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Comment by keiferski

1 year ago

It doesn't really matter if it "was a mistake," because it's what the market is asking for. Cars were probably a mistake ecologically, vs. horses, but it's what we've got.

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keiferski

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ndiddy  1 year ago

Horses caused a huge pollution problem in urban areas. By the 1890s, New York City had over 100,000 horses, which produced over 2.5 million pounds of manure per day. The streets were covered with manure and dead horse carcuses. Cars were seen as the far cleaner alternative.

emn13  1 year ago

Was the market asking for tech review videos, or was the market asking for a platform that helps select, curate, and present content?

If this trend were merely about format, then websites that just host videos would be a viable model - they're not really. I think this is more about the power of platforms than of the format.

I'm sure the format _also_ helps, given how donation-dependent small-scale publishers are which works best if publishers are humanized, but I'd guess the more impactful matter is the way platforms can keep consumers onboard and help them discover new publishers than the format.

  • keiferski  1 year ago

    My experience is that for 95% of people under the age of 30, their media consumption is almost entirely video. That's simply the way it is, fortunately or unfortunately. And these tech review YouTube channels seems to do quite well for themselves, dramatically better than the equivalent text-only sites.

    • mezzie2  1 year ago

      A large portion of people are genuinely or functionally illiterate. Like we're supposed to pitch general material at ~ a 5th or 6th grade reading level because that's the average. Half of people can't even do that. I have daily encounters with adults who work corporate jobs/own businesses who can't interpret compound sentences. I can't use conjunctions or sentences with multiple clauses, etc.

      This is going to get worse: the elementary and middle school teachers/education professionals have been screaming at us that there's a major issue with reading in the upcoming generation due to a change in how many schools taught reading for several years that turned out to be a horrible idea. Add the pandemic on top of it (because losing a year of learning is a big deal at the elementary school level), and now we have a generation who can't read.

      I think we're going back to having a literate class and a non-literate class, honestly. I can't see us putting in the time, money, and effort to fix the situation. Instead we'll just change formats (and probably have a bunch of middle men pop up that turn text into video with AI for the illiterate).

      We're never going to see general purpose text again as a culture. Text will only be primary in certain audiences. (Lawyers, software people, librarians, etc.)

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steve-rambo-fan  1 year ago

Sure, but the least we can do is support the few sane places that still remain, like rtings. Lest they follow the way of AnandTech and we're forced to scroll through hours of video to get the same information contained in a ten-minute text article, with interactive charts and comparison tools.

  • keiferski  1 year ago

    I agree, but unfortunately that support doesn't seem to be widespread enough to sustain these kinds of things.

    At this point, I think efforts would be better placed in making a method that enables videos to be viewed in a way akin to text. AI transcription tools are getting there, so I think it might just be a matter of time.