me_irl

I hate it when I'm looking for a single piece of information like how to change a specific setting in my device and there's no text available, just a highly rated video that goes like:
"Hey guys, it's your boy ManualExplainer here and welcome to another video. Be sure to like and subscribe to my channel. And remember to click on the little bell icon so you get notified whenever I put up a new video. All right, let's get to it. But first, a word from today's sponsor."
😡😡😡😡
- God bless the people that put the video highlight on Sponsorblock or write the solution in the comments.

I don’t like these generational generalizations.
Not an xer but I feel the same. I’d rather read twenty minutes than watch a 5 minute YouTube video.
- “Elder millennial”/Oregon Trail generation here, and I’d generally rather read it, too. I’ve found it often only takes 5 minutes to read an article where the video would be 20 minutes. Sometimes a video works better for a how-to, but often an article will be a faster choice.
  
  It's also much easier to retain information skimming through text compared to a video of just a person talking.
  
  Oregon Trail generation
  Holy shit, you're 185 years old? What's the secret?
- I'm getting really tired of the news "articles" that have a video as well... I can't stand clicking a post here on Lemmy and all the sudden a video is autoplaying... Like stfu I just want to read it, not hear some jackass newscaster and I especially hate the autoplay...
  
  The best ones are when you scroll down the page and the video comes too. I wish suffering on no one but were I to meet that particular 'innovator'.
  
  The autoplay kills me too. I used to complain about it but we seem to be in the minority.
- I’d rather read twenty minutes than watch a 5 minute YouTube video.
  I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a video, YouTube or otherwise, that conveys information faster than an article. It’s usually 10 minutes of video to convey what would take 3 minutes to read while providing greater detail.
  
  I ran into a small series of videos on repairing camcorders that actually delivered the video content appropriately. Basically no talking (I think at one point they poke the broken thing and make an "eh?" Noise to indicate you should pay attention to that). Shows the thing, shows the problem, showed removing the part, showed fixing it, and then putting it back.
  In my experience visual modes of communication work better for conveying visual information. Describing how you should position yourself for doing a task is harder than just showing a picture from a few angles. Likewise, describing how something moves is easier with an video because you can see it moving.
  Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't looking to make the thing they're making efficient, but to keep you there longer for engagement. Text is easy to skip around in, so verbose text describing what could be a 30 second video isn't as effective. Inflating something that would be a four minute read on history or something into a video gives something harder to skim and still get information out of, and it's way longer.
  
  that is because videos have minimums to reach peak monetization
  it isnt about efficient information exchange
- I’d rather read twenty minutes than watch a 5 minute YouTube video.
  Part of the reason why I have no patience for video as nonfiction is because I read a lot faster than videos (or audio) can communicate information. So for me, I'd rather read a 5 minute document than a 20 minute video, even if one is literally a transcription of the other.
  At least with audio I can take that in while doing something else.
- generational warfare is dumb as shit
  
  Except for the fucking Boomers.
- Over all I'd say that humankind generalizes too much...
  ::: spoiler
  :p
  
  Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes

I think the proliferation of videos as primary information sources is a huge part of how propaganda and disinformation became so effective and powerful. It's why we've done a collective nosedive into regressive politics and can no longer agree on the objective facts regarding.. well.. anything!
Information delivered by video tends to be trusted on the way it's delivered rather than the content itself. So we're thinking less critically about what we choose to believe.
- While I agree that the pivot to video was a massive turning point in the dumbing down of political discourse, I think it's more to do with the pace and passive nature of video/audio: the people are getting news and ideas at the cadence that the broadcaster deems appropriate instead of at the pace of the listener which would happen in reading or face to face transmission.
  If something was missed entirely or misunderstood it is far more tedious to try and hunt down the segment that needs reiteration than it is to read it again (or ask for clarification). This means people that miss something will just try to pick up any context later in the broadcast and if the broadcaster doesn't deem it important or relevant (or maliciously omits it), the listener has no further interaction with the idea. And then the idea is lost beneath the rest of the news agglomeration.

The worst is instructional manuals being replaced with videos.
Going back 10 seconds, 20 times, so that you can visually see how two pieces fit together is way more annoying than just looking at a visual diagram on a printed page. Especially when you've got both hands full with stuff.
- I like a combination there. I want a diagram of the parts and how they fit, and a short video of installation or removal. Just like a picture describes a physical scene better than words, a video describes a changing physical scene better than a picture.
  I still want text describing the steps of the process and a diagram showing what it should look like when I've done it right, I just also want someone to show me how to actually execute the tricky bit.
- I put something together I got at Walmart like 10 years ago and it came with print instructions that had links to .gif files that were short and looping showing each step clearly
  I though "oh wow if some random Chinese product does this surely it'll spread" and now feel so dumb for having thought that
- I would agree except the instruction manuals and diagrams are often shit or unclear (even IKEA ones sometimes). To thread a sewing machine it didn't tell me how to get one of the hooks out, turns out it's coupled to the motor so I simply had to turn the wheel. The video made that clear. And yes I'm stupid and it was probably obvious but manuals that come with machines you can buy off the shelf should be for idiots.
  
