Getting grumpy and ‘mean’

@pibbur: H-ate. I used it, so it makes sense Carnifex is referring to me.

Heh(!) for some reason I thought he mean't "Hell", and was trying to make fun of that. Anyhow, it was stupid, so I deleted it.

pibbur

The double hockey sticks word I use at will. The other one....I just don't use it, period. I've always found it to be a jarring, ugly word. When necessary, I'll substitute despise for it.

It all depends.

When it comes to coding tutorials (which I use quite a bit) - I tend to prefer videos, unless it's for something where I just want to steal the code directly.

I find it easier to stay motivated when someone does a proper tutorial video - because it's less of an obstacle to understand what people are trying to convey when you have both sound and images. Also, you can actually benefit from listening to the tone of voice - because you can detect nuances that will help you get their intention.

That said, I hate the concept of "influencers" - and I absolutely despise how Youtube has become even worse than TV - which I completely quit watching back in the 90s.

It seems to me to be around 90% people with greed or ego issues - trying to, somehow, make an impact for their own sake - rather than being of actual use.

But that does leave the ~10% of actually useful and/or entertaining stuff.

However, I have a feeling I will completely stop watching this shit - with very few exceptions - before long.

Yeah, I'd say that a video tutorial can give you much more contextual information. The only reason I still prefer text in many cases: it is much easier to skim a text, to decide whether it is really worth spending more time on it. With videos, it usually takes considerably more time for me to really see whether it is worth it.

Carnifex said:

The double hockey sticks word I use at will. The other one….I just don't use it, period. I've always found it to be a jarring, ugly word. When necessary, I'll substitute despise for it.

Click to expand...

I understand. I tend to use "hate" rather loosely, only when I want to exaggerate a little.

pibbur who actually doesn't hate anyone /anything.

Cacheperl said:

Yeah, I'd say that a video tutorial can give you much more contextual information. The only reason I still prefer text in many cases: it is much easier to skim a text, to decide whether it is really worth spending more time on it. With videos, it usually takes considerably more time for me to really see whether it is worth it.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is a big factor, IMO. It takes about four seconds of scanning a webpage to see if contains the sort of thing I want, whereas you have to trudge through quite a bit of video to see if it's getting to the point. "This week I have mostly been eating cruciferous vegetables, and, um, oh look, here's my cat. Remember to like, comment and subscribe, and here's my Patreon account...."

AAAAAAAAAH!!!!

The reason for that is entirely Youtube's fault.

Back a few years and the primary objective of any videomaker was to make their videos as short as possible. The kiss of death for any uploader was having a 4+ minute runtime and for people to see that and simply not even click. It was all about sharing quick, funny, to the point stuff. However, if something was over 4 minutes long, or even, shock, horror, over 10 minutes, it meant it was because it had to be and all that 10 minutes would be content.

Then, suddenly, fast forward a bit and Youtube changed the algorithm for getting noticed. Out went clicks, likes and comments (though not entirely) and in came retention. YouTube was now interested primarily in users who can hog their viewers for as long as possible, preventing them from going elsewhere and, more importantly, making them sitting ducks for lots of adverts within the same video.

All of a sudden out went the quick memes, 30 second fails, today's cat video and in came popular people who just talk to the camera about stuff, often with a clickbait title but very little content related to the clickbait.

The biggest winner of this turn of events was, ironically, exactly the channels which give YouTube a bad name, namely the political or un-pc drama channels who's content is basically regurgitating the day's news headline but stretched as thinly as possible over 10 to 20 minutes.

You can even see it's effect on random channels like Cinemasins or PewDiePie, where once they would churn out bi-weekly 3 minute videos but now the exact same content gets stretched to 20+ minutes. Of PewDiePie's 29 videos this month, the shortest is 11 minutes 14 seconds; go back just to Aug 2016 and of 20 videos the shortest was just 2 minutes and 1 second and only 2 were over 20 minutes long, the vast majority being around the 6 minutes mark.

With Cinemasins, they reupload a lot of their old stuff due to changes in copywrite practices and it's so noticeable. This week they reuploaded their take on the easily mockable movie Battleship, the video was from 2012, it was just six and a half minutes long. But for a new movie with barely anything mockable, such as Paddington 2, they stretch the video out to over 20 minutes, most of which is just spewing random stuff to cash in on a popular title.

And this is an across the board issue. So all your specialist how-to video makers are having to employ the same techniques to stay noticed. Same with recipe channels, fail channels and all etc. So when Dart says "it's more like TV now" [paraphrase], it's actually precisely because that's exactly what google wants it to be and is a wholely accurate perception.

Three phone calls from "Miocrosoft" today. <insert angry smilie> And it still only 14:50 CET. <insert angry smilie> So, they've started doing Norway again <insert angry smilie>.

pibbur who usually lies by telling them he only have Apple machines. Or answers in Norwegian. Or just hangs up.

PS. Come to think of it, I could tell them I only play phonegames. That should tell them a lesson!!! DS.

I have a little answering device on my phone. When someone calls it doesn't ring the phone, it asks them to say who they are, and what they're calling about, and puts them on hold. Then it rings the phone, you listen to their message, and decide to accept or reject the call. Most of those sorts of people don't even bother doing that, in which case the phone doesn't even ring.

The image of @xSamhainx; posted on Aug 4/5 (depending on your time zone) was moved to P&R, ‘Political and politically incorrect humor’.

I like that !

Apologies. I messed up. I read gay pride, instead of gray pride.
I am clearly getting old and in need of glasses, despite the huge letters in the image.

As you can see I moved the image back to the thread it was originally posted: here in this thread, where it belongs.