Unpopular opinion but setting up a whole recording studio and cutting a video without fucking up a bunch is a lot more fucking work than just writing a damn text document.
If you want to yap about something long, you will have much more success getting people to click on a Youtube video than text content published elsewhere. Especially if you already have a large subscriber base in the first place, Youtube is where his audience is, and once his audience clicks it the algorithm will keep spreading it even further.
A couple years ago I wrote a very long text essay about some controversy surrounding a niche game I play. It got a small handful of clicks within the community for that game, but that was it. A few years later, some more news developed, and I decided to do a half-remake half-followup in video format. It was very minimally edited because I don't actually know shit about video editing, in fact I literally did most of it in Google Slides. But I knew that putting it on Youtube would result in significantly more exposure no matter how amateurish it was. Ended up taking off really well, 29k views, which is about 27k more than the text version got.
And I was a nobody publishing my first video. Ross has 413k Youtube subscribers, and in the 9 hours since this video went up, it's at 337k views. Seems like this Youtube thing is working out well for him.
People generally prefer audio-visual content more than reading.
That’s because people are generally fucking morons who can’t, or worse, won’t fuckin’ read.
Bring on the downvotes. I don’t give a fuck. It’s been proven without a shadow of a doubt that watching things makes you more passive and digest less information than reading. I understand some things make more sense to share in a video format (like a how-to video showing how to fix something) but someone just talking at a camera is not one of them.
Maybe if we stopped enabling the fucking neanderthals among us the world wouldn’t be in such a shitty place as it already is.
haha look, I love reading and writing (and wished the whole world did, too), but either way if you need to deliver a message to as many people as possible, then you need to meet them where they’re at. In the case of advocacy work, it’s irresponsible to try to do everything on your own terms without considering your audience’s needs and preferences.
As for why people prefer videos and audio? Some guesses: its less effort, people have been conditioned through tiktok / short form content to keep consuming from the content machine, the growth of the attention economy, etc. Honestly I feel more pity than I do contempt.
And it needs to be said - meeting people “where they are” instead of making them be better is generally how we’ve gotten into such a horrible place in the FIRST place. “People like SaaS because it’s easier and they don’t care if things go away. They accept it.”
Maybe, just maybe, we should stop letting people dig themselves into comfortable holes and then try to lure them back out via new tunnels. Call them out on crawling into the holes in the first place.
Also, Snot Flickerman, while being excessively confrontational, is not wrong. 21% of US adults are considered functionally illiterate, and a large percentage of the remaining 79% aren’t able to read the MEANING beyond a literal understanding, and I’m sorry, this is a problem to be dealt with, not an expression of neurodiversity - audio/visual stimulation DOES NOT stimulate the same critical thinking centers of the brain. It just does NOT. There are DECADES of research on this.
And this is BEFORE we consider that uploading video to Youtube is putting information EXCLUSIVELY into the hands of a multi-billion dollar company that is NOT on your side and can shut it down for any reason they choose, removing it from the collective consciousness. You can copy and paste and move text around wherever you want. You CANNOT do the same with video. This is a memory hole. There are consequences to this. If you don’t SEE them, that’s a problem.
You say that, but the old men yelled at the effects of walled gardens, corporate ownership of social media, loss of ownership of personal hardware, planned obsolescence, the lack of repairability of hardware, the effect of SEO on usability of search, the dangers of owning media that you don’t really own… and they’ve been right about every single one of those things and the impacts they’ve had.
But maybe they’re wrong THIS time. And maybe you can downvote away the fact that 90% of our shared cultural experiences and history from the past decade are under the control of Google and a couple of clicks or a serious attack away from disappearing forever.
Okay, now I know you’re either being disingenuous or misinformed. Either way, you have a good one. I’m out of this conversation. Sincerely hope things work out for you and yours.
It’s all nice and dandy, you coming in here talking all this nonsense, but then you completely lack any historical knowledge on tech or how we got here today, so I’m far more informed than you are.
Yes, so go out of this conversation, and stay out of this conversation until you’ve at least bothered to educate yourself.
“I’ve complained about everything and sometimes I’m right” is not the flex you think it is.
