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I wish HN would loosen up and admit that videos are a new medium, worth taking seriously. It might bother us that longform writing is dying, but when the new ge

I wish HN would loosen up and admit that videos are a new medium, worth taking seriously. It might bother us that longform writing is dying, but when the new generation decides that this is the way new ideas should be communicated, we'll be left with no audience. For example, I've been working on an essay for some time now, but I'm seriously considering making it into a companion video. I have no video experience whatsoever, so that's a tall order. But what are you to do? If you want to make an impact, are you sure it's still possible to do it by writing 173 essays over 15 years? It used to be, but the world seems to be changing. (This is mostly a reaction to this post being one of the rare videos Deemed Worthy to be on the front page, when there are tens of thousands of others. It's not a good idea to mix up the content too much, but there really are a lot of quality videos and no central curation mechanism. Unlike articles. /r/videos is for mainstream content, like https://youtu.be/kJGGlVg5PpY https://youtu.be/kJGGlVg5PpY. There really isn't any place that collects intellectually gratifying content like the current submission.)

philfrasty 9y ago
Personally I can learn MUCH faster (+ enjoying it) by looking at someone doing/explaining something in a video (e.g. coding). To take it even further: if one person (expert) explains something to another person (not an expert on this specific topic) and the non-expert frequently aks questions. This helps tremendously.
- jscharlack 9y ago
  Agreed though it depends on the topic. If it's very visual, like this is, video is perfect. Video makes a lousy reference though.
stochastic_monk 9y ago
I typically don’t have the patience for most videos. I want information, and much of the time, the information bandwidth or payoff is too low. I think video can be great auxiliary, supporting material, but there should usually be a textual component when trying to inform.
- __s 9y ago
  I get around this by watching videos in fast forward
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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- pdkl95 9y ago
  > there should Or, we could accept that different people learn better in different ways. It's wonderful that a variety of learning resources are being made, so more people have the opportunity to learn complex and interesting topics. > the information bandwidth or payoff is too low Perhaps consider that you might not be the target audience?
  - laretluval 9y ago
    > Or, we could accept that different people learn better in different ways. No evidence for interpersonal difference in learning styles: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidenc...
    - mjw1007 9y ago
      That's saying that some recently fashionable, and fairly elaborate, theories about teaching children are basically junk science. That includes the ideas that there are left/right brain learners, children who are holistic as opposed to serialists, and children who are inherently "verbalisers" or "visualisers". I don't doubt they're right. But I think it would be a mistake to read that article and conclude that adults who simply say they do much better with videos than books, or vice versa, are mistaken about themselves.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      It's trivially obvious that some people get more from reading than from watching, and vice versa. If you think a study disproves something trivially obvious, odds are that either the study is flawed or you've misunderstood it. I'm guessing the latter, as mjw1007 points out.
dizzystar 9y ago
The problem is that so many videos are full of fluff. This video is nice because it gets to the point and finishes in 3 minutes. Article often have 3 paragraphs of preamble, but at least you can skip all that quickly.
zer00eyz 9y ago
> I've been working on an essay for some time now, but I'm seriously considering making it into a companion video. I think that this is the best route to go with. Your supporting multiple learning styles and providing an easily searchable chunk of reference material. Others have pointed out that the ratio of videos like this one to junk is very high - and I do not disagree. The issue is that the quality videos are mixed in with the noise of "social media" as we have one (dominant) platform that supports both. Great videos are about as rare as great/informative social media content. What IS nice is that there are a few channels that realize producing this sort of content is a good thing - numberphile tends to crank out great and quality stuff, but you can find the same sort of values on completely different topics - AVE, and big clive both spring to mind -
monochromatic 9y ago
Some topics lend themselves to videos. This is one of them. Many (most?) topics can be explained just fine in text though. And I can read a hell of a lot faster than I can listen to someone talk.
- davidw 9y ago
  > And I can read a hell of a lot faster than I can listen to someone talk. Especially when you have to go through 1) an intro sequence 2) some guy asking how you are and telling you how he's doing 3) what upcoming awesome videos are going to happen 4) other chitchat - to even get started.
waynecochran 9y ago
This is similar to the belief that visual computing will replace programming languages. New generations keep thinking this and it fails. Videos are great but they will not replace the written language.
8bitsrule 9y ago
Nobody ever said, "a picture is always worth a thousand words" ! In the case of the behavior of physical objects, though, if you tried to use words to describe complex motions, the reader would probably get lost. (And in this case, you'd lose the 'tension' of watching the race.) For the same reasons, rock videos of people just playing instruments are rare.
notatoad 9y ago
the problem with videos is that they require a lot more of a time investment to determine if they're worth watching. I can skim an essay or an article to determine if the content is worth a proper read, but i can't skim a video. So i'm a lot more likely to ignore a video, unless it's already been heavily upvoted or endorsed by somebody i trust. Video is a great medium to convey an idea to people who already trust that you aren't going to waste their time, and that's why youtube works so well - subscribers to a channel have made the decision to trust that channel up front. but it's a poor medium for a link aggregator site like HN. It's not that HN readers don't take video seriously, it's just video is not a good fit for the HN format, where the default assumption on clicking a link is that the content is probably not interesting, and it's up to the content to prove otherwise before losing the reader's interest.

