Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

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He briefly hints at it, but I think the author makes a mistake common to well-read, intellectual-type people: he assumes that people like to read as much as they like watching video, and therefore that the blog vs. video decision is one made on "proper format."

The reality, I think, is that most people fundamentally don't like to read, and that reading more than a few paragraphs is rapidly becoming something akin to a chore for the majority of the population. Watching a video, on the other hand, is an entirely different experience and one that more-or-less comes naturally to human beings, no matter their education level or cultural background.

I run a Substack myself, but I've increasingly become convinced that text-first platforms don't have a mass-market future and at best, will exist as a niche thing. Instead, I think video-first platforms will gradually solve the advantages text still has over video – for example, search and scrolling. As such, I'd recommend any writers/content creators seriously consider adopting a video-first approach, or at least a hybrid one.

Also see a recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924022

Admittedly, I'm a "well-read, intellectual-type" person, but I find videos of people talking to be exceedingly boring. I can't stand podcasts or talk radio either. To me they're just tedious, and whenever I try to watch or listen, I have to turn them off after a few minutes. The S/N ratio is so low. The speakers take 10 minutes to say something that could be read in 1 minute. It's a giant waste of time. And you're forced to sit through all of the filler: the "ums", the "ahs", the pauses, the idle chit-chat.

I don't deny that talk media is massively popular. I don't get it, though. It's not for me. I would guess that maybe viewers/listeners want to identify with the speakers and consider them friends.

I can sometimes tolerate them at 1.5x or 2x speed.

Generally though I hunt around for a transcript (even a shitty automated transcript is often just about readable -enough- if I'm interested) or google up articles on whatever the topic of the video is and read those instead.

I'm not sure what the percentage split of preferences is, but I -do- strongly suspect that "liking text more than video" is rather more common amongst developers than amongst humans in general.

I think it’s mostly that humans spent thousands of years talking to each other in person, not looking at complex symbol systems quietly and alone.

Video is more of a replication of an in-person conversation than writing, and I expect holograms / AR to eventually replace video for the same reason.

> reading more than a few paragraphs is rapidly becoming something akin to a chore for the majority of the population

I agree with that part. Some people will do anything to avoid reading articles: they watch shallow videos with 10 minutes of advertisement-friendly padding, they ask ChatGPT to hallucinate something. But I don't see that those people become better informed as a result of those tools. It's not working, it's only a simulation of knowledge acquisition.

> text-first platforms don't have a mass-market future

They never had. High-information media have always been a niche. It's when economic effects cause them to die out completely that we get a problem as a civilization.

> High-information media have always been a niche.

I don't doubt that, but how much of the text one reads daily can honestly be described as "high information"? In the normal course of reading things, one encounters a dozen ways in which long-form text can have abysmal information density.

Think of the stereotypical 5 paragraph article retelling a 1 paragraph press release. The official document containing pages of magical incantations designed to protect the writer from lawsuits. The "thinker" who has a single, simple idea, but is under contract to publish a book, not an article. The novel where nothing happens at all.

>The reality, I think, is that most people fundamentally don't like to read, and that reading more than a few paragraphs is rapidly becoming something akin to a chore for the majority of the population.

Agreed.

I grew enjoying reading, I still enjoy reading, I'm here reading too many comments. Despite that, of the thousands of "pages" I read last year, most were video with the screen off or proper audio. And that's been the case ever since I became employed in jobs that lack downtime. Reading demands eyeballs, but so does coding, driving, digging, doing dishes, cleaning, etc. Video or rather the implied audio does not.

That is a major contributing factor to TFA's observations. It's also a vicious cycle -- younger people get pulled into information ecosystems that encourage, or only support, short text and video content. They then get used to those formats and find longer forms off-putting. I see this happening with my kids, who won't read anything longer than a paragraph online.

I have found that buying them physical books and cajoling them to read eventually works. They tell me they're surprised they enjoyed reading a novel. Then they go back to Twitter and TikTok.

I wonder if and how schools are contributing to this.

That's also ignoring how miserable the text reading experience is online. Go to a random news site. What fraction of the screen real-state will be content vs ads? Not just ads, but intrusive pop ups, pop unders, scrolls, videos, newsletter subscriptions, whatever dirty trick du jour to count as an ad impression.

The siren song of ad revenue is too strong to ignore, so any platform with content enters a death spiral where the content takes a back seat to ad delivery.

I wish it weren't so but it appears to be. Even when timing is at a disadvantage - I.e. most of my friends will rather watch a 10min video with data content of a 3 paragraph article (how entertaining is that 10min video, is a matter of personal judgement :)

I sure prefer videos but there is a serenity to reading. It is very quiet and all you can hear are your thoughts.

I definitely don't want to disparage reading – I generally prefer reading to video, at least for some topics. But I do recognize that it's not a common attitude to have and it does require more "buy in" than video.

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