Old men also yelled at Newspapers, Radio, Books, Trains, Airplanes… Anything new or different than what they are used to. If you’re only argument for something being bad is “I don’t like it, and other things I don’t like are bad” you might want to reassess your argument.
“It’s a shame anything has to change. The Sun has changed its position in the sky and I don’t trust it one bit.”
Look, from MY perspective, YOUR only arguments are “I like it” and “It’s new”, and you’re never going to convince me that that overrides “It takes millions of times the storage space and bandwidth and is literally impossible to deliver the infrastructure necessary without a major corporate owner.” It’s ironic that you’re even on Lemmy. At least in theory you understand the concept of federation, but on the other hand, you’re sitting here defending the idea of using a centralized, corporate service to store and deliver everyone’s media. You haven’t presented a SINGLE logical argument, and all you’ve done is sit here flinging personal insults and talking about how “new” is better as if it’s some natural gospel.
But it really doesn’t matter to me either way. It’s not my future. Go ahead and make whatever response you want to this. You can have the last word. I’m done wasting my time here dealing with your personal insults. I didn’t bother to turn any of my points into personal attacks, because I may be an old man, but I’m also an adult, and don’t take criticism of my preferences as personal attacks. But since you seem to be itching for some kind of victory, you can have one. You win!
I'd say a large part of why this format is so successful is because there's a large audience of people who just want something to listen to while they're doing other activities. Text asks for the reader's undivided attention, which honestly does make it harder to get that attention.
There's also just the fact that, like, there isn't a good platform for text content to reach viewers the way that Youtube does. Ross has 413k Youtube subscribers, and not only does that mean it's reaching those 413k users, after those subscribers click it the algorithm will continue to push it even further into the feeds of people who aren't already subscribed. A lot of people are first learning about SKG through seeing these Youtube videos pop up on their feed. Where could Ross even try to publish text content that would get anywhere close to that kind of reach? Nothing remotely like that exists for text, and probably never would.
You can be grumpy and shake your cane at a sign of changing times, but remember what the purpose of this is. Ross needs to reach as wide of an audience as he can if he wants SKG to succeed. Putting it in a format that is more digestible, on a platform where people actively seek this type of content, will reach more viewers. Which will in turn lead to more support for SKG.
Do you want the movement to succeed, or do you want to sit here and hate on video content?
There is more to information than reach. Youtube is a single point of failure. If Google decides to shut down his channel, his material is gone. It’s a memory hole. It’s been pulled out of the collective consciousness. Text can be replicated easily and anywhere. Not even the wayback machine can back up video with any consistent reliability. People FEEL like they’re fighting the power with youtube, but it’s the easiest possible way to shut down information, because normal people cannot host video.
Also, Europe is 745 million people, the vast majority of which do not speak English as a first language. They are the ones who need to see this. This video has ONE set of auto-generated subtitles. If I’m a Pole, I can translate your text by machine. It’s not ideal, but it WORKS. What is the majority of Europe supposed to do with this?
And before you say “everyone in Europe speaks multiple languages”, that is NOT something you can rely on. It’s a selection bias - most of the people you interact with in Europe speak English so you get the idea everyone does, cutting off the huge percentage who do not. They need information too. They still vote.
It's much more important that this news reaches audiences now than whether Youtube lasts years into the future. By then, we would hope this video is obsolete anyway. This is something that is able to be ephemeral, long-term preservation is ultimately not a priority here.
Where would you suggest that Ross publish text content that could achieve the 394k views this video got in the span of just 13 hours? Where else can he get that kind of audience?
I did not suggest that Youtube the service is going away. But I AM suggesting that a little bit of pressure on Google from ANY one of the major companies that would be affected by EU action on game preservation would EASILY cause them to just shut the channel down, or remove the video. If it gets enough following? EA just has to threaten to pull their ads with youtube, and it’s gone. It doesn’t even have to be visible. You’d never even know it. And even if you knew it, and wanted to counter, where else could you PUT it? You can put text ANYWHERE. Find me other places to host long-form video with any reliability.
I am ALSO not suggesting in the short term that there is somewhere he can get a bigger audience. I AM suggesting that in the LONG term the costs of using video as a platform are high.
