Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one who has 0 youtube addiction? I find FB far more compelling, though I derive quite a bit of value from it.

I watch YouTube to watch a video or two I want to watch. that's it. Frankly, when someone sends me a video to watch, I resent it, because I hate spending 5 minutes of my life watching something that probably won't be funny.

Some nights I'll pull up YT on the TV and play a Wendover productions vid, or an AvE vid, or a car video or two, and that's it. I don't ever feel sucked in or addicted to it. If anything, I often want to watch something but can't find anything interesting to watch; nothing sounds that compelling, or I get 3 minutes in and am bored so I try to find something else.

Am I unique in that way? I've also never gotten into video games, they just don't hold any appeal or hold my attention. That's not to say I haven't spend 12 hours gaming at a LAN party once in a blue moon (actually far less frequently, maybe 4 or 5 times in my life).. but I don't get sucked in in the same way I get sucked into other internet distractions. I can go down HN rabbitholes or keep refreshing FB or some news site hoping to find something interesting, but YT doesn't do it for me.

I go on YouTube like once a month, at most. So yea I’m with you. I’ve actually _tried_ to get “addicted” to it by forcing myself to search for interesting videos just to see what all the fuss about, but I just never end up going back to the site for more

I am exactly like you. I hate videos. Videos are a loss of time compared to text. They are slower, you can’t consume them at your own pace, you can’t go back easily or read a particular part slowly and then read the rest faster or skip sections or paragraphs or...

Also I can’t imagine anything lamer than YouTube personalities.

This. It kind of depends on my mood or what I'm doing, but reading is generally so much faster. Though I realized a while back that this is mostly true for people who read quickly. Some of my older family members prefer videos to having to put on reading glasses. And a lot of people just read slowly in general.

Now that I think about it, it's usually when my eyes are kind of aching (long days at screens) that I start to prefer videos even for things that don't require a visual.

I think it depends on the type of content. I'm totally with you for content that should be text (e.g. most things related to programming), but some content lends itself to the video form factor and doesn't work as plaintext content.

For example, imagine CinemaSins or Movies with Mikey as plaintext. That would take all of the fun out of it.

Or imagine reading transcripts of Stephen Colbert's monologues. Those would probably be quite tedious since a lot of Colbert's quality is his pantomimic object work.

I used to think exactly like yourself, until I found some really good channels of passionate people. It's clear when the author is doing videos because he enjoy in contrast when they're doing for the short term money.

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