Never had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them.
However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos.
At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now.
I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.
For me, in reddit (and hacker news), I tend to actually read the actual video, read the comments, sometimes even leave a comment. Much more time spent on an actual item.
For short videos, it is a continuous stream of video's where a new video is automatically started after the last one. This is what makes shorts so horrible. You are forced to watch a new video every 15s to 1 min. Versus actively deciding yourself how long you look on a particular item. It becomes bad as your brain gets trained to loose interest after 1min.
I'm so tired of the Internet turning into the Internet of Faces. I feel like I see faces plastered all over the Internet now, eager to take only ten minutes to explain one minute of information to me.
Probably not a coincidence that the Internet became a lot less nerdy and cool around the time HD streaming was viable. Modern social media shows that people want the next evolution of TV not books.
Some of it is that for sure. But you could also make the counter argument about long form content. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to explain how to make a cake.
Definitely two sides of the same coin, struggle not to have a YT video playing if I’m alone and doing something else that should be enough for my focus.
Except I can read much faster than a video can convey information to me, almost always - I suspect the popularity of video to deliver information at least in some part stems from declining literacy. Whenever I have to watch a poor reader read something, I am honestly amazed they can function at all.
I frequently give up on reading a thread midway down the page because it's requiring *too much focus*, and, get this, I might even interrupt my break and just go back to work early instead!
I don't think that would ever happen on a neverending infinite scroll of hyperengaging video.
This type of comment comes up here a lot, but maybe you should show us what exactly you mean?
Because at least for physics and chemistry, those are topics where, in my experience, you need deep, sustained engagement to make any personal progress on them.
Sure, you can probably learn a few fun facts through TikTok but really what's the point?
There are only 24 hours in a day. The hours you spend doomscrolling through - in the best case - fun facts about physics and chemistry are hours you spend not doing anything of value, like learning about actual physics or chemistry.
I get that you don't need to be doing something super productive all the time, what I'm saying is that I think you're fooling yourself if you believe that TikTok and co. are anything more than the shallowest form of entertainment available.
Can you provide a ranking of entertainment from most “deep” to most shallow please since you seem to be an expert on what entertainment is OK to consume?
That is exactly what TikTok does, they are more popular because their tastes algorithm is even better than Shorts for figuring out what you actually want to watch
However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos.
At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, chemistry experiments, interesting physics facts, bits from my favorite comedians, etc. Maybe Youtube learned my tastes, or maybe the content creators learned how to exploit better the platform. Either way I'd say I'm happy with the result now.
I still think some people are getting brainwashed by certain content, but in the same way as they were getting brainwashed in twitter and reddit.