And years from now is not about obsolescence, it’s about HISTORY. Ten, twenty years from now, will there be enough information available for someone to understand what’s happening now? The details of this moment? And it is RELEVANT. The details of what happened 20, 30 years ago inform everything that happens in the world now, just as the details of what’s happening NOW will inform the future. We ALREADY have people defending Nintendo running illegal pressure tactics because they don’t understand the history of what’s already decided law on emulation. What happens when people get to the future and need to know what happened here with SKG, and the detailed commentary is youtube videos, half of which have had their channels shut down or gone private, and the other half of which is in unsearchable algorithmic social media and discords that have disappeared? We live in a world where everyone screams their facts and half the people automatically follow it regardless of accuracy, and at the same time we’re putting our most detailed information into the most transient and ephemeral format possible. There are already millions of youtube videos that are just GONE. They can’t be seen… can’t even be searched - there’s not even a placeholder that something WAS there. Who’s to say there was anything? Who’s to say what it DID say? Are we relying on memory?
I can’t CONVINCE you that’s a bad idea. It should be self-evident. But if it isn’t, I can’t make it any clearer.
The ultimate solution is steering people away from video and back to text, which can be backed up and archived and duplicated easily and in perpetuity, and no, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t even know that it’s possible. But mark my words, this is not a benign, generational transition. This is a shift that’s going to have major negative consequences, and all the downvotes in the world will not change that reality.
Whining that you don't like video and therefore no one else should use the format is just not productive. Do you want SKG to reach the audience it needs in order to succeed, or do you just want to be mad that other people like to watch videos?
Look, I’ll give you what you want. Yes, many, many more people saw the video because they want to watch video. It will have a bigger impact. Maybe even save the effort!
NONE of that answers any of the concerns that video as the default format of record is shortsighted and transient. It doesn’t address any of the concerns I’ve already listed. It doesn’t address the issue of LANGUAGE. It doesn’t address the issue of ACCESSIBILITY. It doesn’t address the issue of ARCHIVAL. If video is our primary method of communication and record keeping from here on, then our history is already lost. Our access to it is only through an untrustworthy gatekeeper and our own collective memory, which we have seen again and again over the past few decades is absolutely awful and in some cases worse than nothing. No victory we win now means ANYTHING if long term we forget the fight, and companies just come at it again when people are paying less attention and conditions are more favorable. Which is what’s happening. Again and again.
Nothing I say or do is going to convince people otherwise. People actively and gleefully gather with others who don’t like hard truths to convince each other that everything is fine, and that the convenient direction is the correct one, and they will continue to do so. But if you can honestly say, with all objectivity, that none of these problems are real or matter? Well, I’m glad to be an old fart who’s not going to live to see the fallout.
… Many more people saw the video because they want to watch (a) video. It will have a bigger impact.
This is the only part that matters.
NONE of that answers any of the concerns that video as a format of record is shortsighted and transient.
Nobody cares. Convenience matters.
It does address the issue of LANGUAGE.
There is no issue with language. The movement achieved 1.4 million signatures as intended despite Ross’ videos being in English.
Writing an essay doesn’t change this either… Unless… You’re somehow suggesting that Google Translate does a good job? That would be laughable. I really hope you’re not.
It doesn’t address the issue of ACCESSIBILITY.
YouTube has the most accessibility.
It doesn’t address the issue of ARCHIVAL (archiving?).
Only if Ross has deleted the video and the video project files from his computer.
But… Um… You do understand this initiative is more than a few videos on YouTube, right? So there’s a lot of “paper”-work surrounding it, including both written and recorded reactions to this initiative from muitiple parties.
If history preservation is such a BIG concern for you, you should know this is more than enough evidence for some far future archaeologist to piece together what this is all about.
Look, I’m beyond bored with this. Like I said - I’m not going to convince anyone here, clearly. You’ve got it ALL figured out. I’ve said my piece, you can take it or leave it, and we’ll just see how the future shakes out. I don’t have to win any arguments here. I am as certain as I am that the sun will come up tomorrow of what the future with video as our primary communication medium and storage is. Maybe you’ll turn out right, somehow, against all objective evidence to the contrary. I won’t live to see the outcome either way. You do you.
