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Watched a street performer in Austin get pushed by the algorithm in real time
I was in Austin on South Congress a couple weeks ago and this guy was doing card tricks for a small crowd of maybe 12 people. Nothing wild, just solid sleight of hand. I filmed a 40 second clip and posted it that night. It got like 30 views. Then a girl next to me posted her own clip from the exact same trick, different angle, and it hit 80k views by morning. Same trick, same performer, same time. The difference? Hers had a caption that said 'watch his hands at the end' and mine just said 'cool magic trick.' I tested it again the next weekend with the same guy. Added a curiosity gap caption and a question in the text and boom, 22k views. It was the same footage basically. I don't fully get why the wording does that much heavy lifting but it clearly does something to watch time. Has anyone else noticed that captions asking a question seem to get pushed way harder than plain descriptions?
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brookeellis1d ago
Wait, you think two clips from some random guy prove the whole algorithm bends to captions?
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