4 ms·

The article is good, but I need to point the elephant in the room: "In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were perfor

The article is good, but I need to point the elephant in the room: "In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were performed by live musicians. Thus, the fixed costs of consumption were very high. If you bothered to pay a huge amount of money and time, you might as well view a long complex opera or symphony. On the flip side, when fixed costs are as low as a Google search, people prefer short YouTube videos of cats doing cute things. Don’t think that this means that the quality of culture has gone down." By that logic, more people could be watching opera videos on YouTube if they cared, since the opportunity cost is the same. I'm inclined to believe the fact most people prefer cat videos is not because of availability, but because most people are mundane.

pfedor 14y ago
The way I understood it, the "cost" of watching an opera on YouTube is the time and mental effort it takes, which is many times greater than the time and mental effort it takes to watch a cat video. Like, say you may derive more enjoyment from reading novels than Hacker News comments, but when you sit down to quickly eat breakfast you peruse Hacker News, even though great many high quality novels are also one click away.
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  > The way I understood it, the "cost" of watching an opera on YouTube is the time and mental effort it takes, which is many times greater than the time and mental effort it takes to watch a cat video. The original analogy compared with the cost of watching an opera on the middle ages, but I get your point: people perceive the value of consuming copious amounts of mundane content to be greater than the reward to be gained from a single, more elaborate content. Interesting. Would you say it's a race to the bottom of time and mental effort then? Cultural production and consumption is limited by the second law of thermodynamics? That sounds pretty hopeless.
  - jamesoswald 14y ago
    The implication is actually that cat videos are more enjoyable per instant than opera. If that were not the case, people would always watch opera. But if there were a high fixed cost, such as a ticket price, or the mental energy required to pay attention, the opera becomes relatively attractive. Imagine driving to a movie theater and paying $10 to watch a 2 minute cat video. It would be absurd. My point about the middle ages was that at that time, the fixed cost for all media consumption was high, so no one even considered short videos (preformances?). Now, when fixed costs are lower, you see a dramatically different pattern of consumption. High cost/high benefit media is still around - just think about a long running tv show like Lost or Game of Thrones, where the audience is expected to put a ton of mental effort into the show. So I don't worry about a race to the bottom.
Evbn 14y ago
People prefer short-term gratification when it is available. "Mundane" isn't relevant. Wik Wheaton or Freddie Wu or someone explained that youtube audiences don't have short attention spans, but that they have demanding attention spans, and won't tolerate a 2 minute bit stretched out to 10 minutes.

pfedor 14y ago

The way I understood it, the "cost" of watching an opera on YouTube is the time and mental effort it takes, which is many times greater than the time and mental effort it takes to watch a cat video. Like, say you may derive more enjoyment from reading novels than Hacker News comments, but when you sit down to quickly eat breakfast you peruse Hacker News, even though great many high quality novels are also one click away.

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
> The way I understood it, the "cost" of watching an opera on YouTube is the time and mental effort it takes, which is many times greater than the time and mental effort it takes to watch a cat video. The original analogy compared with the cost of watching an opera on the middle ages, but I get your point: people perceive the value of consuming copious amounts of mundane content to be greater than the reward to be gained from a single, more elaborate content. Interesting. Would you say it's a race to the bottom of time and mental effort then? Cultural production and consumption is limited by the second law of thermodynamics? That sounds pretty hopeless.
- jamesoswald 14y ago
  The implication is actually that cat videos are more enjoyable per instant than opera. If that were not the case, people would always watch opera. But if there were a high fixed cost, such as a ticket price, or the mental energy required to pay attention, the opera becomes relatively attractive. Imagine driving to a movie theater and paying $10 to watch a 2 minute cat video. It would be absurd. My point about the middle ages was that at that time, the fixed cost for all media consumption was high, so no one even considered short videos (preformances?). Now, when fixed costs are lower, you see a dramatically different pattern of consumption. High cost/high benefit media is still around - just think about a long running tv show like Lost or Game of Thrones, where the audience is expected to put a ton of mental effort into the show. So I don't worry about a race to the bottom.

Evbn 14y ago

People prefer short-term gratification when it is available. "Mundane" isn't relevant. Wik Wheaton or Freddie Wu or someone explained that youtube audiences don't have short attention spans, but that they have demanding attention spans, and won't tolerate a 2 minute bit stretched out to 10 minutes.