Honestly, I think it’s because search results for web articles are so poisoned by SEO spam that people turn to YouTube for information even when they would otherwise prefer it to be textual rather than video.
meanwhile, i don’t have time to sit and focus on reading for 10-15min. what i do have time for is putting a YT video on in the background while im making dinner
if people who write blog posts were serious they’d have a video version on youtube available in parallel /s
they are different formats… so somebody does something you think you’d like in a medium you don’t want to consume… that is absolutely a you problem
Well if everything else that's been said wasn't good enough for you, let me point out another angle. He's giving an impassioned speech. It is a much more expressive format to convey emotion, which is important when trying to rally a call to action.
I don't think speeches are a sign of something wrong with society. People have always given speeches. Doing that in the format of speaking vocally is hardly a new concept.
This is like saying people making videos about Palestine conflict are aiming at the Palestine people. People can care about stuff that doesn’t affect their country directly. You have to be a 12 year old for this to be news.
The brilliant part about writing text is that you don’t have to read all of it. You can have sections where people can find the information they actually are interested in. The only problem is less ad money.
But not enough people these days do for it to be the first form of media someone might choose to make. A video is a lot faster and more likely to be watched than longform text is too be read.
Please consider joining the People Preventing Longform Text From Going Extinct (PPLTFGE). PPLTFGE believes text can actually be quicker and more concise than video. Most influencer videos can be compressed into a couple lines of actual information that takes only a few seconds to read as opposed to watching a ten minute video.
Yeah, I watch those “Save Me Time” slop videos on YouTube too.
But I appreciate more detail. While those videos do decently well, they miss details quite a lot that aren’t necessarily needed for the argument but help support what is being said.
And how many people will actually see it? when he releases a video, i get it on my feed. but i have never seen a text post from any of the creators i’ve subscribed to.
I see it all the time. Maybe your creators don’t care about the feature? Also, you can simply use the description of the video. Of course, this means less ad watch time so obviously not happening.
While text posts on Youtube are technically a thing that exists, you can't expect a significant portion of users on the platform to pay attention to those. People go to Youtube to watch videos. That's what the platform is for, that's what the audience is there for.
Stop killing games is larger than being youtube content now. News are reporting about it. How about starting a website where you present this information instead of on a youtube channel? The obvious answer to why not is that he wants the sweet ad revenue that youtube provides at the cost of wasting everyone’s time.
It will not yield the 495k views this video got. A lot of people are learning about the movement through seeing a popular channel show up in their Youtube recommendations. This is how outreach works, do it on platforms where you will reach the most people. Don't just put it on a website where only people who already know about the movement and are invested enough to actively check it will see it.
No one's time is being wasted. He has 413k subscribers on Youtube because 413k people want to hear what he has to say. You might not, but that's you - maybe take a step back and realize the rest lf the world does not share your weird grudge against people speaking out loud?
Reach and convenience. Why do you think podcasts exist on YouTube when they could’ve as well been audio-only?
Besides, some people like to see the speaker, because it gives visual clues about what’s being said. Not everybody absorbs info efficiently through reading texts or just listening. Sometimes you need more than one way of recieving information.
what they asked is simply a request for you to explain your motivations, since they seem nonsensical to the previous poster.
(and immediately jumping to “personal attack” when someone is trying to understand you doesn’t exactly imply “peak intellect” either. and btw, your snarky “peak intellect” <-- THAT’S a personal attack. phrasing it as a statement doesn’t make it less of an insult.)
No. Vaguely implying that someone has a problem is very much a personal attack. I understand that you’re upset by my opinions but how about you cry me a river?
Either way you interpret it, there’s no constructive intention. Simply saying it and not elaborating is an insult, a personal attack or whatever you want to call it.
if you think it is, then that’s a misunderstanding of the expression on your part.
it was neutral, and it was even accompanied by an “lmao” to indicate that it shouldn’t be taken all that seriously.
if you choose to interpret it only in the strictest possible, probably because you were already upset in the first place, I’m sorry to say, that’s on you. not them.
it was an okay-ish comment:
neither especially offensive, nor especially friendly.
maybe read it again when you’re more chilled out? merely a suggestion…
There are many differences, some advantages and some disavantages. If you want to read, you can read the transcript that YT generates or you can probably find the text posted in some of his blogs, I bet.