  Yeah, its irritating how instruction manuals forget that people don't know.
  Its ridiculous that they don't explain how the "default" is. Needle at its zenith, so everything is lined up and accessible, and presser foot up so the tension is disengaged. I've taught a few friends how to sew, you're not the only one with these struggles.

I can send you the article, but you're going to get two "would you like to subscribe" popups and dozen more ads sprinkled between every third sentence.
Like, I get that the video shit is annoying. But it almost feels like a competition in print media to make it worse.
Case in point:
- I don't see the problem?
  The article clearly demonstrates how the web became unreadable with a handy diagram...
  /s
- Firefox reader mode FTW.
- Ublock origin is your best friend
  
  (Press the image if compression quality really bad)

I'm millennial and i hate those videos too
- Everyone that's functionally literate hates those videos

Millennial weebs read twice as fast as Gen x. Those fanmade anime subs can roll through quick.
- Ikr, fuck ticktok i can SPEED through text!
- cap
  
  https://youtu.be/kq7O6eR12oM
  
  No cap fr fr.

Also, I want to see the video. Not the video with someone next to it making faces as they watch the video.
- The only reaction video worth watching is someone from that profession reacting and giving additional context as to why it works or doesn't
- “[video] REACTION!” And it’s just someone’s head in the corner as they raise a finger to point at the original video

hv;dw (hate videos; didn't watch)

As a xennial with ADD, send me the short, I'll watch it, hunt down the article, read it, then spend 3h down a rabbit hole to understand the validity of the claims and the bias of the news outlet, then I'll get bored and stop typing in the mid
- Well said

Hi, millennial here. Do you know why some millennials and a large portion of gen z suck at reading? Because their boomer/gen x parents didn't read to them as a child.
I grew up on my grandmother's lap, with her actively making reading fun and encouraging me to read along - I was reading, and comprehending, YA novels by grade 2.
My little brother though, who did not have a parent/grandparent to teach them to love reading, can't read worth shit. He was well into highschool before he even attempted a book like animorphs, and still didn't really comprehend the plot any better than grade 2 me.
So no, this is not a generational/phones bad problem, it's just another example of how boomers and gen x let their children down when it came to raising them with life skills, and then making fun of them for it.
- Gen X. My parent and grand parents didn’t do shit. It’s not generational. They weren’t bad , just not great. That’s pretty universal.
  They didn’t read to me, and I’m an avid reader.
  I read to my kids, but they all lost interest in it pretty quickly. Only one of them does it as an adult.
  It’s all situational my dude.
  
  Same experience here as a GenXer - I don't recall my parents ever reading to me - they might have when I was really young, but they were also raising my brothers (6 and 7 years older than me), so I doubt they had much time.
  I was the avid reader in the family. When I got married, I stopped reading as much, but I still do some reading when I find a book that interests me. I have three or four sitting on my desk at the moment that I haven't started.
- Because their boomer/gen x parents didn’t read to them as a child.
  As a gen-Xer, this hurt to read. If I knew my classmates were going to grow up to be such dipshit parents, I would have slapped some sense into them. I mean, a lot of them were already pretty awful as teenagers... but, that wasn't a phase? Man, I am sincerely, deeply sorry.
- I'm also a millennial. I had a lot of classmates and friends whose boomer parents actively discouraged reading. I mean the whole stereotype of the weak nerd that just reads books and is being bullied for it is pretty old. A lot of my friends even back in elementary school had a TV in their bedroom the second cable/satellite TV became a thing here. I had classmates whose parents discouraged them from going to university or reading advanced books because that is for nerds and only working with your hands is real work. Matilda was written in 1988 and while the parents in that book were a caricature, I knew parents who'd scoff if their child read a book or dared talk about going to university.
  The millennial children of these parents grew up to consume internet click bait and are now not teaching their kids to read books. The internet and smartphones definitely accelerated the problem, but it started much earlier.

My favorite trend is where youtubers record a screenshare of a word document they have open on their computer that they proceed to read to me, slowly.
I’m especially delighted when the youtuber selects the text as they read it, as if to make sure I don’t get lost.
ETA: I’m just saying it’s a good thing we streamlined video platform monetization, so 1.6 million other viewers and I can not read that document together. I’m not sure what generation was responsible but, good for them.

Conversely, some things should not be articles either. I tried looking up the temp for cooking chicken, and the amount of 20-minute reads out there to find out it’s 165° for chicken breast, is too damn high.
- The problem in that case is SEO. What you need is a table of cooking temps or just a single number, but what ranks high is a web page that mentions "cooking", "chicken" and "temperature" a million times.
  (Or be like Gen X and keep a cook book and a scattered assortment of notes in a drawer)
  
  Thank you for elaborating and proving my point.
- Some thermometers have common safe cooking temps printed on them, its very helpful
  
  I've got most of them memorized but still have a cooking temp chart on a fridge magnet. There it is, at a glance.
- Same but when you specifically ask for celcius/centigrade in the search prompt, and the first two pages of results either give the temperature in F or just as ⁰ without any units.
- I bet the article was AI slop

This is the type of boomer engagement bait you'd see on Facebook. It's basically "UpVoTe If YoU aRe GeNx!1!1". Sure, the discussion here is higher quality, but it still makes me cringe to see this kind of stuff being posted unironically on a site I use.

