Gurwinder
gurwinder.blog · Personal blog · on HN since 2022
Gurwinder writes essays on social media, attention, and why people hold irrational beliefs, including audience capture and neotoddlerism.
What HN saysHN commenters link his audience capture and neotoddlerism essays, and discuss whether pieces on junk information can change anyone's behavior.
40HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
56stories submitted
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Most-shared posts
- 1TikTok may be a Chinese bioweapon8 people · 24 points · first shared 2023 · 2 comments on HN
- 2The Perils of Audience Capture5 people · 70 points · first shared 2022 · 35 comments on HN
- 3TikTok is a Time Bomb – The ultimate weapon of mass distraction5 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 4The Intellectual Obesity Crisis4 people · 26 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 5The Rise of Neotoddlerism: how society encourages activists to act like infants3 people · 59 points · first shared 2024 · 29 comments on HN
- 6Useful Concepts (Spring 2024)3 people · 5 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 7The Intellectual Obesity Crisis (2022)2 people · 271 points · first shared 2024 · 158 comments on HN
- 8Why everything is becoming a game2 people · 185 points · first shared 2024 · 77 comments on HN
- 9How Social Media Shortens Your Life and How to Expand It2 people · 27 points · first shared 2025 · 12 comments on HN
- 10Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things (2023)2 people · 8 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11You Are Probably an NPC2 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12Useful Principles (Autumn 2023)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 13Mind-Expanding Concepts (Spring 2023)2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Overchoice and How to Avoid It2 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 15The perils of audience capture2 people · first shared 2024
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mrbluecoat · 2024-06-03
> You'll probably read this article, briefly consider the damage junk info has done to you, and then return to aimlessly scrolling Twitter.
Great article but sadly unlikely to change any outcome so you wonder if the article itself qualifies as junk info or digital defeatism
Case in point, TikTok is still alive and well: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
thomassmith65 · 2025-08-21
For anyone who doesn't already know, the term for the phenomenon is 'audience capture'
https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture
davydm · 2025-08-04
Good luck telling your ai-infatuated friends
I've just had a long (slightly frustrating) discussion that basically boils down to their faith being stronger than the numbers, claiming that the study is flawed, that it should be ignored because it's on arxiv.org.
Breaking faith is very difficult, and will likely cause friction with your peers. It doesn't matter what facts are raised, they will fall back on arguments that support their position despite the numbers.
Part of the problem is the time dilation that we experience according to what we're doing and how we feel whilst doing it, discussed here: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/how-social-media-shortens-your-life
Y_Y · 2025-01-09
I like collecting little ideas like this. Slightly meta-ironically I'd describe the genre as "just abstract enough to be useful nuggets of knowledge" and I have an org file full of them. The hard part is I don't know any better name for such "concepts" so I can't search for other people's lists.
Does anyone else keep a similar collect or have advice for finding more?
(For example Gurwinder sometimes posts lists like this: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/30-useful-concepts-spring-2024 - that's what I'm talking about.)
jseliger · 2024-06-13
Whether good or bad, the deal was the deal, and the terms of it were fulfilled. I personally am not so fond of Musk suffering from Twitter brain worms (he's neither the first nor will be the last to acquire it) but that is separate and apart from the pay issue.
Audience capture: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture or perhaps more accurately criticism capture: https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/criticism-capture-is-more-dangerous is a problem for many people who become media people.
dotcoma · 2024-06-03
> Case in point, TikTok is still alive and well: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
The writer never said that TikTok would self-destroy; he said that it’s “a time-bomb that’ll wreck a whole generation”.
xcv123 · 2024-06-03
Go install TikTok and scroll for 30 minutes. It is the experience of your brain dissolving into sludge in real time.
https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
TimJRobinson · 2024-04-13
Good related article on the dangers of TikTok: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
fossuser · 2023-09-19
Audience capture is a scary thing: https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture (a particularly sad and grotesque example).
I think it's something we're all vulnerable too.
It's important to be aware of the incentives you're allowing yourself to operate under.
A little tangential maybe, but it reminds me of this book review I really liked: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/books/review/herman-wouk-winds-of-w…
braingenious · 2023-03-13
In case anybody missed it, I’m talking about how the dude went full Zarathustra in the agora.
https://twitter.com/jason/status/1634771851514900480
It did lead me to a really interesting article about audience capture and how it twists “influencers” into saying and doing outlandish things though!
https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture
adamgordonbell · 2022-09-10
There is a tendency for this to happen in real life with influencers. Certain aspects resonate with an audience and so they overemphasize them.
https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture