But, you know, YouTube just changed their shorts from 58 seconds to three minutes. So you can do longer shorts now. Those are called pants. Today on Taco Chats and Laugh Attacks, we're breaking down the chaos of social media algorithms, how they decide what you see, what you don't, and why getting noticed feels like a guessing game. So let's grab life by the taco and dive in. So last time we sat down and talked, we did talk about sort of the algorithm stuff and seeing all the videos on how you do things and all that kind of thing. And one of the things that I did, I don't know if you noticed any of it, some of them I would do like the puppet thing or some of them would be me and I did all the crazy edits. And I basically what I did was I would go through and watch different YouTube videos on trends with videos, like editing trends and things like that. And I would listen to everything they said and talk about, you know, they would talk about the timing for putting it out and how to do all these different pieces to it. And so I would copy that to the T and then I'd create the video and I'd do it. And I would put it on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I did some on LinkedIn to see what it would do. I then took the same video. So there's one I did on the ADHD symphony. Which I loved. Oh, thanks. And that was a lot of fun to make. I really liked making that one. I could tell. And it was because you turned me on to that archive.org. Yeah, which I think is down right now. There's like had some kind of hack thing to it or whatever. It's like down so you can't. So that was like, you know, finding old, you know, copyright free videos to incorporate. I was just like, this is so fun. Yeah, it's an awesome resource. Yeah. So I created that video and I put it on all those different platforms and just kind of let it sit, see what it did. We were talking about that creative flow. That was where it went from a creative flow to a problem solve. And I have this suspicion that once you set one of these things to a business, that they threshold your stuff until you start advertising. And the second you start advertising, they don't share your stuff until they can get you to do more advertising. Wow. So you'll never stop paying. You'll never stop. I mean, that's the way they make their money. So they can then, right. So there's the natural content creators that create stuff and they just naturally get picked up for whatever reason. And then there's the people that are running their business that that's where, that's where they're trying to get the attention in the attention economy. And so these platforms know that it's like gambling, right? It becomes this thing where like you go, okay, I'm going to spend $50 to advertise this video. I get 2000 views. Oh, awesome. And the second that amount's done, crickets. You get nothing. And it's crazy. And where I saw this the most, because this is what I experienced. I saw this with all but LinkedIn. I put it on Instagram. No views. Put it on TikTok. Got a couple of views. Promoted it on TikTok. I got like 35,000 views or something like that. Something ridiculous. But what's funny about that is that the number of views that I saw are not the number of views you see on the video. It's weird. I don't know why that is. But the second that it stopped promoting, nobody saw it. I mean, literally, like up to the very minute, 100 people saw it. 100 people saw it. The second that money ran out, nobody saw it. You think people are even seeing it? Do you think it's just them punching in numbers? Oh, he spent money. Let's give him some. Yeah. Let's push it to whoever. And that's the thing that's so interesting about that because we think about that in terms of like the behavior. It's interesting because I'm looking -- I'm doing that intentionally, and I'm also checking in with myself. There are plenty of times where I was getting pissed because I was like, you know, the world needs to burn because the Internet. Yeah, yeah. Right? You know, I'm still running a business, and I'm trying to get people to come in, and I'm fighting all these other pieces to it. I'm thinking about it in terms of people that are relying on this in a way that feeds their family. Yeah. And how incredibly painful that must be to be trying to create content so you can get people in your shop or to get people to buy your product or whatever. And it's this -- that whole like I've got to, you know, I've got to do all these different things and hope that something's going to happen. And then on the other side of that, you have all these people that are making money or doing content creation on how to create content. And so these -- you get caught in this -- Are there videos about how to advertise and make the most of your advertising? Or is that not being promoted? Is it being hidden? Maybe there are videos that explain, hey, this is a joke. This doesn't work. Like how do you find that information if they're the gatekeepers of the information? Well, no, I mean, you make a good point. I know we don't like talking about politics, and that's fine. But that brings up another thought that I -- so after I did all that, I just -- I was like, okay, this was great. I learned a lot because I was doing it with intention to see -- to really think about it in terms of like how it made me feel, which it made me feel like shit. I mean, I loved making the video. Those were fun to do. And I was like, oh, I can do this. And I was thinking of all these different things. And I was like, okay, I don't have a lot of time to do all that because I've got other things going on, right? So, you know, I had to go back to