Traditional print publishers put lots of efforts into making the covers of their books and magazines attractive and indicative of what you can expect inside.
You _can_ judge a book by its cover, _if_ the publisher is doing their job right.
Why would online video be any different?
That would be like saying you can judge the quality of a cereal-brand by its box. Special-K? That is really special.
The Book might be full of lies or incorrect information no matter how beautiful its cover is.
You can judge the quality of the cover of the book by looking at the cover. :-)
> The Book might be full of lies or incorrect information no matter how beautiful its cover is.
Cereal "might be", but almost nobody has motivation to do so — this is market differentiation to tell you what you're buying.
Compare and contrast:
https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/Kellogg-s-Special-K-Origina...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=budget+cornflakes&t=iphone&iar=ima...
https://www.kaufland.de/product/338169035/?search_value=cere...
None of these will be surprise Weetabix in soy sauce. None is actually a frozen pizza. None is garden fertiliser.
Similar with books and youtube videos. It's not a claim that "beauty is truth and truth beauty", it's a claim the thumbnail/cover tells you what the video/book is about.
For "quality"? Good branding used to be expensive, before GenAI (now I'm not sure). If you could afford it, you could afford good content; if you could only afford good branding or good content but not both… it happens, of course, but it leads to angry refund demands IRL, and no organic viral growth for videos.
It's absolutely accurate that `kids these days` have grown up in a different environment than `grownups these days` than the same demographics from 50, 100, 200, or 1000 years ago.
The "kids just lack manners these days" should also be separated from more detailed criticism.
That whole thing about denying that decadence is even possible is so comically a symptom of people being part of said decadence not wanting to admit it.
From my other post:
Overall, when the parents lose control of the child, the culture takes over parenting. When the culture is ridiculous, the child grows to become a ridiculous adult and won't know it and possibly even defend it.
Of course, their ideals will most likely differ from your ideals. In addition, even where multiple people might share abstract ideals, their ideas about how to effect these ideals will often differ.