yeah I'm trying to watch less YT, hard for me to just sit in silence and think
trying to be more of a producer than consumer, not saying this to look down I'm socially/financially a failure, trying to change my habits
trying to be more of a producer than consumer, not saying this to look down I'm socially/financially a failure, trying to change my habits
Short form pop content like TikTok doesn't give my brain enough time to engage the thinking muscle.
I think it's better to identify the characteristics of the media we consume, rather than lumping all of them together.
You’re hand waving it away because you prefer long videos. What about all the people using TikTok as a search engine?
I'm all for nuance. Its also why I'm biased towards long form media as it's more likely to contain nuance, but not guaranteed. The gps specific example of lectures is quite narrow and more likely to have depth. Which is the entire problem of short form media, that we live in a complex world where we can't distill everything into 1-2 minute segments. Hell, even a lecture series, which will be over 10hrs of content is not enough to make one an expert on all but the most trivial of topics.
You're right that we need nuance but you're not right in arguing for it while demonstrating a lack of it. A major issue is we need to communicate, something we're becoming worse at. We should do our best to speak and write as clearly as possible but at the end of the day language is so imprecise that a listener or reader will be able to construct many, and even opposing, narratives. It is more important to be a good listener than a good speaker. I'd hope programmers, of all people, could understand this as we've invented overly pedantic languages with the explicit purpose of minimizing ambiguity[0]
Maybe practice slowing down by reading a book. Any book, hard copy.
> trying to be more of a producer than consumer
Thank you!
While 3 minutes is indeed an arbitrary limit, the difference between short and long form videos is very noticeable. Long form requires another form of attention, focusing more, more commitment, less distraction; there's even a form of "delayed gratification" (a form of attention that only grownups can provide) in that the payoff isn't always immediate and can sometimes be very delayed.
Short form is like junk food, zero friction, instantly addictive and doesn't require you to really pay attention. Surely the immediacy of attention it needs is completely different to long form video.
I also disagree with your other comment that maybe long form can promote similar consumption habits (you call it "overconsumption"); I don't think anyone can get "addicted" to long form video, it's simply too time-demanding, you don't get a "fix" and the "zapping" effect of quickly moving from one video to the next.
I don't know what qualifies as "addiction", but it is typically where I get my news, where a web-series I watch is released, and where I learn about social justice issues important to me, through video essays.
I'm sure my consumption is very different from that of someone who watches 100 1-minute Tiktok videos per day, but I think it's worth at least questioning how this might also contribute to cognitive performance and mental health.
Though I think a big difference with short-form content is the autoplay functionality (as your sibling commenter mentions). I watch videos which are released by channels I subscribe to, and occasionally (maybe once a week) watch something Youtube recommends to me. So I retain some agency over my viewing habits compared to someone whose decisions are dictated by the algorithm, which also has an incentive to keep people watching as long as possible.
Actually, I've encountered the argument that speeding video up when the speaker is too slow for the listener can be useful for staying focused on what they're saying.
I don't think watching a 40 minute video essay on 1.5X speed is comparable to watching 25 1-minute videos
To be clear, I do remember watching long videos at 1.75X: Coursera's. By extension, I see myself watching "instructional" (tech) long-winded videos this way, but to be honest this is not the type of videos I usually watch on YouTube, and I watch them on 1X.
In short: There are a lot of differences in how long and short videos affect a person, in my opinion.
There are people that autoplay long videos, in fact people stream random Simpson’s (or other favorite tv show, podcast, music, books on tape, etc) episodes in the background while they work. Classic TV has autoplay with no opportunity to decide. Autoplay is not an exclusive short form video feature. I can make a short video on my computer and it will not autoplay other content.
If you continue to push this point, people will only think that short videos under 3 minutes are some how the devil and TikTok et al will continue on making whatever length of video is next in line, more addictive.
There's no deficit of time in the day, the deficit is in energy and attention. I'm worried we conflate speed and productivity (I'm unsure if you do or don't) but these are original. Speed gives the illusion of productivity but it is ignorant of quality and efficiency. It's only a first order approximation of productivity and a noisy one at best. Velocity is more important, as it requires direction but even velocity is ignorant of momentum, acceleration, force, and many other factors that go into making one productive. Speed is only important if everything else is held constant.
Let's not confuse speed for productivity. I'd argue that is a major contributing factor that has gotten us to this point. Where everything appears to move fast but in reality moves slower than ever
It's the algorithmic loop that starts the moment you scroll to the next video that starts playing before you even have a chance to decide whether or not it's something that you want to watch that's abhorrent to me.
On desktop/laptop I decided to go deeper into YT customization. My current mod stack for YT completely re-imagines the YT interface to be focused and space efficient, replaces spammy, inaccurate thumbnails with actual video stills, re-formats spammy ALL CAPS AtTentIoN SeEKiNG headlines, shows enough of the expanded description to be useful and outright blocks a bunch of stuff I never want to see (channel promos, upcoming, shorts, live streams, algorithm recommendations, etc). It takes me straight to a grid of only new videos posted by the niche channels I subscribe to, so I never even see the Youtube home page.
Warning: I cobbled together this stack over time out of disparate unrelated components by just experimenting until I found a combination which "fixes" YT in exactly the ways I want. Even though it heavily customizes YT, it's all been working great with no changes for over two years - but YT could break it any time. If you're okay with that, this should get you started:
1. A UserScript YouTube 'mod platform' called [Nova YouTube](https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension). This does the thumbnail, description and other reformatting as well as most of the content blocking by type (with a couple uBO filters found in the uBO subreddit).
2. A Stylus userstyles (CSS) mod called [AdashimaaTube](https://github.com/sapondanaisriwan/AdashimaaTube). This mostly handles reformatting the interface like number of rows and columns in grids and selectively removing YT's dark-pattern UI cruft.
3. "Youtube Enhancer" (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-enhan...) is a Firefox add-on which I mostly use for one feature it does perfectly (auto-expanding videos to fill the browser viewport but not in 'full-screen'). I also like the way Enhanced YouTube's configurable player interface buttons work and look.
My YT account was created in 2008 and until I did this I didn't even realize just how awful YT had become because it was done so gradually over the years. There are a lot of different add-ons and userscripts out there and the ones I happened to land on may not suit you, so just try different options to see what's possible and then experiment until you find a stack which works for you.
I would mod the YT app to remove 'autoplay next' and algo recommendations but unfortunately my kid is on iOS where modding isn't possible. The best thing we did was not get her a phone until after she turned 13.