No. Automatic transcriptions have flaws. Why not write down the information? Imagine if instead of writing books, people told stories verbally and then had it automatically transcribed and published straight away. This is why I have a very hard time believing you have read a book since it obviously would massivley suck.
Well I think you’re old enough now to learn that not everything that gets created will be in the exact format that you specifically prefer. Some things will be made with other people in mind as the target audience and if you want to enjoy it you’ll have to engage with it in a way different from your own personal preference. It’s all part of being a grown up.
Who‘s gonna actually read it tho? Like 90% of the people who watched that video would never have read a whole text. Not to speak of the issue of getting the text out to people.
So there’s some magical limitation which only lets him make videos? He’s doomed to solely create videos and if he as much as thinks about writing a blog post, he gets struck by lightning or something? What an interesting phenomenon.
Nice. The first time I ever played CrossCode, I was shocked at how much it felt like a Nintendo DS game. The sprites, UI, and music are so representative of the DS era. Plus, playing the game with Mouse & Keyboard controls is so reminiscent of using the stylus for games it’s ridiculous.
It looks like they’re doing the same thing with this, except it looks like a 3DS game. I’m in.
Crosscode was a RIDICULOUSLY good game. It genuinely captured the feeling of playing an MMO for the first time and making new friends while having VERY dot hack vibes as you learn more about the world as a whole.
Combat was… fine. When it worked, it worked. When it didn’t, you lowered the difficulty.
Then you get to the dungeons. Which… honestly, I just did not have the patience for puzzles that spanned two or three rooms that I worked on over the course of five overall puzzles and had to have pinpoint accuracy to launch an orb six screens away. I love a good puzzle game (Talos Principle is love. Talos Principle is life) but far too many of these were just more frustrating than fun.
Which is a shame. Because most people nope the fuck out after the second or third dungeon… and that is basically right before the story goes completely off the rails in all the best ways. Shit went REAL hard in ways it had no business even trying but pulled off perfectly.
And… the engine was a technical marvel even if it was also a huge mistake.
So yeah. VERY VERY excited about Alabaster Dawn. And here is hoping Radical Fish didn’t write it in html5 this time.
I don’t know enough about the underlying code (I am the guy who still makes jokes about how html is super easy before remembering that it has been 30 years since I made websites with frames…) but yeah. HTLM5+Javascript with a heavy reliance on Impact support libraries.
The end result is that it is a god damned shitshow to get running on modern platforms and controller support is an even bigger mess. Like, I STILL don’t entirely understand how it manages to detect the difference between an xinput device and a device Steam is binding to xinput… on Linux via Proton. And it tends to break for anything but a proper microsoft made xinput device…
Incredible game. Highly recommend to everyone. It’s another of those games where every piece of brilliance gets destroyed of I spoil them for you in a review
He is not. But he is a regular, who posts hight quality content most of the time, and is well known for that.
So which side would we chose? A random guy trying to gatekeep for some personal reason a valid content, or someone who consistently post high quality content, participate in the community while, with some exception, consistently respecting the rules?
Such a difficult question…
I realized I probably badly explained my point here. I will not act differently for someone well known in the community or someone new. The rules are the rules.
The unwelcome behaviour here is the gatekeeping. Videos are welcome, as are links to article or plain text posts.
This mod comment is in contrast to your previous mod comment, where you were publicly weighing the commentors status in the community to gauge whether to take fair action.
While I agree with OP, I'm glad to see "if yoire a dick, you get treated equally" win out.
Agreed. The media is the message. I watched most of the video and it was fascinating in a way an article would not be, largely because the video isn't just a description of a piece of art, but rather a piece of art on its own.
An article could still be interesting and maybe excellent, but it's an oddly entitled thing to demand that someone offering you art go find a different type of art you like better.
Thank you! I’ve yet to sign up for mastodon (pretty new to Lemmy, too), but feel free to share it there yourself if you can think of any nerds who might appreciate it!
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