engineer, actor, intellectual, mal vivant
365 stories
·
84 followers

SEO Cargo Cult Online New Tips For Optimizing Your Search Engine Performance Top Ten Business Tips and Advice

1 Share

Anxiously refreshing Twitter to see how people were responding to my blog relaunch got me thinking about a story I heard a while ago. Check it out:

In AD 1941, war was beginning. I mean it had been going on for a while but that’s when AMERICA got involved, so that’s when it started mattering. The empire of Japan was sending boats full of soldiers all up over everywhere, because they wanted to own everything. Meanwhile the United States of America was sending boats full of soldiers all up over everywhere ELSE, because they didn’t want Japan to have all the fun. One of the places the US sent boats and soldiers was an archipelago called Vanuatu — a small island chain northeast of Australia, and future home of the ninth season of Survivor.

Now, war sucks, but it comes with a lot of sweet loot. All the gun boys need food and blankets and candy and cigars or they get hungry and bored and start shooting the wrong people. So when America moved in to Vanuatu, they built air strips and started airdropping INSANE AMOUNTS OF MASS-PRODUCED GOODS on an island where grass-roofed huts were still the height of technology.

Most of these goods were for the soldiers, but a ton of stuff ended up being given to the native inhabitants, in exchange for being chill about the whole military occupation thing. And the dudes who received these goods got really attached to this lifestyle. SO attached, that when the war ended and all the troops moved away, these dudes started imitating what they thought were the mystical rituals that summoned all the sweet loot. They built their own air strips, and did their own military parades, and made radios and airplanes out of coconut husks and straw. They figured if they did all the things they saw the soldiers do, then goods would rain from the sky!

PRETTY FUCKING STUPID, RIGHT?

Groups who did this were referred to as “cargo cults” and used as an example of consumerism or being a dummy or whatever. But leaving aside the fact that this probably isn’t exactly how things happened, put yourself in the cargo cultists’ shoes for a second. You’ve never seen any of this shit before. The goods coming out of these planes totally changed your life. Wouldn’t you do anything you could think of to make those goods come back, once they were gone?

It’s NORMAL for humans to look at a system and try a bunch of weird shit to make candy come out. It’s how we ended up drinking from cow tits and eating chicken periods. And more and more these days, it’s how we use the internet.

I used to write product descriptions for power tools I had never used. It was kind of an interesting challenge. I had keyword quotas that I had to hit — each tool description had to use words like “power tool” and “best” and “quality” a certain number of times. I wasn’t writing like this for the benefit of other humans. I was writing for the benefit of search engines. Write a perfectly informative product description without using the right number of magic words, and the search engines wouldn’t see it. And if the search engines didn’t see it, neither would the humans who used those search engines.

SEO gibberish speak has become a cargo cult ritual. Every google result is a listicle. Porn titles read like lists of ingredients. Recipe blogs have gotten longer and longer, defying anyone’s attempt to use them. They’re not for people to read, they’re for machines to read.

Like a true cargo-cult, this algorithm worship has gone on so long we’ve lost sight of its original purpose. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a webcomic which I no longer enjoy but which I will read forever out of a grudging sense of familiarity, includes a red button under each comic, which can be clicked to view a little bit of bonus content. Clicking this button used to register as a vote on one of the popular webcomic ranking services of the time, essentially bribing users to catapult SMBC to the top of the rankings. The rankings no longer exist, but the button does, and we still press it.

Because it’s not just content creators who participate in this cult. We as consumers have also adopted bizarre rituals. When I search for a pirated movie, I type “watch The Room online free putlocker” as if I’m casting a spell or having a stroke. When I prompt Midjourney, I type, “anime girl long hair studio ghibli big titties trending on Artstation.” This is not poor grammar. This is not improper English. It’s not even English. It’s machine language.

We put up with this garbage because we’ve created a system in which a machine HAS to sort our content for us. We can’t go to a place, switch to a channel, and just see what’s on. There’s too much stuff, and it’s on all the time. We barely know what we want in the first place, so how can we ask a machine to give it to us? Instead, the machine gives us what it has determined we want . When a machine determines the value of the input, and who gets to see the output, we end up producing and consuming not what we enjoy, but what the machine enjoys. The decision has been taken entirely out of our hands. We’re just standing on the landing strip, waiting for the planes to arrive.

Read the whole story
fancycwabs
5 days ago
reply
Nashville, Tennessee
Share this story
Delete

HP Is Selling a 40-Year-Old Calculator Again—For $120

1 Comment

You’d assume that calculators would have been one of the many technological casualties of the smartphone, joining MP3 players and point-and-shoot cameras as standalone devices no one really uses any more. But there are apparently still enough calculator devotees for HP to resurrect a model that’s been kicking around…

Read more...

Read the whole story
fancycwabs
6 days ago
reply
I'm surprised it's $120, instead of $20, but you have to subscribe to the numbers for $15 / month.
Nashville, Tennessee
Share this story
Delete

Heinz Unveils the Coca-Cola Freestyle of Ketchup

3 Comments

Like a kid in a candy store, or anyone filling a cup of soda at the movie theater concession stand, ketchup fans are about to have more options than they ever dreamed possible. Kraft Heinz has announced the upcoming debut a the Heinz REMIX, a new digital sauce-dispensing machine capable of serving over 200 unique…

Read more...

