Technology Connections' thoughts on Mastodon
Technology Connections' thoughts on Mastodon
So, unfortunately when I go to Mastodon these days it's a bit of a ghost town. And I say unfortunately with sincerity - there are some things I really liked about the ethos behind it. However, the reason I'm posting this here is that I couldn't put it there without getting instant shit. 🧵
Context: Technology Connections is a YouTuber https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
This is his account on Mastodon https://mas.to/@TechConnectify
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On one hand it’s nice that Mastodon doesn’t have ads, and people usually don’t share bullshit, but does that logically result in attracting users who shit on someone for sharing a YouTube video, because sometimes other videos on YouTube are bad?
I have lost count the amount of times I've shared a YT video on Lemmy, and people bitch about the fact that they have to spend 15-60 minutes watching it, or immediately ask for some TL;DR about it. Like, I'm curating content for you, sharing a video I liked among the other videos that you probably didn't like, and people just want to universally shit on the format because of that one bad experience from two years ago when they dared to go to the web site for 5 minutes.
People love to shit on TikTok, but secretly, that's the length of content a majority of this audience wants, and it's dumb. If you don't want to devolve into a TikToker, then watch longer videos and don't bitch when somebody asks you to watch a video for 10 minutes. If you don't like it after a few minutes in, fine, go watch something else.
Could be wrong, or just more domain-specific, bu my experience is people don't complain that the video is 15-30 minutes long, is that it's a video (and that long) when the information could have been more succintly and practically displayed in a text tutorial or a blog format. Basically "this could have been an e-mail".
Not to mention that way people avoid having to go to YT which is yet another cesspit community-wise.
You are right that people have shorter attention spans ofc, but then again when it comes to tackling it it's largely an issue of medium: in the world of coding you can convey easily copyable or testable instructions in text format maybe with attachments, that can be verified in up to 60 seconds... or you could post a 30 minutes long video plus ads. Why would anyone expect the Fediverse, with the kind of people who are naturally attracted to it, to prefer the latter, no idea.
is that it’s a video (and that long) when the information could have been more succintly and practically displayed in a text tutorial or a blog format. Basically “this could have been an e-mail”.
Or it's a lot of information to digest and an "e-mail" or blog article would have been too long and visually-unappealing to properly convey the information. Videos have words, pictures, and sounds. Even if it was in article form, they just want it so that they can skim parts of it, and pretend to read it, while not digesting a damn thing. Why bother with actually reading anything when you can shove it in an AI summarizer and get the best possible summary that takes 5 seconds to read?
Not to mention that way people avoid having to go to YT which is yet another cesspit community-wise.
It entirely depends on the channels you watch. All of the comments I read on the channels I follow are fine. I don't know what other people are having a problem with, but maybe they shouldn't be following Mr. Beast or Logan Paul bullshit.
It entirely depends on the channels you watch. All of the comments I read on the channels I follow are fine. I don’t know what other people are having a problem with, but maybe they shouldn’t be following Mr. Beast or Logan Paul bullshit.
Oh how much I wish people would listen to you on this...
Could be wrong, or just more domain-specific, bu my experience is people don’t complain that the video is 15-30 minutes long, is that it’s a video (and that long) when the information could have been more succintly and practically displayed in a text tutorial or a blog format.
Which is kind of interesting, considering it wasn't that long ago that people asked for tutorials and other information in the shape of videos because they couldn't be bothered to read shit.
I womder if "history is cyclic" applies here somehow and all that...
But I feel it's kinda a more domain-specific thing. I'd venture and take the guess that people in some fields such as origami or other arts & crafts, as well as cooking, would actually have far better use for instructions and how-tos in video format (or at least in audio...) than in text, for one.
(I'll be both happy and unhappy to be ackshually'd, and for the same reasons :p)
"You are right that people have shorter attention spans ofc"
Why do we all endlessly state this narrative as if it was a fact.
Like I get the feeling but there is very little good evidence for it.
Scientists don't even largely consider attention span a useful concept to understand the human brain.
"Recognize that attention is task-specific. One reason it’s so difficult to definitively say whether or not attention spans are decreasing is that it depends on the task with which someone is engaged. We may be able to sit through an entire 2-hour, action-packed movie, but start to squirm within 10 minutes of a nature documentary. Infusing things with storytelling and interactivity are two evidence-backed ways of increasing the likelihood we’ll be able to sustain focus. "
The entire narrative about attention span hinges upon this fundamental distortion, you cannot separate your ability to pay attention to something into an abstract universal quantity, your capacity for attention is always intimately interwoven with the environment around you and the specific task at hand. Attention span is a pop culture concept, not a scientifically rigorous one making any science done about attention span unable to actually illuminate the unknown since the concept being studied simply comes undone with a tug on one of the founding assumptions. In popular culture attention span is defined axiomatically as decreasing because of technology, and discussion works backwards from there.
The references cited also don't really support the conclusions the article comes to ("Challenging the the six-minute myth of online videos"), or they are links to pop-science articles talking about the topic, not actual evidence on the topic. An amusing example of this is the repeatedly, endlessly cited "McSpadden, K. (2015, May 14). You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish. Time. https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/".
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Goldfish are specifically studied because they can be trained to remember things and focus on them, they do not have "short attention spans" so the entire metaphor is broken from the start.
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There actually isn't any hard evidence even in the original paper that popularized the idea.... it was a white paper from microsoft not a scientific publication by academics
See this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shanesnow/2023/01/16/science-shows-humans-have-massive-capacity-for-sustained-attention-and-storytelling-unlocks-it/
It is also pretty easy to poke holes in the narrative that our attention spans are decreasing, driving a car takes an insane amount of concentration, more than arguably almost any other human activity practiced by billions of people on earth. If our attention spans were decreasing, the very first place you would see it would be in a huge increase in traffic crashes and deaths. You also wouldn't see a vibrant world of longform youtube videos on niche topics that are made by some of the most perennially popular and watched video content makers. People wouldn't be listening and reading to books, listening to longform podcasts, or engaging in hobbies that take significant preparation.
Further, the industry of marketing, perhaps one of the entities with the most interest in how we actually pay attention to things vs. what the popular narratives are about our attention span isn't convinced our attention spans are decreasing either.
More things are competing for our attention, so we are more selective and discard things quicker in a fashion that is totally rational. Daily life has also become exhausting for most, if you notice you are unable to focus like you used to it is probably because you are more tired, stressed and have less free time than you did in the past. If our "attention spans" were decreasing the way everybody seems to believe they are, the impacts would be catastrophic and look like entire populations undergoing early onset dementia, and as someone who has spent years around people with dementia.. that is clearly not what is happening at all.
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