A decade ago it would have been a text format blog post with screenshots and downloadable binaries, and perhaps the occasional demo video. The same amount of information could be consumed in 5 minutes.
Now we need to watch hours of overproduced youtube videos, because that's the way "creators get paid".
We should have gotten micropayments to work in browsers instead.
Google really did a number on the web.
Do you also spend 12 minutes smelling flowers and then complain that the gardener could have sent you a txt that said "they smell like flowers" so much more efficiently?
I think this is bad for human progress.
A blog post and a video are 2 different things.
Shitter still has many many 5 minute reads if you only want that. They exist, and in greater numbers than ever, right now, today, despite "how creators get paid".
The fact that you only want a soylent pill doesn't mean that a sit-down meal is some waste of time.
Either way, I don't want to continue this conversation. Good bye.
> Instead of blog posts, we have videos
They're saying
> In addition to blog posts, we have videos (we still have blog posts)
Can you imagine the positive impact on the world if just a fraction of that screen time was devoted to just making the people near you smile?
This is the worst when I simply want to read the documentation, but Google attempts to serve me "tutorials". I have never derived value from programming tutorial videos.
But we don't. Plenty of people just ignore all that stuff, and there remains an impossibly vast volume of old and new content to consume in other forms. I've probably watched a total of 3 hours of Youtube since it launched, and I don't feel even a little bit less informed for that.
Would you really be worse off if you did something else with your time? Since you seem to prefer text, I'm sure there remain many stimulating blog posts (and books!) you haven't yet read.
If people find that sharing their little hobby efforts by video is easier or makes for better inspiration, it's not coming at some cost to you.
It's a different medium. Among both content creators and content consumers, some people prefer it, some don't.
So yeah, youtube videos CAN be concise, but I have actually two explanations for why many are not:
1. Most people want to put in mid-roll ads
But that can't be the only reason -- if it were then a few creators could take over the market by making concise videos. So here's the second reason:
2. Many people watch YouTube for entertainment, not for learning information and they like to see long-form videos because they also want the pseudo-social interaction of watching their favourite creators.
It doesn't appeal to me personally but it is what it is.
Sadly that would have only accelerated the enshittification. Commercial interests are what turned the web into slop. Remember when Usenet was originally rendered useless after succumbing to spam? That's the web as of 2024, and why we can't have nice things.
It feels like the mostly non-commercial web is like a fever dream now. I miss it.
> Remember when Usenet was originally rendered useless after succumbing to spam?
Yes, but then we repurposed it as a medium for distributing buffy the vampire slayer eps from some guy with a big sat dish who intercepted internal transmissions to local tv stations, so what we could see the next ep half a day in advance.
It’s not meant to be a TLDR minimal words fact delivery post.