Comment on A long video of one person's opinion about "algorithmic complacency"
JayEchoRay@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoI was served the channel by the algorithm and was concerned with the length so I attempted to share in a neutral manner unsure on reception.
I found it interesting and wanted to share the opinion
KnightontheSun@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
38 minutes is too long? What a world we have when folks cannot pay attention longer than a tiktok vid. Perhaps that isn’t you, but I cringe that we have to think about that. No offense intended.
TC is a treasure, btw. Go back and view some of his other content. Not too long ago I watched his dishwasher video as I had just installed a new one. I learned quite a lot and I assumed I knew most things about them. He also explains things so thoroughly that my mother was able to follow along and appreciate the information. His demeanor helps as well. Love the guy. Thanks for the post!
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
Short attention spans is an overly simplistic explanation. Of those who may find a 38 minute video to be too long, I think only a small fraction of those have that preference due to becoming accustomed to Tik-Tok and other short form content. I’m going to give a few examples of alternative explanations, and perhaps that will help you to cringe less.
I have a friend who has the unfortunate combination of being hard of hearing, and dyslexia, so lip reading is more useful than subtitles. They can cope with videos where it’s mainly a person talking to a camera (so TC would actually be better for them than most video essays), but a lot of long-form videos have fancier editing or visual effects than that. Even when it is a relatively accessible video style, it takes more mental effort to be parsing spoken information.
I know someone else who is dreadful at processing auditory info, likely related to them being neurodivergent. Definitely no problem with attention span though, because they’ll digest huge essays and books with zeal. They’re young, so the majority of their peers are big fans of the short form videos like TikTok. We sometimes laugh at how sometimes they sound like more of a grumpy old person (with their “kids these days” rants) than I do (and I do my fair share of ranting too)
I know someone who can only effectively focus on auditory input when they’re able to focus on something else visually, such as going for a run, or doing crochet. They prefer podcasts and audiobooks to videos, because it’s easy to get lost if a video is expecting viewers to be at least half watching things.
I hope my comment doesn’t come across like I’m telling you off or anything. A large part of why I wrote this is because I know that there are quite a lot of people who just can’t jibe with long videos (for a variety of reasons), which makes me appreciate how OP was clear in their title. it’s a little gesture of being considerate of other people’s needs always brightens my day, especially on places like Lemmy, where it bolsters the wider sense of community
To cap off my comment, I’m going to end it on a positive by actually materially replying to the meat of your comment and adding to that discussion rather than just lecturing you: I have been a long time fan of TechnologyConnections because he’s so enthusiastic that it’s like he’s casting a spell; when I first stumbled across one of his videos, I laughed at the absurdity of a 40 minute video on some boring and niche topic I didn’t care about, but I ended up sticking around to watch the whole thing, and I came away from it with stronger opinions on appliances than I ever expected to have. I do love weird nerds who are so excited about their hobbies that they make learning about it fun. His vocal delivery makes it easy to follow along semi-passively without tuning him out.
KnightontheSun@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m sorry, do you have a TLDR for your comment? ;)
Am kidding of course. I appreciate your examples and I do understand some have legitimate issues with long format media. However I was speaking in quite broad brushstrokes and still feel the general tenor of attention spans have gotten shorter and shorter. TikTok is but one example. Twitter is another. There are certainly more examples, but I won’t belabor the point. We’ve come a long way from the bards having to memorize entire stories. I do appreciate your comment.
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
38 minutes is a normal length TV. I do like the long rants though, about Christmas lights
trolololol@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Different people specialize in different contents. Most things need to be consumed bite sized. The things you are really good at, you’ll spend time watching half an hour video.
We don’t need a one size fits all, this was the mentality of the industrial age where scale was the main driver of being cheap and competitive. Now we have the possibility of content and physical manufacturing for niche segments, and that is great.