problem solving. You know, that creative flow to create something and be proud of it and to share it and be like this is -- not only is it funny, is it fun to look at, it's also informative. Yeah. And then you put that out there, and it's like nobody wants to see it. Well, because you're not playing the game. Because I'm not playing the game. Yeah. And it's -- the game is you got to just keep creating content. You got to keep creating content, you know. Or the new change is, oh, they just want talking heads. They just want people, you know -- this is the new trend that I keep seeing on YouTube now is that when you're -- is like the way to get people to watch your video is not to do all the edits, to just put yourself on camera and just talk for 30 minutes. So now you see all of these people putting these videos out where they're just talking for 30 -- so, like, I follow people camp, like, ASMR camping videos. Oh, yeah. That's like crack cocaine. Woodworking videos and videos on how to make videos. Okay. So but the first two or maybe all three, are you watching raw, uncut, no editing, just straight up, like, camping? Like, I've seen some of the camping ones where -- The ASMR campings are just like -- It's just a wide shot and somebody's making a fire, like, trying to chop wood. I like the edited ones. Mainly because I like the ones that are, like, in China or Japan or whatever, and they're, like, eating these weird food. They always -- it's like, I wouldn't think about going camping and bringing, like, frozen squid. It's just not something I would think of would be a great camp food. And so that's sort of that weird kind of thing with that. You know, those -- and car videos. I love car videos where they're, like, rebuilding or fixing a car or whichever, or here's a car they're selling or whichever it is. Those are, like, my go-tos. Because of the videos I watch on how to create videos or what makes a good video, I start seeing these other places doing those things. So I can recognize you're doing what these people are saying you need to do to get more views. Yeah. And so because I see that, I then go on to those videos and I comment on it and tell them how great I think their video is. I really like that you didn't do a bunch of weird edits and you just, you know, just told me like it is. Thanks a lot. Yeah. And it's that I'm manipulating that. Right? I'm totally manipulating it. Yeah. But it's this sort of, like -- it's really kind of -- It's a vicious cycle. Yeah, it's this whole thing. And what's funny is when I see those videos where it's like they're doing that, where they're just on the camera and it's like -- and I look at the time. Like, I'll go see it and if after the first minute they're still, like, jawing and not getting to the point of what it is, I look at how long it is. And if it's, like, 30 minutes, I scroll farther back to see what they say at the end. I'm like, okay, I'm done. I'm out. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that was a real interesting process, thinking about that and thinking about what we're doing here. And that I have fought the urge to go watch and listen to things about how to make podcasts. Because I just don't care. I really don't. No. Right? We're not trying to fit a mold. No. No. And it's so funny because even, like, as we're saying this, I shit you not, you will get videos. You will go see videos pop up now on how to create a podcast. Yeah. Without a doubt because everything's listening. Yeah. Right? No, we're going to get real precise ones. How to make a podcast and not really care about it. Without pants on. Yes. Which is weird. Sorry, jumping back to the raw clip, raw uncut stuff. Isn't that odd that we're in this TikTok world where everything is so short and chopped up and then you got one other platform saying, oh, this is the way to do it. Yeah. It's just a weird. It's almost like they're just trying things out. But, you know, YouTube just changed their shorts from 58 seconds to three minutes. Okay. So you can do longer shorts now. Those are called pants. Those are pants. Yeah. So it's like they're competing with each other in that sort of deal, which I think is kind of strange. But I also wonder if the reason why they're pushing people to do these, like there's this trend of pushing people to do these longer videos is so that people gravitate to the shorts. Because they get more content to make shorts. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Dude, that's the algorithm. That's how that shit works, where it's like we're constantly in question. We never know what to do, the expectations, and that we're putting expectations on something with absolutely no basis on why we should have that expectation. That's interesting. It's just chaos. There's a service, there's an AI website, it's called Opus. Do they sponsor us? No, not yet. Okay. And they probably won't. All right. Well, whatever. Well, maybe. We'll run this through Opus and see what they say. That would be good. But so what they'll do is they use AI to transcribe your entire video. And then they basically go and say, they're like, oh, these keywords, you talked about this one thing. And they'll go and it'll go and chop that one piece out, that one minute or that 58 seconds or whatever it is. If it knows that there's two people on camera, it'll put the one guy on top and one guy on the bottom. It does all this stuff. And now that's one layer of it. Then it's going and saying, oh, you mentioned the Atari 2600 three times over the hour, but they didn't have anything to do with each other. It'll find a way to make it cohesive because it's using AI. CapCut, like I remember you were telling me, and it has all these extra things where it can just make, it'll just show stock footage or make stock footage for you. You have no idea where that stock footage is coming from. Yeah. I mean, I've done it. I've done a voiceover for like 30 seconds and said, make me a stock, you know, like did the AI thing and it's got all this stock footage and it doesn't always necessarily, which is kind of funny, but it's like, it's like it's coming out of nowhere. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's the weird part because I feel like what people are doing with these podcasts is just like, let's just talk about a bunch of stuff and then let something like Opus figure out what are the most interesting parts. I kind of feel like, well, my cousin and I tried our best not to read into that, but we'll go and let's say, all right, we just did a two hour long podcast. Let's throw it in there and see what it does. And it'll tell you that the top five, you know, clips right away. And you're like, oh, these subjects do really well. We should do more of that. So it's like, it's that we're being manipulated all the way through. Absolutely. Especially if you're letting AI get involved with how to say or show anything. Like it's, it's pretty interesting. You know, there's, there's an aspect to AI that we don't necessarily think about. Well, at least I didn't necessarily think about until I started reading about it more. In qualitative research, there's a thing called coding where we might have a transcript and we go through and we code, we look at each, whatever the person is saying, and we're looking for themes or specific, you know, things that they talked about. It codes it. Very powerful. And it's how they create theories. Basically, when we get, we, you know, we interview a bunch of people, we code all these interviews, we find these similarities, we get it down, down, down. And all of a sudden you've got this, like, here's the common themes. And then you build that into a framework and then that builds into a theory. There's qualitative research 101, right? So now AI is helpful with that because you can have it go and analyze it and start you on sort of these codes. Problem is, is that with AI, AI is a learning engine. The stuff we give it and the stuff we say thumbs up to, it's learning from that. And so what happens is as it builds and builds and builds, it's then taking what's being built and giving it to other people. So then what you're getting is you're getting that manipulated sort of, we have what we come up with, like historically, these are our ideas that we came up with and they're organic. And then we take all these ideas and feed it to AI and then we ask AI to tell us what it is. So it's going to give us its rendition of whatever that is. And then that keeps happening, keeps happening. So if our qualitative research is using AI, it's creating these codes based on what it's already learned. So then it starts to change. So now our reality becomes AI. And what we're getting is now the learned environment that it's kind of come up with. Here's where the creepy part of it is. Rarely will AI tell you you're wrong, if ever. You can ask it to tell you something. It'll give you all these answers. And if you say, no, that's not quite right. It'll then give you something else. It'll keep trying to create an answer until we are satisfied with that answer. Then we move on. You know what creeps me out? On top of that is that it apologizes. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Like, no, this isn't exactly what I want. Oh, I'm so sorry. You know what? You're right. That's what I see. Yeah. And so when you think about that in the long term. Yeah. That's what scares me is that the singular form of thought. Like everyone is going to be thinking the exact same way because we're all invested into it. We're being fed that through every source of media. So with the election. Yeah. I hear from a lot of different people and I'm not going to get into political ideology or anything like that. But what I found really interesting were a lot of younger people that felt that might have leaned more left felt like a betrayal. Like how could this happen? How could Trump become president? How could this whole like this absolute sort of betrayal of anybody who didn't vote for Kamala? What's really sort of sad about that is that kids today, people that are 18 to maybe 25, their world is through these applications. They're not necessarily having deep political thoughts and conversations and experiencing the things that people are experiencing with buying groceries and all that stuff the same way as say we did before all this stuff was there. Yeah. And so when we didn't have that, our experience was what we experienced in the present reality. These algorithms create these silos of ideas and thought. Kind of like the way AI kind of does that. You're always right. You're always right. So if the algorithm is always showing you this one picture, you're saying to yourself, this is what's right. Yeah. And you're not seeing the whole picture. What's really sort of, I don't know, it's almost like a epiphany of sorts with this whole attention economy research is that that scenario that these kids experienced where they had this sense of betrayal was artificially created. Was created based on behavior, marketing, and advertising sales. I can imagine if the only thing I saw was that everything's great, Trump is gone, Kamala's making, you know, billion dollars, blah, blah, blah. And then the reality sets in that, nope, people didn't want her. That's a loss. And it's not a loss like, oh, you