4 ms·

We don't talk about this enough but those kinds of techniques are just manipulation techniques, the same way movies and tv are designed to affect our senses and

We don't talk about this enough but those kinds of techniques are just manipulation techniques, the same way movies and tv are designed to affect our senses and emotion (rising music, etc). They exist to short-circuit our logical minds and appeal to the emotional parts of our minds to create attachment and familiarity and sympathy with the content and creator. Which is fine if that's what you're asking for. I dislike that you're being criticized. In a technical forum we should be demanding more efficient uses of our time and less manipulation and more facts-based presentation. I feel a little sorry for people who grew up in the youtube influencer age. These techniques are totally normalized for them and I don't think they realize how deeply manipulative your average popular youtuber is. A lot of us just want a fact-sheet kind of thing that is neurodiverse and "busy technical person" friendly. The marketing-style media is really meant for executives and potential customers. I always shy away from those kind of presentations, find them hard to focus on, get impatient, and just google for a fact sheet, credible review, or technical reddit posting or other text-based info. And if there is video, it should be justified. Like a short clip illustrating something that is hard to explain or appreciate otherwise. The other big bonus is how easily I can copy and paste these text items, make a bulleted list, etc to share with other busy people. "Hey Boss, check out this robot project, I think we can try that here," is going to be an easier sell with a page of text and some photos than "Hey Boss, here's a 40 minute video of a robot project." I can't stress how badly the move from a text based internet to a video-based one has badly hurt people like me. I'm autistic with adhd and the constant demands to "hey just watch this video if you want to learn this technology," is just too much. I seek out text tutorials with screenshots or code snippets or whatever. I think we're becoming what happened to the boomers. That is to say the rise of TV, TV news, etc moved them way from books and newspapers that were far less centralized and had more potential for merit, variety, and lower barriers to entry. For someone like me, I could never be a slick youtube video producer, but I could write a good hack-a-day article. Why should the former have more merit? Why should we be applauding slick production techniques outside the ability of nearly all technical people? I'm sorry if this rant is going odd places, but honestly, the mass videofication of all things has incredible downsides, but is incredibly profitable hence we're stuck with it, but we should be able to call it out if we are displeased with it.

throwuwu 3y ago
They’re also just techniques in art where the artist wants you to feel something specific rather than just dumping their creation on you without comment.
mft_ 3y ago
Thanks; and I'm totally with you. Most informational topics (except perhaps obviously mechanical topics - e.g. changing an inner tube on a bike) are by far better dealt with in written/pictoral form. Funny you mention boomers - I remember my Dad, many years ago, complaining vociferously about how much TV documentaries were padded out with extraneous content versus those on radio. What goes around, etc. :) --- Even more of a tangent, but regarding the march of videos on the internet, I have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed (and even derived value from) TikTok, which I would have expected be the worst of the worst. But thanks to its nature, it's both far more efficient at enabling discovery, and almost always far more concise, than Youtube. And oddly, TikTok has done a lot to drive off-internet pastimes, thanks to discovery of new books to read, recipes to shop for and cook, films to watch, exercise routines to try, etc. It's so weird so write this, but I find (my little slice of?) TikTok unbelievably wholesome.
- zoeysmithe 3y ago
  Great comment! Totally agree here! A lot of boomers didn't like the TV-ization of the world. For a long time Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to death," was a top rated academic commentary on how TV is ruining society by moving us more towards sensationalized news, easy manipulation, centralization, etc. Its sad to think that war is long over and TV has won. And now that same war has been lost on the internet with things like youtube. I'd argue tik-tok is a new artform and not TV or youtube like at all, and works pretty well for what it does. It doesn't ever, at least for me, take the place of written materials or photo tutorials or technical articles, but youtube is doing its best to replace those items. Tik-tok is more a unique media that wants to create a new space in your life and badly constrained by its short video focus, but youtube trying to eat the internet by eating up traditional spaces like written media.
cardanome 3y ago

throwuwu 3y ago

They’re also just techniques in art where the artist wants you to feel something specific rather than just dumping their creation on you without comment.

mft_ 3y ago

Thanks; and I'm totally with you. Most informational topics (except perhaps obviously mechanical topics - e.g. changing an inner tube on a bike) are by far better dealt with in written/pictoral form. Funny you mention boomers - I remember my Dad, many years ago, complaining vociferously about how much TV documentaries were padded out with extraneous content versus those on radio. What goes around, etc. :) --- Even more of a tangent, but regarding the march of videos on the internet, I have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed (and even derived value from) TikTok, which I would have expected be the worst of the worst. But thanks to its nature, it's both far more efficient at enabling discovery, and almost always far more concise, than Youtube. And oddly, TikTok has done a lot to drive off-internet pastimes, thanks to discovery of new books to read, recipes to shop for and cook, films to watch, exercise routines to try, etc. It's so weird so write this, but I find (my little slice of?) TikTok unbelievably wholesome.

zoeysmithe 3y ago
Great comment! Totally agree here! A lot of boomers didn't like the TV-ization of the world. For a long time Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to death," was a top rated academic commentary on how TV is ruining society by moving us more towards sensationalized news, easy manipulation, centralization, etc. Its sad to think that war is long over and TV has won. And now that same war has been lost on the internet with things like youtube. I'd argue tik-tok is a new artform and not TV or youtube like at all, and works pretty well for what it does. It doesn't ever, at least for me, take the place of written materials or photo tutorials or technical articles, but youtube is doing its best to replace those items. Tik-tok is more a unique media that wants to create a new space in your life and badly constrained by its short video focus, but youtube trying to eat the internet by eating up traditional spaces like written media.

cardanome 3y ago