Read the whole story
fxer
10 days ago
reply
Every dollop of stone-ground chia béchamel gonna fund John Kerry’s election war chest
Bend, Oregon
dreadhead
2 days ago
Does it have this? https://www.snackhistory.com/heinz-ez-squirt/
fancycwabs
10 days ago
reply
They're missing an opportunity by not leaning into the Kraft side of things. Cool Whip/Ketchup? Ranch/Mac&Cheese Powder? Mustard/Cherry Kool Aid? The flavor combinations boggle the mind!
Nashville, Tennessee
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
christophersw
7 days ago
reply
I 100% cannot tell if this is satire.
Baltimore, MD

Apple's AI-Driven Accessibility Updates Include Text-to-Speech That Can Mimic Your Voice

1 Comment

Apple is embracing AI for to grant a new suite of accessibility features to its phones, tablets, and laptops. Though the tech giant had previously announced new accessibility features in May including last year’s on-device live captions, these bevy of new features could help those with cognitive, speech, and mobility…

Read more...

Read the whole story
fancycwabs
12 days ago
reply
They'll probably only use this for accessibility, but it *would* be cool to have it as a feature of carplay to differentiate speakers on group texts.
Nashville, Tennessee
Share this story
Delete

Does Nutella Fall Short of Its Newest Competitor?

3 Comments

Bonne Maman, purveyor of jams and spreads in adorable glass jars with the gingham lid, has debuted a new hazelnut chocolate spread, currently available online but heading to retailers nationwide this August. In other words, Bonne Maman is now in competition with the world’s most commonly consumed and widely known…

Read more...

Read the whole story
fxer
42 days ago
reply
round heah we call’em filberts
Bend, Oregon
fancycwabs
42 days ago
reply
Trader Joes Cocoa Almond Spread has all that and is made with delicious almonds instead of weird-ass tasting hazelnuts.
Nashville, Tennessee
Share this story
Delete
1 public comment
jepler
40 days ago
reply
I'll just keep making my own sunflower / chocolate spread thanks :)
Earth, Sol system, Western spiral arm

Twitter to un-verify people who don’t pay $8/month starting on April Fools’ Day

1 Comment and 2 Shares
Close-up view of the official Twitter Blue account with its verified checkmark.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Four and a half months after the chaotic rollout of paid checkmarks, Elon Musk's Twitter is following through on a plan to remove verification from individual accounts that don't pay $8 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription.

"Starting April 1, we'll be winding down our legacy Verification program and accounts that were verified under the previous criteria (active, notable, and authentic) will not retain a blue checkmark unless they are subscribed to Twitter Blue," a Twitter FAQ says. Twitter also stopped accepting applications for verification checkmarks under the old criteria.

"To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here," Twitter said yesterday. "Organizations can sign up for Verified Organizations here."

The change means that many accounts deemed notable by Twitter before Musk bought the company will no longer be verified. As we've noted, that could make it easier for scammers to impersonate real people even when the scammers don't purchase blue checks. After a verified person loses their checkmark, a scammer could pretend to be that person, and there would be no verified account to point to prove the scammer is fake.

Twitter also announced yesterday that it is "accepting applications for grey checkmarks for eligible government and multilateral accounts." Twitter now has several checkmarks with different colors to indicate the type of account.

Musk reportedly ignored warnings about scammers

When paid checkmarks first rolled out in November, Musk reportedly ignored internal warnings from Twitter's trust and safety team that scammers would abuse paid verification. The paid checkmarks fueled a wave of imposter accounts, and Musk temporarily halted the paid verification scheme after just two days. "Basically, tricking people is not OK," Musk admonished Twitter users at the time.

Musk relaunched paid checkmarks in December but didn't say exactly when he'd implement the original plan of removing checkmarks from what Twitter now calls "legacy verified" accounts. The updated version of Twitter Blue has some rules to limit abuse of paid checkmarks, such as requirements that an "account must be older than 90 days upon subscription and have a confirmed phone number," and "have no recent changes to your profile photo, display name, or username."

Meanwhile, Twitter announced yesterday that Twitter Blue is now available globally. "Sign up today to get your blue checkmark, prioritized ranking in conversations, half ads, long Tweets, Bookmark Folders, custom navigation, Edit Tweet, Undo Tweet, and more," Twitter's announcement said.

But as The Verge pointed out, the prioritized ranking feature and the perk of seeing 50 percent fewer ads aren't available yet. Those two perks are listed as "coming soon" when you click the link to sign up for Twitter Blue.

Read Comments

Read the whole story
fancycwabs
66 days ago
reply
So one of my twitter accounts is about to lose its blue checkmark, but on the other hand, I can become the official account of SenTedCruz, probably.
Nashville, Tennessee
Nezchan
66 days ago
Waiting on the impersonation lawsuits, like the one that caused the creation of verification in the first place. Good precedent there.
dreadhead
63 days ago
https://twitter.com/MonicaLewinsky/status/1639972616210632708
fxer
66 days ago
reply
Bend, Oregon
DMack
65 days ago
What is it verifying at this point? Certainly not anyone's identity...
DMack
65 days ago
VERIFIED TwitterLiker©
Share this story
Delete
Next Page of Stories