3 ms·

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

by 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.

by pfedor 14y ago

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.