know, there's all these different things in my life that are going to change now. I get all that. This is why we have checks and balances. This is why we have the government that we have, blah, blah, blah. But the thing that's sort of sad about that is that there's no acceptance of maybe I was looking at only one side of things. Yeah. That's gone. And not thinking about the people in other places. I even talked to one of my kids. One of my kids called me and was talking about the election. And they were sort of confused about what was happening. And I told them, I said, you know, you have to think about, you know, there's people that have certain things that they want to make sure they have protected. And you have other populations that are trying to protect something they already have. And that's the two sides. And, you know, we have to, you have to be able to look at all of the experiences of people in order to understand how it's affecting me and how it's affecting our government. And you're not going to be able to do that 18 to 25. I think our generation could do it because we can think on our own and not. Right. Well, and that's what I told my kid. I said, you know, we're the same. And I told her, I told my oldest, I said, you know, you have to take into consideration that we're the sandwich generation. So we're also not the ones that get online and talk about shit. And so when you're in your silo, you're not hearing this group that's quiet, that has spent their entire lives working their ass off. And now they're in the sandwich generation where we're not only taking care of kids at home, we're taking care of kids in college and we're taking care of parents. And so. You know, a $2 change in eggs just might be a big fucking deal for a Gen Xer who's dealing with all these people who are relying on them. And they're like, I'm sick of having to be relied on for all my life. This is bullshit. Right. Now, I'm not defending. No, no, I get it. I'm just talking about when we look at that perspective. Yeah. Right. And it's so funny because I feel like. I feel like that's the piece that these these the attention economy has created that division. As soon as they show you something that you don't agree with, you're gone. And there's no more advertising. There's this book I love. It's called Shit My Dad Says. And there's quotes the guy shared on Twitter for a long time. I don't know if he's. But his dad had said anybody who thinks they know what's best for 300 million people is an asshole. So basically, you're just voting for the king of the assholes. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, that makes complete sense. Right. But I think without getting into it, what this election got narrowed down to is morals and money. And it depends on where you are in life and what you're and if you're at all enticed into one or the other, the algorithm will take care of the rest. We'll say, OK, you're kind of in the moral side. Let's go ahead and capitalize on that and keep that going because there's products that want to sell to you. But it's like with all things, right? Like we talk about, like, gun safety. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If you're like sitting there and all of a sudden on TikTok, you're seeing all these videos of people with like, you know, different types of like customizations for their pistols. And also, if you're like, this isn't what I want to see. Right. And then all of a sudden you're off the app. Mm hmm. Right. That's the thing with this. The response of this election is it's so incredibly telling of our society. And even to the point where we see, like, you know, the news and how these different, you know, elected officials, how they respond and react and the shit they say. And it's like this is all part of it. Even the anchors and the reporters and everybody. It's just bananas. Yeah. Yeah. It's just bananas. It's wild. And it's sad, too, because that's the environment that these kids are growing up in. I don't even know how to say you need to go look at both sides. You need to go listen to all of it. You know, you don't have to agree with it, but you got at least know what's going on. I see it a lot in the social work programs, too, where there is condemnation for people that want to take care of themselves. Kind of going back to that idea of the selfishness and like my passion and why I do these things that I do. But that it's that condemnation of it that where we become divided because it's all or none. You don't want to make a good living and also care about people that don't make a good living. You know, you have to suffer to help people suffering. I don't know if I believe that. I think that that kind of becomes an area of discontent amongst some of my colleagues. And I've made it very clear to people that in my line of work, you can't take sides. That's not our role. If you are taking a side, you can't take a side that oppresses a group out of and calling it social justice. And I think that's what we're seeing. I think what's happened, what happens through those algorithms is it amplifies that. We see this with this group that's like, because you didn't do what we wanted to do, then you are an evil, immoral. You know, you don't care about people, whichever it is. And then you have the other side that is saying the same thing, but a different vein. And either way, it's like everybody has the same thing. Everybody is afraid. Yeah. Fear is a powerful drug, man. Oh, man. Fear is a powerful drug. Capitalizing on it. It's time to face your fears. Hit the subscribe button and share this episode. We doubt it'll mess with your algorithm, but no promises.