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est

In case anyone missed previous videos

Two from HUST: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14p4y1V7kS/ https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13k4y1G7i1/

One by USTC https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ex4y1X7ix/ this tiny sample can stand on its pointy side.

Another by Qufu Normal University https://www.zhihu.com/zvideo/1669820225079070720

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Curious, what does the text flying by on the screen say on the bilibili video? I’m always amazing at the cultural differences in design and how Chinese apps tend to always be so busy. Everything feels like a slot machine.

That thing is called "弹幕DanMu" (Barrage), which is a type of synchronized comment that appears alongside video playback. In this video, most of the comments are related to "taking a group photo" and "sending blessings". Perhaps because Chinese characters can convey more information in shorter sentences, this form of commentary is not as popular in other places, but it can actually be quite interesting. It provides an interactive experience that transcends time and space. On Bilibili, you can adjust the display area, font size, transparency, scroll speed, and intelligent prevention of blocking the main content for danmu. If you don't like it, you can turn it off.

For reference, Bilibili started as a direct clone of Acfun (which itself is a clone of Niconico).

I recall reading about this in Logic mag a while back: https://logicmag.io/china/bullet-time/

I have seen it on SoundCloud for what it’s worth.

It originated from the japanese video sharing website Niconico. It gives the users a sense of participation. Some twitch streams also have on-screen elements that can be controlled by chat. Many twitch viewers enjoy chaos and like mindlessly spamming and reposting copypastas.

They are user comments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danmaku_subtitling

Compared to regular comments on say youtube, these kinda give a time element to the comments, when they should appear in the video playback

Youtube annotations (those coloured speech-bubbles that did not work on mobile) were (mis)used in a similar way - some uploaders opened them for everybody, allowing all users to leave a "comment" in form of an annotation at a certain point in the video.

Watching movies on Chinese movie sites also gives you these comments.

I think they're insanely distracting, and they only get worse the better I get at understanding them. But then again, people disagree on whether you should talk during movies, too. If it's a bad movie, sometimes the user commentary is better.

adding another from a person affiliated with THU https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV14z4y1s7Vo/

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