[Dalewyn]

I generally read faster than some narrator slowly babbling on over a meandering script, so that is 20 minutes long. If the video is 20 minutes long, I wager I can read an equivalent article in less than 5 minutes and come out enlightened all the same.

Videos are great for getting the eyes of the general man who doesn't have a preconceived interest in a subject, you're trying to bait clicks and videos are great for that. For people already interested in the subject though? Videos are almost always a literal waste of time compared to a well written article.

And if you wanna say I have a short attention span: Sue me. I'm a 35 year old millenial, we're infamous for having short attention spans.

[nottorp]

> If the video is 20 minutes long, I wager I can read an equivalent article in less than 5 minutes and come out enlightened all the same.

Not to mention that skimming through this page of HN comments does NOT take 20 minutes. More like 45 seconds.

> And if you wanna say I have a short attention span

Short life. Not attention span. If you get your info in writing you waste 4x as little of your life getting it.

[SllX]

You my friend may benefit from developing the arts of the 2x speed, the skipping, the scrubbing and the stopping.

Not every video is worth watching to completion (some are, you get a feel for it), there may be background details you want to skip or scrub through eyeballing the thumbnails depending on familiarity with the subject matter and sometimes everything you want to know is right at the end of the video in a neat little summary. The comments can even give you some insight into where the video is going and whether you want to continue if you read through some of the top ones during playback.

I’m not much younger than you, but watching and re-pacing YouTube for educational/information videos is a skill that can be refined and the visual imagery can provide details that again, depending on what it is, might be missed in a written summary. And hey, if none of this is for you, maybe this comment helps someone else out.

[bigstrat2003]

I mean... you can do that, yes. Or we could use the far superior medium of text, where you don't need hacks to get around how slow it is.

[bdw5204]

One reasonable compromise would be for video makers to provide a transcript or written article to complement their video. Video is a terrible format especially when you're actually using the video and not just using it as a mechanism to deliver audio. Audio is not a bad medium because you can do something else while listening to it.

[SllX]

I mean you could restrict yourself to only a single medium, independent of what the rest of the world is doing; or you can learn to process information efficiently regardless of medium and respect each medium for its own strengths and weaknesses. A good YouTube video produced perfectly needs none of the “hacks” I listed above and will relay far more information on complex subject matter in context than just an essay will, but people are more comfortable writing will write and people who want to make videos will make videos.

[lotsofpulp]

There is a slight conflict of interest where more money can be earned by wasting the information recipient’s time via advertising. Text offers less opportunity to do this.

Perhaps some amount of time wastage is necessary to incentivize the information providers to provide the information, but the pendulum can also swing too far.

[SllX]

That’s why I got good at getting through videos quickly and figuring out when or if they’re a waste of time.

There’s plenty of “research” videos that are just spewing crap that can be found on a wiki or a database somewhere else on the web; but see enough of them and you pick up on the pattern and cadence and quality they’re produced at quickly enough to just move on when you see it.

[ddingus]

This too is the way.

I am quite happy to take good info produced for me in almost any form.

We all have options.

[ddingus]

This is the way, along with just listening during other tasks.

[ddingus]

Same. Reading is always faster than watching video.

However, listening to one can be done while driving, or doing many other tasks.

Expecting producers to cater to the can read fast crowd is not realistic. People are just not going to produce for us. And I do not believe they should.

There are options. A big one is listening.

[smegger001]

especially now with you tubers vainly trying to placate the fickle algorithm gods by stretching out videos to meet time minimum lengths

[ddingus]

Yeah. Can't blame 'em for that. It sucks, and I bet most of them hate doing it.