Hey! Lots going on in the world, and in the overlapping realms of social media, algorithms, and reality. “The algorithm” is more salient than ever. So, I decided it’d be a good time to rebuild What the Robot Saw.
What the Robot Saw is a generative livestream that uses its own “contrarian” algorithms to continuously select YouTube videos with low subscriber and view counts. Since these views are typically buried by social media algorithms, some videos may have no human viewers — and may normally only be seen by the robots that analyze and rank them.
^^^(Please be sure to turn on the sound. It’s important.)
What the Robot Saw has been continuously generating new content for five years, and social media video has changed a lot in that time. The popularity of TikTok and short-form video has impacted even longer YouTube videos, and the quest for likes, comments, and subscribes influences even “low engagement video” by fledgling content creators. Still, there is something different in the less seen part of social media, and some subtleties emerge when you watch a lot of it at once. So, I’ve revised What the Robot Saw’s analysis and production algorithms to better handle contemporary videos, while hopefully making the live film more contemplative. Well, “contemplative” isn’t really the right word. I could go into something here about layers of representation and self-representation, sound and image juxtapositions and possibly algorithmic sublimes, but… fortunately for both of us, this is just a blog post.
Despite its longer term evolutions, the “film” still varies noticeably over shorter periods -— I especially notice the vibe shift depending on whether TikTok is “in” or “out” of the US app stores. As I write this, TikTok is back “in,” so you may see fewer US TikTokers in the stream than a week or two ago -— though you can view the older streams in the archive. (Or in the clips selection.)
In any case, here it is. Tune in, turn on, and all that.