Wednesday, September 30, 2015

What's The Aural Equivalent Of A Thousand-Yard Stare?



The internet only seems to remember the terrible videos I watch when recommending new ones for me  


Jeremy would much rather have the internet refer him to the latest My Little Pony videos.  


While that is almost assuredly not the case...


...I heard the word "almost" in there...


...I'm not specifically talking about what videos should be recommended to me.  This is more of a rant on what videos should not be.  It's a fine line, but one I'm okay with making.  

There are two very noteworthy examples of things going on here.  One is auto-complete.  You've seen this before, where you type the first few letters of your search into the little box on a popular video-streaming website.  The box fills itself in with things that the internets think you might be searching for.  This is based, supposedly, on not only your specific searching habits, but on the searching habits of other internet denizens as well.  The exact algorithm is secret and proprietary, of course....but it's also nonsense.  For example, there is a recurring show that I watch on occasion which starts with the letters "Jus."  While I've filled in this search more than a few times (I habitually refuse to "subscribe" to any of these channels because reasons), the auto-complete invariably comes back with the exact same thing after those first three letters.  "Justin Bieber."  

This is crap.  

I do not watch Justin Bieber videos, nor listen to his music.  I am not a fan of his.  I am not in his target demographic.  I have never once searched on this video site for his stuff, and yet, that is the first autocomplete every time.  

The other issue I have is slightly more understandable, and arguably more annoying.  Against my better judgement and for educational purposes only, I recently searched for and watched a music video because of several internet memes I've seen.  I pretty much knew this wasn't going to be good for me, but I did it anyway.  Yes, friends...I actually suffered through the entire "music" video "Watch Me" by Silento.  Needless to say, I don't recommend this to anyone.  

My suspicions were confirmed a mere 8 seconds into the video, when the "artist" blatantly violated Jeremy's Big Rule #1 with the first spoken lines of the "song."  It only went downhill from there.  To borrow a line from Dave Chappelle, "songs" like this make me wish I had more hands...so I could give it four thumbs down.

Having subjected myself to this musical violation of my well-being, I am 100% confident that I will never need to watch this video again, nor will I ever listen to any further performances by the "artist."  

However, the popular online video streaming site now knows that I have watched that steaming pile of video.  So now, when I log in, I get to see all of my new recommendations based on the fact that I watched it.  I've told the video site that I didn't like it, though not so far as to post a comment saying that the "song" was "so bad it gave me butt cancer," (I'm not making that comment up, BTW...it was the first one on the page).  I have also gone through my video history and deleted the fact that I put up with that crap from my records, and yet the message seems to be lost on the website.  They keep on recommending me horrible-looking videos because I watched that guy whip.  

Meanwhile, the show that I actually have watched and enjoyed takes a back seat.  Be careful on the internets, everybody. 

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