Youtuber's 'Titanfall' style grappling hook pulls you up a tree in seconds

reviewgeek.com

29 points·luord··4 comments

This is one of the examples where the series of long videos is not the appropriate medium.

Yep, the few minutes of demo'ing the ready device need to be a video. But the rest -- the "build" story, parts list, internal constructions, non-obvious details would be so much better in traditional format, text + pictures.

Well framed, high resolution pictures, so I could look at each part carefully and not try to pause the things at just the right moment. As well as nice text with sections, so I can skip over parts I do not care about, and jump right to the interesting parts.

Although I'd agree that's the case for technical demonstration, (documenting an invention, publishing the results of an experiment, etc.) the goal of this video is to engage viewers, and entertain them, rather than documentation.

I recognize this as show vs tell. I would rather be shown something in great detail and reach my own (guided) conclusions, rather than being told that this is how something is.

Another example is the rise of the 'reaction video', someone being told what their emotional reaction should be, rather than presenting some subject neutrally and allowing the viewer to develop their own thoughts and feelings on the subject.

The goal is not to educate you; it's to extract as many ad views out of you as possible, and mostly from kids who experience the internet exclusively on phones, with the least effort. The video has preroll ads and, for me, 3 midroll breaks. I'm sure it also has inline advertising.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com