philfrasty 9y ago

Personally I can learn MUCH faster (+ enjoying it) by looking at someone doing/explaining something in a video (e.g. coding). To take it even further: if one person (expert) explains something to another person (not an expert on this specific topic) and the non-expert frequently aks questions. This helps tremendously.

jscharlack 9y ago
Agreed though it depends on the topic. If it's very visual, like this is, video is perfect. Video makes a lousy reference though.

stochastic_monk 9y ago

I typically don’t have the patience for most videos. I want information, and much of the time, the information bandwidth or payoff is too low. I think video can be great auxiliary, supporting material, but there should usually be a textual component when trying to inform.

__s 9y ago
I get around this by watching videos in fast forward
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pdkl95 9y ago
> there should Or, we could accept that different people learn better in different ways. It's wonderful that a variety of learning resources are being made, so more people have the opportunity to learn complex and interesting topics. > the information bandwidth or payoff is too low Perhaps consider that you might not be the target audience?
- laretluval 9y ago
  > Or, we could accept that different people learn better in different ways. No evidence for interpersonal difference in learning styles: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidence-to-back-idea-of-learning-styles https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/12/no-evidenc...
  - mjw1007 9y ago
    That's saying that some recently fashionable, and fairly elaborate, theories about teaching children are basically junk science. That includes the ideas that there are left/right brain learners, children who are holistic as opposed to serialists, and children who are inherently "verbalisers" or "visualisers". I don't doubt they're right. But I think it would be a mistake to read that article and conclude that adults who simply say they do much better with videos than books, or vice versa, are mistaken about themselves.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    It's trivially obvious that some people get more from reading than from watching, and vice versa. If you think a study disproves something trivially obvious, odds are that either the study is flawed or you've misunderstood it. I'm guessing the latter, as mjw1007 points out.

dizzystar 9y ago

The problem is that so many videos are full of fluff. This video is nice because it gets to the point and finishes in 3 minutes. Article often have 3 paragraphs of preamble, but at least you can skip all that quickly.

zer00eyz 9y ago

> I've been working on an essay for some time now, but I'm seriously considering making it into a companion video. I think that this is the best route to go with. Your supporting multiple learning styles and providing an easily searchable chunk of reference material. Others have pointed out that the ratio of videos like this one to junk is very high - and I do not disagree. The issue is that the quality videos are mixed in with the noise of "social media" as we have one (dominant) platform that supports both. Great videos are about as rare as great/informative social media content. What IS nice is that there are a few channels that realize producing this sort of content is a good thing - numberphile tends to crank out great and quality stuff, but you can find the same sort of values on completely different topics - AVE, and big clive both spring to mind -

monochromatic 9y ago

Some topics lend themselves to videos. This is one of them. Many (most?) topics can be explained just fine in text though. And I can read a hell of a lot faster than I can listen to someone talk.

davidw 9y ago
> And I can read a hell of a lot faster than I can listen to someone talk. Especially when you have to go through 1) an intro sequence 2) some guy asking how you are and telling you how he's doing 3) what upcoming awesome videos are going to happen 4) other chitchat - to even get started.

waynecochran 9y ago

This is similar to the belief that visual computing will replace programming languages. New generations keep thinking this and it fails. Videos are great but they will not replace the written language.

8bitsrule 9y ago

Nobody ever said, "a picture is always worth a thousand words" ! In the case of the behavior of physical objects, though, if you tried to use words to describe complex motions, the reader would probably get lost. (And in this case, you'd lose the 'tension' of watching the race.) For the same reasons, rock videos of people just playing instruments are rare.

notatoad 9y ago

the problem with videos is that they require a lot more of a time investment to determine if they're worth watching. I can skim an essay or an article to determine if the content is worth a proper read, but i can't skim a video. So i'm a lot more likely to ignore a video, unless it's already been heavily upvoted or endorsed by somebody i trust. Video is a great medium to convey an idea to people who already trust that you aren't going to waste their time, and that's why youtube works so well - subscribers to a channel have made the decision to trust that channel up front. but it's a poor medium for a link aggregator site like HN. It's not that HN readers don't take video seriously, it's just video is not a good fit for the HN format, where the default assumption on clicking a link is that the content is probably not interesting, and it's up to the content to prove otherwise before losing the reader's interest.