I watched all of that. Begrudgingly. So much video time.
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.
> Now we need to watch hours of overproduced youtube 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.
The purpose of a video like this is not to deliver data.
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?
My point is that things that would previously have been 5 minute blog posts now are e.g. 90 minute video odysseys, and the primary cause is that's the way "creators get paid".
Welcome to the attention economy, where we make people watch ads to doomscroll the latest drivel, hopefully diverting their attention to buying more senseless crap rather than improving their situation or the plight of humanity in general.
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?
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.
Well, just want to point out that not all content creators do this. I have a channel and I make videos that are to the point and scripted. It probably won't interest you much but just saying that it IS possible to do it. I record a concise script AHEAD of time and the sync the recording to the script. And I still make money off it.
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.
> We should have gotten micropayments to work in browsers instead.
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.
The modern maybe-AI generated, definitely SEO optimized method of writing where they spend 5 paragraphs restating the same thing in different ways when it could have been said in two sentences is unbearable.
Have one of the LLMs summarise the LLM-generated pablum? Do this a few times and you have a new version of the old 'Chinese/Russian Telegraph' game where a group of participants whisper a message around in a circle.
Weird that the photo of the eBayed disk is a Maxell CF2 - a 3in disk! These were standard on the Amstrad 8-bits (CPC/PCW) and the Sinclair Spectrum +3, after Amstrad bought the rights to the Spectrum, but I’d never seen them on a C64.
I know a few other systems outside of Europe had 3 inch disks, for example the Nintendo Famicom Disk System. But the FDS disks were intentionally different again to those Maxwell disks.
Like yourself, never seen 3” disks on the C64 before.
3.5” disks were extremely common. Everything from Atari STs to programmable keyboards supported them. Plus they were the standard in PCs for a very long time.
What the GP saw was 3” a disk (ie half an inch smaller). Those came with a harder plastic shell and were a lot less common except for a few specific systems (like the aforementioned Amstrad 8bit micros).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
I know a few other systems outside of Europe had 3 inch disks, for example the Nintendo Famicom Disk System. But the FDS disks were intentionally different again to those Maxwell disks.
Like yourself, never seen 3” disks on the C64 before.
What the GP saw was 3” a disk (ie half an inch smaller). Those came with a harder plastic shell and were a lot less common except for a few specific systems (like the aforementioned Amstrad 8bit micros).
Moving on…
With a link to the source YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvSlWLgXcsU