- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Your thoughts?
I feel like my attention is bad now compared to where it was… or is possibly still getting worse… Honestly, what a bother… I deal with a lot, C-PTSD and ADHD, both of which hurt my attention. The attention economy compounds it further. Now I am less mentally than I could be or so it seems.
What do you think? Video is 25 minutes long so not too long, imho.
Yeah, we need rest, especially from work and trauma. And yeah, the vagueness too makes it less worthy to investigate the content. Don’t waste my time, one might say! But that’s exactly what they do, quite consistently.
Besides, longform content on YouTube that’s each a few hours long wastes your time, profoundly as well as your energy, and executive functioning. And these YouTubers have the guile to lambast TikTok and TikTok influencers, which I find annoying. One day, everyone will have been for short form content…
But frankly, I want a balance; no rambling and meandering videos and no short content that lacks substance.
There is definitely something to be said for the style of video that can get to the point in a few minutes without feeling like it’s rushing through the concepts either. Some concepts may warrant longer amount of time, but I think often with youtube, it’s been padded out because of ad plays giving people a monetary incentive to pad the length of their videos (I remember youtubers talking about this when things were transitioning to the norm being longer videos). Whereas like with tiktok and short form more generally, it’s reversed motive/design; be brief, even if that’s damaging to the content.
Capitalism and its distortion of motives toward monetization over quality of life.
Frankly?
YouTube is worse now; it has indeed gone downhill.
Still has good content here and there but of generally lower quality.
Many videos are one and done now.
I save many of them, but that’s just me; I use Raindrop.io with note-taking but most people won’t and should not be expected to use a note-taking or cloud-saving app.
Besides, even my note-taking reveals that the videos are largely bereft of new info for every 5 minutes of a video.
Even ML YouTubers have this problem, arguably more than most (but the again, so do ultra-right or fascist YouTubers and other political YouTubers so, whatever, might as well be objective here when assessing them).
They can’t explain their point effectively. Not even in a way that’s accurate. Give a YouTuber an hour to explain something and it’s just rambling nonsense. Even 30 minutes is meandering nonsense.
I hate to sound like a conservative here, but I do… kinda blame modern-day culture (not just digital capitalism)… but that in itself is informed by capitalism, of course.
Culture mixed with the modern-day Internet produces bad results.
I miss Internet message boards or Internet forums from the 2000s, tbh, not the more centralized socials nowaday(like Twitter).
I would venture to say part of what you’re touching on is a result of bougie idealism and imperialism mixed with rabid anti-communism resulting in people generally being lost in this headspace of something like a romanticized and distorted imitation of an ancient Greek philosopher, constructed largely from internet quotes of things they never said, mixed with PT Barnum, some fundie Christian preacher here and there for fire, and a dash of good ole western chauvinism.
Basically, what I’m trying to get at is this thing of people talking in such a way it sounds like they’re saying something as an authority on the subject, but they’re mostly saying nothing and most of it boils down to vibes. I don’t excuse myself from this either. It’s a tendency I more so had as a lib, but something I still struggle to shake in spite of being ML-minded now.
I think it usually comes from a place of good intention, but nevertheless, the end result is a lot of meaningless spew that is not grounded in much of anything.
The funny thing is, from my own experience, when I do investigate and learn well on a given topic, suddenly the need to go into that mode tends to evaporate. Because I can just… plainly say what I know. It’s when I’m too ignorant on a topic but am trying to add something to it anyway that I most tend to slip into that headspace. I kind of miss old internet forums too, but if I’m being real, they had this kind of problem in their own way. Threads with 2 people going back and forth for 30 pages in a way that no one but them can follow. Each stubbornly convinced they’re enmeshed in the argument of the century.