4 ms·

In a way television was kind of cool. I loved it as a child, give or take. Nowadays ..... hmmm. I no longer own a TV since many years. Sadly youtube kind of re

In a way television was kind of cool. I loved it as a child, give or take. Nowadays ..... hmmm. I no longer own a TV since many years. Sadly youtube kind of replaced television. It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era. But I also don't really want to go back to television, as it also had low quality - and it simply took longer, too. On youtube I was recently watching old "Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst", in german. The old videos are kind of cool and interesting from the 1980s. I watched the new ones - it no longer made ANY sense to watch it ... the quality is much worse, and it is also much more boring. It's strange.

the_af 9mo ago
> It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era Is it though? I of course watched TV as a kid through the 80s and have some feelings of nostalgia about it, but is it true that YouTube today is worse? I mean, YouTube is nothing in particular. There's all sorts of crap, but Sturgeon's Law [1] applies here. There is also good stuff, even gems, if you curate your content carefully. YouTube can be delightful if you know what to look for. If you don't filter, yeah... it's garbage. ---- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- sodapopcan 9mo ago
  Definitely good stuff on YouTube, but I do miss the curation and, as was talked about here recently I believe, shared experiences that brought. I'm also crazy addicted to YouTube in a way that I wasn't to TV, but that's another issue.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
  There is many times more things on youtube than were ever on TV over it's entire lifetime up to the YT era, even discounting old TV show content on Youtube. But it also feels like the ratio of of good-to-shit has not remained constant between the two.
- k4rli 8mo ago
  Same as reddit pretty much. 98% is trash but good parts do exist. Diving into new topics on YT is delightful. The site becomes much better with sponsorblock+ublock origin+hide shorts/trending (unhook or blocktube)+replace clickbait titles+replace thumbnails (dearrow)+return youtube dislike.
tadfisher 9mo ago
I remember when we organized our lives around television. On Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same thing, everyone had something to talk about from last night's episode, and there was a common connection over what we watched as entertainment. We saw a resurgence of this connection with big-budget serials like Game of Thrones, but now every streaming service has their own must-watch thing and it's basically as if everyone had their own personal broadcast station showing something different. I don't know if old-school television was healthy for society or not, but I do have a feeling of missing out on that shared connection lately.
- victorperalta 9mo ago
  Planet Money recently released an episode that mentions some of these points around drop vs drip programming https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5646673/stranger-things-season-netflix-binge-drip-watching-tv https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5646673/stranger-things...
- jedberg 9mo ago
  This is something I've been lamenting for a long time. The lack of shared culture. Sometimes a mega-hit briefly coalesces us, but for the most part everyone has their own thing. I miss the days when everyone had seen the same thing I had.
  - ghaff 9mo ago
    I don't know if it's good or bad but, outside of some megahit films, people mostly don't regularly watch the same TV series. I don't even have live TV myself.
  - Diederich 8mo ago
    I found this the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg "NBC Nightly News, June 24, 1975" I strongly urge people to watch this, it's 30 minutes but there are many very illuminating insights within. One word for you: Exxon. While I was young in 1975, I did watch ABC's version of the news with my grandparents, and continued up through high school. Then in the late 1980s I got on the Internet and well you know the rest. "Back Then", a high percentage of everybody I or my grandparents or my friends came into contact with watched one of ABC, NBC, or CBS news most nights. These three networks were a bit different, but they generally they all told the same basic stories as each other. This was effectively our shared reality. Later in high school as I became more politically focused, I could still talk to anybody, even people who had completely opposite political views as myself. That's because we had a shared view of reality. Today, tens of millions of people see the exact same footage of an officer involved shooting...many angles, and draw entirely different 'factual' conclusions. So yes, 50 years ago, we in the United States generally had a share view of reality. That was good in a lot of ways, but it did essentially allow a small set of people in power to decide that convincing a non-trivial percentage of the US population that Exxon was a friendly, family oriented company that was really on your side. Worth the trade off? Hard to say, but at least 'back then' it was possible, and even common, to have ground political discussions with people 'on the other side', and that's pretty valuable.
procflora 8mo ago
The broadcast nature of it is something that I missed just last night. I was walking past several bars as the Seahawks won a big football game, but of course each spot was on a different stream delay so instead of one full-throated simultaneous cheer echoing across the neighborhood it was three or four quieter, distinct cheers spread over 20-30 seconds. Not really a big deal but still, it felt like a lesser experience to this aging millennial.

the_af 9mo ago

> It is not the same, quality-wise I think youtube is actually worse than e. g. the 1980s era Is it though? I of course watched TV as a kid through the 80s and have some feelings of nostalgia about it, but is it true that YouTube today is worse? I mean, YouTube is nothing in particular. There's all sorts of crap, but Sturgeon's Law [1] applies here. There is also good stuff, even gems, if you curate your content carefully. YouTube can be delightful if you know what to look for. If you don't filter, yeah... it's garbage. ---- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

sodapopcan 9mo ago
Definitely good stuff on YouTube, but I do miss the curation and, as was talked about here recently I believe, shared experiences that brought. I'm also crazy addicted to YouTube in a way that I wasn't to TV, but that's another issue.
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
There is many times more things on youtube than were ever on TV over it's entire lifetime up to the YT era, even discounting old TV show content on Youtube. But it also feels like the ratio of of good-to-shit has not remained constant between the two.
k4rli 8mo ago
Same as reddit pretty much. 98% is trash but good parts do exist. Diving into new topics on YT is delightful. The site becomes much better with sponsorblock+ublock origin+hide shorts/trending (unhook or blocktube)+replace clickbait titles+replace thumbnails (dearrow)+return youtube dislike.

tadfisher 9mo ago

I remember when we organized our lives around television. On Saturday mornings it would be cartoons (including the first full-CGI television shows, Reboot and Transformers: Beast Wars), Wednesday evenings would be Star Trek: TNG, Fridays would be the TGIF block of family shows (from early-to-mid-90s USA perspective here). It felt like everyone watched the same thing, everyone had something to talk about from last night's episode, and there was a common connection over what we watched as entertainment. We saw a resurgence of this connection with big-budget serials like Game of Thrones, but now every streaming service has their own must-watch thing and it's basically as if everyone had their own personal broadcast station showing something different. I don't know if old-school television was healthy for society or not, but I do have a feeling of missing out on that shared connection lately.

victorperalta 9mo ago
Planet Money recently released an episode that mentions some of these points around drop vs drip programming https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5646673/stranger-things-season-netflix-binge-drip-watching-tv https://www.npr.org/2025/12/24/nx-s1-5646673/stranger-things...
jedberg 9mo ago
This is something I've been lamenting for a long time. The lack of shared culture. Sometimes a mega-hit briefly coalesces us, but for the most part everyone has their own thing. I miss the days when everyone had seen the same thing I had.
- ghaff 9mo ago
  I don't know if it's good or bad but, outside of some megahit films, people mostly don't regularly watch the same TV series. I don't even have live TV myself.
- Diederich 8mo ago
  I found this the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksFhXFuRblg "NBC Nightly News, June 24, 1975" I strongly urge people to watch this, it's 30 minutes but there are many very illuminating insights within. One word for you: Exxon. While I was young in 1975, I did watch ABC's version of the news with my grandparents, and continued up through high school. Then in the late 1980s I got on the Internet and well you know the rest. "Back Then", a high percentage of everybody I or my grandparents or my friends came into contact with watched one of ABC, NBC, or CBS news most nights. These three networks were a bit different, but they generally they all told the same basic stories as each other. This was effectively our shared reality. Later in high school as I became more politically focused, I could still talk to anybody, even people who had completely opposite political views as myself. That's because we had a shared view of reality. Today, tens of millions of people see the exact same footage of an officer involved shooting...many angles, and draw entirely different 'factual' conclusions. So yes, 50 years ago, we in the United States generally had a share view of reality. That was good in a lot of ways, but it did essentially allow a small set of people in power to decide that convincing a non-trivial percentage of the US population that Exxon was a friendly, family oriented company that was really on your side. Worth the trade off? Hard to say, but at least 'back then' it was possible, and even common, to have ground political discussions with people 'on the other side', and that's pretty valuable.

procflora 8mo ago

The broadcast nature of it is something that I missed just last night. I was walking past several bars as the Seahawks won a big football game, but of course each spot was on a different stream delay so instead of one full-throated simultaneous cheer echoing across the neighborhood it was three or four quieter, distinct cheers spread over 20-30 seconds. Not really a big deal but still, it felt like a lesser experience to this aging millennial.