[noveltyaccount]

I have read countless self help books where I complained about fluffy filler material and the book should have been fifty pages instead of two hundred. Not a surprise to me that a topic distilled through an LLM is a better experience.

[Gigachad]

Or youtube. The youtube video essays can still be way too much waffle, but it's at least capped out at about 30 minutes and cost you nothing so you can quit if it's not useful.

[TheCapeGreek]

For better or worse, AI is beating on video essays too.

Maybe my attention span is truly stuffed, but I really can't stand it when a video essay is the most succinct source on a topic - waiting for someone to express their thoughts in speech, with sometimes slow cadences or their own waffling, combined with sponsor segments (yes I use SponsorBlock, but sometimes or on other devices ads get through), etc.

So I use AI summary for a lot of informational videos now unless I actually am watching it for the entertainment and production value. I don't need 10 minutes on "this will change the way we look at XYZ" that has only 1 minute of real information in it.

[throwaway2037]

    > video essays

In the last few months, I have watched many YouTube videos from the Australia Broadcasting Corp (ABC) subtitled "If You're Listening" [1]. They are primarily about geo/political issues, but there are some odd-ball ones about Japanese land-use & development policy. I think that the production is very high quality. (1) They do they research. (2) They find lots of interesting funny old video clips. (3) They add helpful "infographics". (4) They stitch all together with a modestly funny script. All in combination: It works very well. I find that I never need to skip boring parts -- either the script is interesting or the visual content is interesting. Would you consider this type of video a "video essay"?

I am honestly curious why ABC produces such high quality content that is given away for (nearly) free on YouTube. I would hazard a guess that they spend no less than 10K USD to produce each episode (surely more, to be honest -- skilled labour isn't cheap in Australia). Does anyone know if these videos are also aired on Australian broadcast TV? (That would help for advertising revenue.)

[1] YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN7rBX00xjQ&list=PLDTPrMoGHs...

[clydethefrog]

They are provided for free because a quick scroll through the playlist shows they are soft propaganda tools for Australia's geopolitical interests. These video essays "explaining" geopolitics are the contemp version of Buggs Bunny and Donald Duck making fun of Japan and Germany.

[chadgpt3]

What are Australia's geopolitical interests?

[Gigachad]

They are more tolerable as background noise on the TV while you are cooking. Where the length is a feature so you don't have to queue up something else for a while.

[throwaway2037]

Can you imagine the day when an AI/LLM-assisted tool can watch a YouTube video at super speed and then clip X% of the video to show you the best parts? I can see it coming. It might really hurt YouTube revenues.

Recently, I had a similar idea when I tried to watch the TV series "SAS: Rogue Heroes". I quit after a few episodes because it was so damn slow. I spent most of each episode skipping pointless dialog and overly long landscape/driving scenes that added little to the story. I am sure the two seasons (10-20 hours) could easily be condensed into a much more exciting 2-4 hour film. I have heard the saying that the hardest type of novel to write is the shortest one. Constraint forces an author to carefully select the words, characters, and storyline that make the most compelling novel. When I was younger, films were rarely more than 90 minutes. These days, so many of them are more than 120 minutes with very little gained... just the same story was watered down over 30+ more minutes.

[prepend]

There was a tivo competitor called ReplayTV that would record tv and then replay clipping out commercials.

They got sued out of existence.

[chadgpt3]

The trick is to use a hundred shell companies so they can't figure out who to sue. As I said recently... it seems like everything worth doing is illegal

[jeffrwells]

that future is here!

I set up my claw to be able to do that and it’s infinitely better than searching through hours of content myself.

I set it up as experts on topics I already know and like to reduce noise. So I can say “ask [NAME] what I should do about XYZ” and I get back contextualized info and cited video clips

[timwis]

Came here to say the same thing. How could the author possibly illustrate the point of the book without at least 4 case studies and a reference to prehistoric humans?