Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

I need to troll a little bit here: Do you watch the whole 90 min film, or the YouTube summary in 10 mins? Or even shorter: Just the 2 mins trailer? Why do you read a whole novel instead just reading the back cover? Why read Der Speigel or The New Yorker long form journalism when you can get the summary in 90 seconds on the toilet with CNN?

View on HN

It's not a difficult question: people will watch the trailer or read the summary to decide if they want to invest their time in the complete work. That's why trailers exist!

Not the same. The key is weather it captivates the reader/viewer/audience.

If the 90 min film gets hopelessly boring, I wouldn't hesitate to stop watching. Heck I've abandoned 10 minute YouTube videos because it got boring.

I have abandoned novels halfway because it was boring. Perhaps it may have been the greatest novel ever and I'm missing out by not completing it, but it's okay for me. Now I'm not saying it should be interesting right from page 1. But if it's not reached any major plot point by page 200, I'm skipping.

Relevant discussion about this from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35340083

Reply on news.ycombinator.com