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Journaling in YouTube comments

Between 2020 and 2023, a user named @mrtortilla3895 commented every day under the same YouTube video, an upload of Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. For 1,000 days, the comment section became his personal diary, written in public and read by hundreds of other users gathered in the same virtual space. His entire adolescence is documented and narrated in this unconventional space. Also, mrtortilla’s performance has inspired so many other users to start their own journals in the comments.
In these two videos (1 – 2) you can find more details about this incredible story.
Here is the original Debussy video upload.
Here is a spreadsheet containing the complete archive of @mrtortilla3895’s diary.

[via Depths of Wikipedia’s amazing talk]

DIY vs AI videos

Generative AI is taking over every corner of the internet. All kinds of content are imitated, replicated, remixed, and reinvented through AI. An unstoppable avalanche of images, videos, and text is submerging us.
I’ve been observing a specific reaction to this phenomenon that’s incredibly interesting: people trying to “fight” AI by attempting to recreate its content with physical objects and practical effects. I first saw this trend emerge in the field of ASMR and satisfying videos, but now people are recreating all sorts of slop. This response is giving rise to a new subgenre: a kind of artisanal content that deliberately imitates the artificial but, in doing so, emphasizes human skill and brings the craft element to the next level.”

Some great examples below.

To See What It Feels Like

In 1974, Thomas Nagel posed a deceptively simple question in his essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat?: what does it FEEL like to be another creature? Nagel argued that no amount of objective knowledge could grant access to an animal’s subjective experience. Half a century later, users on TikTok are testing that limit through performance, attempting “To See What It Feels Like” to be monkeys in rainforests, rabbits in cold English winter rain, chipmunks in a storm, polar bears on a glacier, underdeveloped hippos in the water, or lonely raccoons in a trash can.

 

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Un post condiviso da Valentina Tanni (@valentinatanni)

Slop Evader

Slop Evader, a browser extension for avoiding AI slop, by Tega Brain: “this is a search tool that will only return content created before ChatGPT’s first public release on November 30, 2022“.

WorldGrow

Researchers have created WorldGrow, an AI system that generates endless 3D environments by stitching together procedurally created rooms and hallways. “Photorealistic and structurally consistent” spaces you can theoretically walk through without end.
Welcome back, backrooms.

[via]

Syrmor

YouTube creator Syrmor uploads his VRChat encounters with random strangers, who open up about themselves and share intimate details of their lives while hidden behind their avatars. Some of the videos are incredible touching. Unfortunately, the latest upload is from two years ago, I can’t believe I haven’t come across this before.

[via + via]

 

Mallworld

I just fell into the Mallworld rabbit hole. Apparently thousands of people on Reddit, TikTok and other platforms are sharing their dream experiences and they claim to have visited the same place. Some are event drawing detailed maps of it. This place is Mallword and it is a sort of gigantic liminal space with shops, airports, playgrounds, hotels and other buildings. But the heart of the world is – of course – the oniric version of your typical American mall, where people get lost and disoriented. Mallworld is a sort of narrative container that merges vaporwave, liminal spaces, the backrooms, dreamcore and This Man all together.
“Ever dreamed of this place?”