HIGHLIGHTING one of the great new post -AI jobs

PLUS Extra Helpings of Youtube and a Word Salad about a common Statistics trope

As I bump through this journey like a proverbial steel ball in an old fashioned pinball machine, I keep learning more about writing and publishing. I’ve decided I’m going to go all in on my food and drink metaphor. Consequently, in a highly ironic move, FTW will be renamed Word Salad. Over on LinkedIn the much smaller excerpt newsletter will be renamed TechTonic Leftovers. Headline Head Scratchers will be rechristened Menu Mistakes. In late April when I return from a relaxing vacation in Costa Rica, I will kick off a series of longer form articles that will appear as The Sunday Roast. Onward and upward including:

EXTRA HELPINGS: Parasociality is one causal explanation for Youtube’s success

This Monday’s tonic received the most amount of feedback I’ve ever had. Yes indeed there were several people other than just my wife’s regular and needed compliments. In addition to a few comments about Stargate, one reader said that she was glad that there was somebody else besides her that didn’t understand the YouTube craze. She mentioned that she was having trouble getting her daughter to understand that these seemingly lovely people are paid to influence her and change her behaviours, particularly buying decisions.

This leads to something more profound that I need to think through. If you were born and raised in this social milieu, if it is all you know, you may actually believe in what others can easily see as inauthentic and quite frankly annoying behaviour. In an era of diminished social interaction and increased solitude, parasociality is greatly accelerated by the technologies we are immersing ourselves in.

Parasociality describes one-sided relationships or emotional attachments individuals form with media personalities, fictional characters, or public figures. The term was first coined in the mid 1950s by sociologists observing novel behaviours around watching television programs. I had an aunt who was completely addicted to viewing daytime television after she retired, and talked about Oprah and Ricki Lake like they were personal friends of hers, as she passed on their advice. Like so many other social phenomena that had their roots before the Internet, algorithmic and trending mediation, social media platforms, and the like, what has happened is that this technology has supercharged the effects. Which makes them profoundly more dysfunctional.

I recommend this provocative article that deals with parasociality, primarily through the lens of the Only Fans mania. It also points out other quickly normalized creator and consumer conduct, such as female musicians raising money through titillating photos because the business models in both touring and recording new music have been destroyed.

OnlyFans, and the media's parasociality vortex

QUICKBYTE: AI coming for our jobs is a highly overrated perspective

Who says AI is going to replace jobs? It is merely going to shift them, killing some job categories (conveyancing lawyers I’m looking at you) while adding others. Look at this great new opportunity to become an EV teledriver. Not only does it have a nifty ring to it, you don’t even need to leave the basement. Kids want to leverage your gamer skills, Vay - a German startup expanding its Las Vegas EV fleet - wants you now. Just look at their job requirements.

I’m sorry but why do you need gaming skills? Have the crafters of this job description ever played a video game? They aren’t replete with caution, safety and courtesy. Unless it is the venerable Minecraft, which isn’t really all that popular. Presumably in this job you aren’t shooting anything so most games are irrelevant, other than familiarity with various joy sticks you are likely required to use.

No word on compensation for what sounds to me like a very boring job: driving EV’s remotely and safely to and from real people who are going to rent the cars for their driving needs But maybe I have it all wrong and they’re going to do this on a piece work basis. Top recruiting marks then for those people who are experts in Grand Theft Auto. They will be able to zip these cars around the streets of Vegas, getting them from A to B in no time. Even older people like me can get onboard this new gravy train because I was killer on the original Super Mario Kart.

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WORD SALAD: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I first heard this expression in the early 1970s from my first statistics professor. I last heard it twice yesterday when browsing comments on various articles I had just read. People giving feedback just wrote the expression - lies, damn lies, and statistics - like it was gospel. Others quickly commented “too true”, “absolutely”, etc. On one of these streams, I had the temerity to ask, “Well what do you mean?” Some confusion then entailed amongst the various commenters.

I had known from years of prior experience that this expression can mean two very different things to two very different groups. The original intention was that when people want to add to their lying, they then use statistics. But there are many others who actually think that it is an indictment of statistics itself. That somehow statistics are inherently incorrect and improper, lying built in. This view is more prevalent that you might think, particularly amongst those who don’t have mathematical background. If this was the case, the expression should be WORDS, DAMN WORDS, and statistics.

There are two modern corollaries to this. The most prevalent one is that some people are inept with data analysis and use of statistics so that they are “lying” quite innocently through the creation of misinformation. I see this problem many times each day.

The secondary corollary is that the expression should’ve been updated a decade or two ago as people started, through easy-to-use applications, to play around with various graphic representations of data. In some cases they’ve mis-analyzed the data and used the wrong graphical choice. Hence, I would like to see this renamed as:

LIES, DAMN LIES, STATISTICS and VISUALIZATIONS

Thanks again to everyone who gave me some needed feedback. Feel free to continue to do so. Have a great weekend and see you on Monday