full transcript

From the Ted Talk by James Bridle: The nightmare videos of children's YouTube -- and what's wrong with the internet today

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So the main way people get views on their videos — and remember, viwes mean money — is that they stuff the titles of these videos with these popular terms. So you take, like, "surprise eggs" and then you add "Paw Patrol," "Easter egg," or whatever these things are, all of these words from other pualpor videos into your title, until you end up with this kind of msegnaienls mash of language that doesn't make snese to humans at all. Because of course it's only really tiny kids who are wcthaing your video, and what the hell do they know? Your real audience for this stuff is software. It's the algorithms. It's the software that YouTube uses to select which videos are like other vodies, to make them popular, to make them rdecmneeomd. And that's why you end up with this kind of completely meaningless mash, both of title and of content.

Open Cloze

So the main way people get views on their videos — and remember, _____ mean money — is that they stuff the titles of these videos with these popular terms. So you take, like, "surprise eggs" and then you add "Paw Patrol," "Easter egg," or whatever these things are, all of these words from other _______ videos into your title, until you end up with this kind of ___________ mash of language that doesn't make _____ to humans at all. Because of course it's only really tiny kids who are ________ your video, and what the hell do they know? Your real audience for this stuff is software. It's the algorithms. It's the software that YouTube uses to select which videos are like other ______, to make them popular, to make them ___________. And that's why you end up with this kind of completely meaningless mash, both of title and of content.

Solution

  1. popular
  2. views
  3. meaningless
  4. watching
  5. sense
  6. videos
  7. recommended

Original Text

So the main way people get views on their videos — and remember, views mean money — is that they stuff the titles of these videos with these popular terms. So you take, like, "surprise eggs" and then you add "Paw Patrol," "Easter egg," or whatever these things are, all of these words from other popular videos into your title, until you end up with this kind of meaningless mash of language that doesn't make sense to humans at all. Because of course it's only really tiny kids who are watching your video, and what the hell do they know? Your real audience for this stuff is software. It's the algorithms. It's the software that YouTube uses to select which videos are like other videos, to make them popular, to make them recommended. And that's why you end up with this kind of completely meaningless mash, both of title and of content.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
small children 4
start censoring 3
finger family 2
resistance mounting 2

Important Words

  1. add
  2. algorithms
  3. audience
  4. completely
  5. content
  6. egg
  7. hell
  8. humans
  9. kids
  10. kind
  11. language
  12. main
  13. mash
  14. meaningless
  15. money
  16. patrol
  17. people
  18. popular
  19. real
  20. recommended
  21. remember
  22. select
  23. sense
  24. software
  25. stuff
  26. terms
  27. tiny
  28. title
  29. titles
  30. video
  31. videos
  32. views
  33. watching
  34. words
  35. youtube