[vjk800]

> So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.

This is how TV broadcasts also work, though. You could even argue there's an algorithm behind TV broadcasts too - it's just a kinda poor human-run algorithm trying to maximize viewer numbers.

Unlike many people, I still often watch TV broadcasts to relax for exactly this reason - there's no decision fatigue since I don't need to choose what to watch. Usually there's only one channel with something that's even remotely interesting and it's kind of an obvious choice.

[lccerina]

With the (somehow sadly) added value that the TV broadcast algorithm is kinda known by everyone (morning programs, prime time etc), and that if there wasn't nothing interesting to watch, we would just do something else.

[carterschonwald]

yeah shared “did you this weeks X” is lame, but it was social glue for a long time.

[munificent]

I think about this all the time.

The trend towards personalization in media and software comes at the cost of a loss of a shared social experience we can use to relate to each other.

[iammjm]

yeah but do we really need some trash reality-TV for a "shared social experience"? most of TV's programming was garbage anyway and contributed to a lot of what was/is wrong with the society