands of homes in the pandemic, a venture that collapsed under the weight of its own risk. But other “iBuying” start-ups are still developing semi-automated valuation and home-buying models that may eventually — for better or for worse — distort local housing markets.
"Internet ‘Algospeak’ Is Changing Our Language in Real Time, from ‘Nip Nops’ to ‘Le Dollar Bean,’” by Taylor Lorenz in The Washington Post. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and lots of TikTokers need to evade moderation. Hence these zany, kinda whimsical new code words, like “panini” (pandemic), “unalive” (dead) and “le dollar bean” (lesbian).
“Crashing Elon Musk’s Cyber Rodeo at the Texas Gigafactory,” by Loren Grush in The Verge. For some, this will be a fun caper story. For others, further evidence that Elon Musk is a clown. Personally, I am here for the descriptions of the “cyberpunk carnival” -- though for more serious reading on the subject, please also see “Tesla’s Austin Gigafactory Could Be an Environmental Disaster Waiting to Happen.”
“How Jack Dorsey Quit Twitter to Become Bitcoin’s Spiritual Leader,” by Kurt Wagner in Bloomberg. No one knows precisely what former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey plans to make next. But given his eccentricity, his track record and his proclivity for cults … it’s bound to be interesting, I’d guess!
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was this yarn on the mystery URLs of YouTube.
The classifieds
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Postscripts
The evolution of the crisis actor. The rise of the pharma influencer. Meet the biggest chess streamer on Twitch and Democrats’ 54-year-old Gen Z whisperer. Why your internet is so slow. How TikTok secluded Russian users. The last pure thing on Twitter is now a book, and I am delighted for Gerald Stratford.
Metaverse fashion. Metaverse Coke. The “coastal grandmother” aesthetic. Why every second restaurant is called “noun & noun” and how Arizona ice tea still costs 99 cents. Two dispatches from the Miami crypto conference. Also, alarmingly: crypto for kids. Last but not least, a Q&A on the “increasing heteronormativity of the internet” (!).
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin