Comment by JustinXie
4 days ago
This really highlights the misalignment between information density and monetization mechanisms.
Text is random-access, searchable, and respects the reader's time (I can skim a blog post in 2 minutes to find the one command I need). Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment.
It is somewhat tragic that the format which is often technically superior for documentation and reference (text) relies on the format that is optimized for engagement/retention (video) to subsidize it. Kudos to you for maintaining the blog-first workflow despite the incentives pulling the other way.
> Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment.
Because people like video. I'd rather watch a video where the narrator shows me exactly what's happening and where, over text that I have to read. Many on HN like the opposite but don't seem to have the charity to understand the point of view of people like me.
I think this can be effective if videos are structured properly. The other day I was trying to learn Wan animate and found a comfy ui workflow that game with an hour-long "how-to use" guide. The workflow required some diffusion models that were not listed in the video description, so I had to scrub through the video to find it. I used the auto generated transcription to help me, but even that's kinda shoddy sometimes.
The official ComfyUI tutorials are great — they give you the workflow, they tell you what to download, and they have screenshots of each step of the process, and take maybe 15 mins to follow.
So I think it depends. I don't know why HN is hostile against people who prefer video, it seems like a strange hill to die on, but as with most things in life, there's nuance.
I think for me it comes down to what I know:
Do I know what I'm looking for? Do I know what I know and what I don't know about this subject? If yes, I prefer text so I can jump to whichever part I need. If not, I prefer a video walkthrough where I might learn about pitfalls, what to do and not to do. I'm open to sitting through a video if I'm learning something new.
It’s because a video can be passively watched when doing chores while reading text is an active … activity. The former requires less energy and commitment than the latter.
It also means that if YouTube displays an ad while I’m washing the dishes, I’m not stopping to press the skip button (unless it’s one of those silly ads that last an hour) which probably inflates the stats quite a bit.
It's nuanced but for me it boils down to: prefer videos for novel information/narrative, docs for something I know
I'm similar and I think it comes down to the exploration versus exploitation dilemma [1].
When I'm in exploration mode, time is plentiful. This makes linear mediums like videos excellent primary sources of information.
When I'm in exploitation mode, time is short making videos a bad fit for the time I have to spend. I'd rather prefer text-based primary sources that will allow non-linear consumption.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration%E2%80%93exploitati...
> Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment
I recently saw that YouTube allows you to “chat” with videos through AI and can surface random content from the middle of the video if you ask it to.
That's neat, but now it's almost as if YouTube is encouraging people not to watch videos, but to just make AI give you the cliff notes.
I absolutely use it for this because lots of videos drone on and pad their length for the ad revenue, so I ask the AI to summarize and then I can click through exactly what I want to see. I found myself actually watching more videos now, not less, because I know I don't have to listen to them for 10 minutes and waste my time when they don't get to the point.
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You put into words what I often felt. I can’t CTRL+F a video per se. And a 30 minute video is too high a bar to learn it didn’t answer the question