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I am aware of the feature. The styling makes it hard to read and the autogenerated transcript text is poor quality, so without a real transcript made by the aut

I am aware of the feature. The styling makes it hard to read and the autogenerated transcript text is poor quality, so without a real transcript made by the author, it's useless. A real, literate piece of text intended for reading rather than autogenerated poorly, would be a lot easier to read. What I'm railing against here is the video-fication of the web as literacy rates and attention spans keeps going down. I do not think it is consistent with HN's mission of intellectual edification to use this kind of lowbrow video content that doesn't actually use the video format for any useful visualizations that can only be done in video (eg 3blue1brown), but is merely text content that is made more engaging with a bunch of meaningless clip art and narration

aspenmayer 2y ago
I would agree with you generally, but not in this specific case. They explain how they used street photographs collected by the government as part of a special program. They also included topical photographs from the actual diner/automat chain that the video creator’s dad visited, as well as menu scans for pricing info. Furthermore, they sourced government relative cost of living data from a government report from 1900-2000. I actually don’t think they used clip art at all. On balance, the video did make extremely excessive use of jump cuts, but I couldn’t really fault the video much beyond that. I thought it was cute how the video creator’s dad called her YouTube channel “her show,” it was just so quaint and wholesome. Video literacy is a form of literacy too. Somehow I doubt that a person of any age who would watch this video for entertainment purposes has poor literacy. There are services you can use to download the captions from YouTube videos, by the way. I guess I disagreed with your original comment and I disagree with this response even more. Some things are just a matter of taste or preference, but other things you’re meaningfully incorrect about. On the whole, I think you’re just not a fan of YouTube videos that other folks enjoy but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the content in this manner. If you don’t like the video, ignore it, and hide the post if you must. I don’t think you could intellectually justify flagging the post, but do that if you think it’s against the guidelines. The guidelines make specific statements about complaining about votes or posts, which you’re kind of doing here so I don’t know what else to say while being constructive.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  I get your point. Your view is widespread. The war is over, video has won. I know I have to accept this. It just makes me sad, because there's no way around the fact it just takes _longer_ on a time-per-idea basis to consume content this way, no matter what I do, whether I use the AI generated transcript, use the speed up fourier transform feature at 2x, skim it with scrobbing time jumps, or whatnot. PS: Blog posts support photographs. A slide show did not need to be a video. I'm OK with videos that really make use of the video medium -- this is not one of those.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    I agree with you on pretty much all your points here, I just think that for the kind of slice of life content that this “video essay” has an audience for, there just isn’t a similar audience for if it were a blog post. I guess the shift to a semi-professional approach to content creation of this sort is driven by content creators going where the audience is, which is overwhelmingly on the side of video. It’s just easier to build an audience on YouTube and support that with Patreon I suppose. I think the kind of content you’re looking for is probably on Substack and its competitors, but the major benefit to consumers and competitive advantage of YouTube is the recommendation algorithm and built-in user base of people with a Google/ YouTube account.
    - galdosdi 2y ago
      Right, I agree -- much of the web has turned into slow superficial low info density high entertainment density video stuff. I kinda thought the whole point of HN was not to give in to the superficial wave, and focus on more information dense, less superficial, technically or intellectually interesting content. Again, I don't have an issue with video as a form, but with low info density high entertainment density video. It's like a fast food version of what I want. HN is for steak content not McDonald's content

aspenmayer 2y ago

I would agree with you generally, but not in this specific case. They explain how they used street photographs collected by the government as part of a special program. They also included topical photographs from the actual diner/automat chain that the video creator’s dad visited, as well as menu scans for pricing info. Furthermore, they sourced government relative cost of living data from a government report from 1900-2000. I actually don’t think they used clip art at all. On balance, the video did make extremely excessive use of jump cuts, but I couldn’t really fault the video much beyond that. I thought it was cute how the video creator’s dad called her YouTube channel “her show,” it was just so quaint and wholesome. Video literacy is a form of literacy too. Somehow I doubt that a person of any age who would watch this video for entertainment purposes has poor literacy. There are services you can use to download the captions from YouTube videos, by the way. I guess I disagreed with your original comment and I disagree with this response even more. Some things are just a matter of taste or preference, but other things you’re meaningfully incorrect about. On the whole, I think you’re just not a fan of YouTube videos that other folks enjoy but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the content in this manner. If you don’t like the video, ignore it, and hide the post if you must. I don’t think you could intellectually justify flagging the post, but do that if you think it’s against the guidelines. The guidelines make specific statements about complaining about votes or posts, which you’re kind of doing here so I don’t know what else to say while being constructive.

galdosdi 2y ago
I get your point. Your view is widespread. The war is over, video has won. I know I have to accept this. It just makes me sad, because there's no way around the fact it just takes _longer_ on a time-per-idea basis to consume content this way, no matter what I do, whether I use the AI generated transcript, use the speed up fourier transform feature at 2x, skim it with scrobbing time jumps, or whatnot. PS: Blog posts support photographs. A slide show did not need to be a video. I'm OK with videos that really make use of the video medium -- this is not one of those.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  I agree with you on pretty much all your points here, I just think that for the kind of slice of life content that this “video essay” has an audience for, there just isn’t a similar audience for if it were a blog post. I guess the shift to a semi-professional approach to content creation of this sort is driven by content creators going where the audience is, which is overwhelmingly on the side of video. It’s just easier to build an audience on YouTube and support that with Patreon I suppose. I think the kind of content you’re looking for is probably on Substack and its competitors, but the major benefit to consumers and competitive advantage of YouTube is the recommendation algorithm and built-in user base of people with a Google/ YouTube account.
  - galdosdi 2y ago
    Right, I agree -- much of the web has turned into slow superficial low info density high entertainment density video stuff. I kinda thought the whole point of HN was not to give in to the superficial wave, and focus on more information dense, less superficial, technically or intellectually interesting content. Again, I don't have an issue with video as a form, but with low info density high entertainment density video. It's like a fast food version of what I want. HN is for steak content not McDonald's content