[lproven]

Huh. Fascinating. That's the precise opposite of my reaction to such things, which is more like:

"You want me to waste hours of watching someone when it could be boiled down to 1000w of text I could read in 30sec and a 2min video demo?!"

I am not saying you are in any way wrong! I am merely fascinated that two people who are interested in this sort of very niche thing could have such different reactions.

[dark-star]

I guess the difference is how we are watching things.

You are probably looking for an answer to a certain question. Or want something that you can rebuild at home. Or want to consciously spend the next hour actually extracting valuable information (or enjoyment) from a video.

But here I meant it more like: When I get home from work, I can start up my PC, open YouTube and start watching Hjalfi's new video, while simultaneously going about my usual routine of reading/answering mail, doing some coding, playing a game, etc., all while watching the video on a second display.

i.e. for me it's more like streaming music in the background, except it also has video. Of course you probably can't do things that require you to be super focussed (and in those cases, I actually pause the video), but in all other cases (casual gaming, coding things like Advent of Code, etc.) it's pretty nice.

[segfaultbuserr]

I used to unconditionally hate videos, especially tech videos, for exactly this reason. Later I realized that these videos are made for a completely different audience - most of them are meant to be watched while sitting on a sofa with some coffee or popcorn on a Sunday evening, rather than technical communication. It's great that you can coincidentally learn something while watching it, but it's primarily infotainment. Meanwhile, clicking Hacker News or Reddit links is the modern equivalent of reading newspapers and magazines, with an audience who demands more efficient communication.

[david-given]

Ironically enough, I agree. I loathe trying to get information out of videos. To pick an example _completely at random_: trying to get information on how to do video editing stuff with DaVinci Resolve invariably leads to a video, which is guaranteed to increase my blood pressure at a time when I'm already annoyed.

[segfaultbuserr]

Right. Tech videos can be a source of infotainment, but video-only documentation and tutorials are just a waste of time.