.
[ 5 minute read ]
.
Influenced
.
I sometimes use YouTube to hear an old song or first experience an artist or band I have never heard of. Nancy Williams is just such new artist. Apparently, Paul Weller, from the Jam, prominent in the late 1970s, gave Nancy Williams some free time in his studio through contact with one of Nancy’s Friends. I listened to Nancy Williams on YouTube and discovered that YouTube, using AI I suppose, puts together a playlist of, I suppose, similar songs on the basis of: ‘You played this; you may like this!’ Why? I can’t delete the playlist so if I want to listen to another song I can’t create my own playlist without the AI generated playlist playing first. In other words, I can’t replace it. Why?
.
I used to use YouTube to hear songs that helped me shape a new marionette show. Mostly, I can see scenes if I listen to some classical music. Listen to ‘Skater’s Waltz’ by Émile Waldteufel, and you can ‘see’ Skater’s, but the title guides us to that vision, doesn’t it? I wonder if ‘Les Patineurs Op 183’ would evoke the same imagined scenes in our heads.
.
Here then, we can begin to understand how ‘influence’ is the weft on which we weave our lives. Yet the influence that YouTube now has on what we listen to, is a corruption to the agency we have on our own lives.
.
‘YouTube are catering to the people lunching out and listening to music to mask their own inadequate abilities to create their own world.’
.
‘Well, that’s a bit harsh,’ part of me said.
.
‘Cold!’ said another.
.
‘They can’t be bothered to actually act as their own personal DJ for their own entertainment.’
.
There is a part of me that subscribes to the harsh and contemptuous attitude that the first voice has and the last voice that elaborates on it by adding a bland aspect to ‘lunching out’ with ‘laziness’. Yet, I know that many people find that passive discovery is where their ambitions lie. That is ‘what they do’. It would be easy to set inexperienced people to one side under a sign that says ‘Potential Losers’. But, we have to understand that it is through influence that we find our place. We ought to be repainting the sign to say, ‘Absorbers – Open to creativity. Lots of potential’.
‘Make another sign that says, ‘Let them rest’.
.
However, I have experienced intellectual thieves. I have had a number of successful businesses with unusual names. In every case, someone has stolen my business names and set up shop on their own terms in the same scope of business. These robbers were obviously less successful, quite simply because they lack creativity – ‘they’ are followers. If they set up a haulage business they would follow their preferred influencers, their mates, and drive too fast and eat into their potential profit. These are the people who belong under the original sign of ‘Lunching out’ and ‘Can’t be bothered’. In case you are wondering, I have always got out of the businesses before the economy forced me to, which is why I never sued anyone, and is another reason why the lazy thieves went to their banks ‘cap in hand’.
.
‘I am not sorry that I cannot repay the loan, you greedy thieving bunch!’ Hmmm, ‘Pot, kettle, black’ methinks.
.
Still, I really don’t feel comfortable knowing that using YouTube as a tool that assists inspiration is no longer a good idea. Most of us know that it takes a lot of minutes to shrug off our worries and woes to reach a stage of equanimity that allows creativity to come alive. The constant attention I have to pay to YouTube to stop it playing its own ‘idea’ of what I want to listen to just interrupts my mood. I used to both queue music and suddenly switch to a different genre up until recently. I can’t do that now.
.
But here is something that really sticks in my craw. Let’s say I want to listen to ‘Everything’ by Alanis Morissette. Easy; either the title or her name works as a search term. Whoever, uploaded the video I pick will get some YouTube money. That’s great! Thanks for uploading the video and giving me the opportunity to listen / watch it. But, the ‘world’, the greedy, and the narcissists now profit if I do not pay attention to when the song / video ends, and stop the AI generated playlist. That is a world I do not want to pay into.
‘Anathema!’
.
I am not foolish enough to ever sign into a Google product, so I cannot tell it to never second guess me. More fool you, you might think. But then I will respond with, ‘Who influenced you into thinking that, Google, Amazon, or MicroSoft?’
.
‘It’s just easier to let things run along without me having to keep stopping what I am doing.’
.
‘I never need to wake up. It’s Great!’
.
‘Shut up, you paranoid idiot!’
.
All valid shouts in the present environment.
.
Maybe I just like my own thoughts just as well as I like yours. Maybe I am not passive. Maybe I cannot relax. Maybe I am scared of being controlled again. Thieves, bullies, and unconscious people were a mix in an environment that has caused me to suffer for most of my life. I value having agency more than you might ever imagine. Perhaps, because I am only just beginning to recognise it I appreciate it so much.
.
I can't help thinking that Google, who owns YouTube, might have a strap-line that says. 'The customers we want, are the customers we created'. Or, if I spell it out.
.
'Well done team, we have shaped our customers.'
.
'What do you mean 'shaped?'
'
'Quite simply we have come up with the formula to send them to sleep, and then influence them while they are unconscious.'
.
'We have been doing that for years!'
.
'Absolutely, but now they are malleable. We have them so completely that we can get them to do anything. They actually believe that they NEED Google. They simply cannot do without us. We are a locked-in service, like the QWERTY keyboard, and we have made them think it, buy it and rely on it. We will forever be able to influence their spending and their reliance on us'
.
'Genius!'
.
'Like taking candy from babies!'