• Snot Flickerman
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    6 months ago

    It’s why I barely watch YouTube at all and mostly read news and get frustrated if the only source is a fucking YouTube video.

    You know what’s really easy to cite? A text document.

    You know what’s not so easy to cite? A six-part 14 hours-of-video deep dive into Disnleyland queueing and ticketing systems or whatever.

    No, stop, write it the fuck down. You definitely wrote a bunch down in service of making this fucking video so why not also just release that for fucks sake? Are people so unable to get involved in reading anymore?

    Some things are more helpful as a YouTube video, like How-To videos where you can see more clearly what is happening when a written instruction can be unclear. It’s also useful for speaking truth to power by recording cops who are breaking the law and so forth. But those are specific use cases.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Are people so unable to get involved in reading anymore?

      I don’t know know if this trait carrys over to Lemmy, but on reddit I would get my best upvotes on messages that were 1-2 sentences, usually with a quote or reference to something popular.

      You know, thoughtless content where I’m just reminding them of a quote from the office, or a small joke. Anything more than a paragraph and people replied "Whoa! I’m not reading that mountain of text! Meanwhile it’s less text than would be on a pamphlet.

      It reminds of something Bo Burnham said in a song from Youtube Live, which was planned as an annual celebration of youtubes biggest stars featuring live performances on stage. Bo Burnham had just broke out. He said:

      “It’s youtube, it’s what this country’s been needing, an entire generation of kids who don’t waste their time reading!”

      That was 2009. Which means at the youngest, those kids are now at least young adults. And the older ones are pushing 30 now.

      Excuse me as I go cry looking in the mirror at my grey hairs, pondering how many more years until I need a cane.

      • Snot Flickerman
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        6 months ago

        Thankfully, the trait for the most part does not carry over. I still see (and get) a lot of upvotes on dumb, cheeky posts.

        But honestly, the deep dives and thoughtful shit gets way way way more love, in my experience.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      6 months ago

      A lot of people are bad at reading. Sometimes it’s not their fault. Taught poorly, learning disabilities, whatever. Sometimes they’re just lazy and out of practice.

      • Snot Flickerman
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        6 months ago

        To be clear, I’m not against people who have trouble reading having a resource, like I said, it would be ideal to produce a video and a text/image document. This way you can reach the most people and not put off the people who would just like to be able to read it quietly.

        I just dislike when the only source is a YouTube video.

        • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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          6 months ago

          I think we agree. I get very frustrated when there’s only video. I’ll be like “Is power A or B better in game X?” and find a bunch of 10 minute videos that could be summed up in a paragraph that said like “A has higher burst DPS by a wide margin, but B does more damage overall in fights that last more than a few rounds”

    • daltotron@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, I think this problem is mostly solved if people were more willing to take their obviously highly produced and edited scripts and just make those publicly accessible with sources and whatnot, which they presumably need to basically do anyways in order to have good captioning on their video. The main problem isn’t so much that they use videos, to me, but that we have no way to sort through leagues of text documents and blogs now. Harder for me to subscribe to and read a blog in a dedicated fashion, I guess. I dunno, I guess ultimately I’m just saying that the two mediums need more connection, which would be mutually beneficial, I think.