I think it's an interesting relationship between influencers, especially young ones, and their followers.

Young influencers of this nature get a following because of their authenticity. They're genuine, honest, about their experiences, and the comments reflect it. People in the comments open up about their own problems and insecurities and issues. It creates an "illusion of community" as Edwards says in the article.

Now couple with that the complication of making money. An influencer indirectly makes money from their followers. I could easily see how someone who makes that authenticity part of their brand/identity feeling an obligation to their followers to continue to be honest even on subjects of high emotion. These people who are responsible for your success, your lifestyle, how could you be anything but brutally honest with them?

And just like in real relationship where showing vulnerability can strengthen bonds, it has the same effect on the influencer-follower relationship -- despite in reality being parasocial. And strengthening that bond also results in more faithful followers, which is financially beneficial.

Now, whether a given influencer is being vulnerable due to obligation or due to financial incentives, is unclear. For many it seems more obviously financial. But for others it does seem like a bit of a complicated mixture of the two.

Edit: Here's the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8J8fWCNqCI . Personally this feels more genuine than financially motivated, but that's me. And to be fair there is no actual crying in the video! Seems like a bit of a dishonest wording by the author of the article to claim as such.

For me it was poignant as the story of a young man who has for his entire life been keen on reading, writing, and communicating, who has in a way achieved what he was looking to achieve, and unknowingly created a set of shackles from his own success/fame that he's struggling to reason with and untangle. I can't imagine the pressure of loving to critique books, but then being slapped with labels like “#1 most read on GoodReads” . How could you make fun critique videos knowing that an honest negative critique could tank an author's career? It seems like a lot of pressure.

His quote about internet "community" also especially struck me as poignant: “You have this illusion of community when we’re really very alone.” There are loads of young people who I imagine have an over-emphasis in their lives on online "community", and I really do think it is an illusion. I've been toying with the idea whether community can really even exist if you can't see each other in person.

I'd be curious as to your interpretation that led to you finding the article poignant in the archaic sense (sharp or pungent in taste or smell) or dystopian.

I read what you're saying. I don't want to go into detail about all the things in the article that rubbed me the wrong way, although saying that makes me feel like I owe that, so, sorry about that.

I will say: I don't know who _you_ are, but I feel like _the average Joe_ would love to be this guy and would love to have his problems instead of Joe's.

Succumbing to the pressure of knowing "an honest negative critique could tank an author's career" sounds like a skill issue, as the young folk say. If that's your worry, you are not this Joe's reviewer! I want an _honest_ critique! That that's a lot to ask of my number one TikTok bookfluencer is dystopian!

While observing the benefits of his position, I also empathize with the struggles that must come with unexpected widespread fame. And I never said he is/should succumb to the pressure, but again I empathize that navigating that pressure is an added stress of his position. A stress which I'm grateful isn't part of my life, and not one I would trade any of my average Joe problems for. I'm personally not convinced by your argument, and still struggle to see how the word dystopian made it into the conversation.

And although of course you do not owe an explanation for your opinion, I do find it a bit ironic that you were the one asking of others to defend/expand on theirs, but are yourself unwilling to do the same. But I understand it, it can be difficult and time consuming to reflect on one's opinions and come up with a clear and concise write-up of those thoughts that others can enjoy and benefit from. That's why I respect it when people are able to do that -- people like Jack Edwards, perhaps? ;)

I've seen a few of his videos over the years and remembered them similarly to your description, but watching that video you linked to I think he does do a proper critique. Goes into what makes the writing weak, plot drag, links books to other books, and even has a deep understanding of an authors' body of works to be able to compare and provide insight.

And in the beginning of the video he gives quite a lot of praise to BookTok, so I reckon the title is more tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, with a dash of clickbait!

Second definition of power on Google: "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." Influence is a reasonable part of the definition.

Depends on how you define power, and the article is defining it as influence. Do Jack Edwards reviews influence a substantial population of people to buy/read certain books? Seems like yes. If he's the world's most powerful, that depends on if others are _more_ influential. I personally don't know of any individual who has as big a following that influences reading. So the claim holds for me and doesn't seem hyperbolic.

And on the flip side, sometimes there's no need to learn a lesson! One of my pet peeves is when people draw huge conclusions about people/things based on way too few interactions (small sample size). Sometimes someone is just having a bad day. But if it happens again and again and again, _then_ you should draw conclusions.

Agreed. Naturally, we don't always know which event is a one off ( it used to be easier prior to proliferation of internet and then cell phones ). This likely explains some of the overcorrection I see in this area as a result. I am constantly on guard in public and if someone pulls a cell to record me, I am immediately defensive.

I guess what I am saying is that it is harder to assume it is not the type of event where we don't have to 'condition' people.

Yeah, but the lead makes it seem like an organisational decision:

> Ever since Linux got a graphical desktop, you could middle-click to paste – but if GNOME gets its way, that's going away soon, and from Firefox too.

But who knows, maybe it is a team decision, I don't know the internals or Jordan Petridis' role outside of "gnome dev".

Programming on a phone is a tough sell for many since typing is slower and you have less screen real estate to view/debug the code. Using an AI agent and typing only prompts makes it more compelling. You input less, and only occasionally have to edit code instead of writing everything from 0. And even with editing, typing a prompt like "separate the X logic from class Y into a new file/class" is much faster on mobile than the equivalent actions.

> the people who don't understand why some of us don't want it everywhere don't understand that distinction, or else are financially motivated to ignore it and gaslight everyone about the categorical boundaries crossed.

This is such a common fallacy that I think it should be given a name. When you believe that the people who disagree with you must either be ignorant or malicious. Leaves no room for honest disagreement or discussion. Maybe the "dumb-or-evil" fallacy?

It's a specific case of the false dilemma, sure.

But, in life, when you meet enough AI evangelists, what was formally a logical fallacy becomes informally a useful, even necessary heuristic.

Perhaps; but I would argue talking to many AI evangelists is a form of selection bias. Which makes the false dichotomy conclusion reasonable given the inputs, but still inaccurate given reality.

True, it's a form of false dichotomy, but I think this specific instance is particularly interesting in that it allows the holder to dehumanise their opponent to an extent, and justify lack of discussion. It's also an incredibly common conclusion in politics after people gain a somewhat superficial understanding of both sides. I wonder if it might play a key role in social polarization.

For me the strongest arguments are the ones that can argue the opponent's side as effectively as the opponent, and then show why it's weak. And that feels entirely incompatible with a dumb-or-evil argument.

>I think this specific instance is particularly interesting in that it allows the holder to dehumanise their opponent to an extent, and justify lack of discussion.

That's a wild take and a wild leap. For my own part, I see the failure or refusal to comprehend someone else's preferences, values, or boundaries as itself a profoundly human quality, even if it's a quality I don't love, rather than one which would cause me to see someone as less human.

I will admit that, when there's enough nonsense money being thrown after a vaunted object, sensible discussion can feel pointless. Prudence goes deaf amid the din of hype.

And yes, steelmanning can be highly persuasive, but not when premises are radically different enough between two parties. It's really a more productive tool to improve your model of someone else.

It’s kinda weird, because I have the exact same feeling about people who seem to categorically reject it based on what appear to be mostly emotions.

There have been such a large number of OCR tools pop up over the past ~year; sorely in need for some benchmarks to compare them. Would love to see support for normal OCR tools like tesseract, EasyOCR, Microsoft Azure, etc. I'm using these for some projects, and my experiments with VLMs for OCR have resulted in too much hallucination for me to switch. Benchmarks comparing across this aisle would be incredibly useful.