Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

> We favor videos that either are very short or don’t require dedicated focus, confident in the knowledge that we can move on to something else whenever we want to. We ignore thoughtfully composed “walls of text,” but we electronically applaud memetic image macros and single-sentence references that aren’t inherently entertaining or insightful

The rise of long form YouTube videos and Podcasts directly contradicts this. Summoning Salt, Technology Connections, and the dozens of other small documentary channels. Heck Matholger is able to regularly hit 500k+ views with 30min+ math videos![1]

True crime podcasts and history podcasts are also in direct opposition to the idea that we only consume short form content.

Then there is the entire rise of Medium and Substack. 10 years ago if I wanted long form journalism it was either The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or some tiny indie news magazines.

Now long form articles are more popular than ever.

Heck even movies are getting longer! [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@Mathologer/videos [2] https://www.whattowatch.com/features/are-movies-really-getti...

I'll throw in Cathode Ray Dude [0] in there. It's hard to believe he will get 500K view on a 70 minutes video about some weird 90s hardware but he does.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude

Is there any demographic of his audience?

Given the topics on that channel I would guess most viewers are already older people who got struck with nostalgia (a typical phenomenon in elder people).

Gen Z and younger on the other hand seems to have in large parts just an attention span of a few seconds left. At least that's my personal experience. (I don't want to annoy anybody here, there are exceptions of course!)

What's your time frame on "long form articles are more popular than ever"?

And are you using relative or absolute popularity? E.g. "medium form" articles in pop magazines were probably always more popular than longform ones in literary mags, but were they more relatively popular than "tweets" or "tiktok videos"?

Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248 million tickets today? And that number has a lower total population size to pull from! For a focused experience without your phone, or work, or anything else (compared to listening to a podcast in the background while working or driving)?

There are groups that still enjoy, or are learning to enjoy, longer stuff still. But that's not the dominant trend.

> Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248 million tickets today?

Avatar, Way Of The Water, a 3 hour movie, broke all sorts of sales records (though # of tickets sold data apparently isn't out yet).

Heck Avengers End Game was 3 hours long and it sold 351 million tickets.

I do think you get less of the repeat sales now days vs even in the 90s, just because there are so many more movies coming out, both in Cinema and on streaming platforms, but that doesn't say anything about people's willingness to attend long movies.

those are unfair comparisons.

They are franchises, not standalone projects. Much like you are more keen to see a video from a creator you have enjoyed in the past. The barrier to entry is lower.

And the avengers have comic books as well as an excuse to yourself that it's probably worth it to risk putting your time into watching the movie.

Now think of a random movie, I call it 'The study of Protastores' It's a made up name, it has the word study in it. Would you go and watch it if it was 3 hours long? You it would be a difficult pitch, even if it is the best movie ever and has an exciting thumbnail

> They are franchises, not standalone projects.

Sure but it's not like Dr Zhivago (widely popular book, won the Nobel Prize for Pasternak in 1958) was an unknown project from an unknown director (David Lean, 7 Oscars in 1957 for Kwai, 7 Oscars in 1962 for Lawrence of Arabia) featuring an unknown cast.

>Would a three hour film like Doctor Zhivago ever sell 248 million tickets today?

No, partly because the media landscape is much more fragmented with much more choice and partly because streaming services are now the natural destination for serious long-form drama. If you were a screenwriter pitching Doctor Zhivago today, you'd pitch it to Netflix. Nobody goes to the movies to watch a historical epic today, but nobody in the 1960s was binge-watching subtitled foreign drama on TV.

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