Post a pithy hot-take in text? Nobody reads.
Post a screenshot of the same text from a social media site? That’s bussin!

If you see a millennial doing that then slap them and call them an embarrassment for me

TBF as a middle millennial, if you want me to click on the link you sent me, it had better not be a video
Whenever I've got the time to sit down and watch a video, it's going to be one of the million things I've already been meaning to watch.
An article can be consumed in way more situations
- This goes both ways, though. I hate it when I'm linked to an article that describes at agonizing length something that was captured on video, with only the lightest smattering of commentary that adds any insight or context, and not even a working link to or embed of the footage.
  Think of Anthony Weiner's furious, "The gentleman is correct in sitting!" (before his fall from grace), or Musk's Nazi salute that looked suspiciously like a Nazi salute, or George W. Bush winning a free pair of shoes.
  The video of the event itself would take fifteen seconds to watch and I'll still feel the need to watch it after reading the article anyway.

Also: Please just give us the f'ing text instead of a screenshot of text.

I'm a Millennial. I'd rather burn a house than pick a video from a choice of (video, article).

I do wonder how much of video's proliferation is because we (in the US at least) fucked up teaching a generation of kids how to read. I'm told one of the dominant strategies for teaching reading was just bad. Well meaning people went all in on it, and then kids just didn't learn to read well.
You can read about it here, or listen to it as a podcast https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
- This is just appaling to read. No wonder the US education is so fucked.
  Just to further push the point, it took me 40 minutes to read 3 transcripts. Each transcription is of a roughly hour long podcast episode. So 3 hours down to 40 minutes and English is my second language. It stresses me that people can't recognize that reading is the closest thing humans have to a superpower.

Amen to that, brother.
I fear for the future, because this generation won't know something if it hasn't been tictokified or taught by an "AI".

I am a Millenial and I prefer to read than to watch a video short from social media...

I know plenty of people that "can read fast." Unfortunately, they don't comprehend anything they read until they slow the fuck down.

I’m a boomer and I approve this.

Lmao, "for the love of bananarama" "in Prince's funky name, amen." Who types that?
- A millennial pretending to be gen X.

"Ummm" ... "yeah, ya know." "Ummm." "Jeeze, I hadn't thought." Scratch scratch scratch" ... supressed burp. "Sigh." "Hmmm....ummm." "Hahahahahaha."
Yeah, fuck all that. Give me the info: Issue. Rule. Analysis. Conclusion. The big video push is social media grooming for the algo.

If my friend sends me a TikTok as a source of information, I'm gonna start questioning my choices in friends (/s but also sorta not)

Zoomer here! Written articles are amazing for fast information, and I go to them when I want a solution to something I already have a decent understanding of. Videos are especially nice for something you haven't done before and want a real-time breakdown of the information.
- I don’t need or want a video to do that for me though? I can breakdown information on my own as long as it’s presented to me, I don’t want everything spoon fed to me

Did someone just say something? I thought I heard an opinion but it must have been the wind. I was born in 84 and I remember there being older kids but I don't really remember much about them. I remember reading magazines and books and having the world revolve around me. I remember having to learn cursive, memorizing math tables, watching Mr. Wizard, I used a rotary phone, and I even understand a file system. Boomers and younger generations don't know how to use a terminal. The only thing that stumps me is the generation between me and the boomers. I remember someone being there but they just sort of blur together with the boomers now like they were always the same thing.

I'm a slow reader and I still find articles faster and easier to parse than videos.

Conversely, don't send us AI generated filler either, please.

I wish to buy this person a beer. Also send me tech docs and not a YouTube tutorial where I have to jump ahead of all the bullshit while trying not to miss the useful details.

I agree completely. The only time I actually see benefit to video over print is with service guides and manuals. Unless you’re including a perfectly detailed exploded view, videos always seem to convey more information.
- And especially fuck the manuals that lump an entire product line into one manual (looking at you, HP) when they can have wildly different hardware

That would be great but I think OP's just gonna get a denial a denial a denial a denial a denial...

Millenials also grew up reading everything, it's just that the teen years had the text on a screen. It's Gen Z that really had online video content from the start.

Hallefuckinglujah!

Gen Z'er here, and well, it depends on the topic. TBH I don't read much news at all, unless I see it on social media I'm not gonna know about it. But I will read an article if I care enough. Sometimes I want a quick overview, and some channels/reporters can do informative yet brisk news reports.
But when it comes to educational stuff, me and my fellow high school classmates hated watching a video for homework, and would usually just read the transcript of the video instead (and with ctrl + f, you save even more time). This was funny to my xillennial teacher, as he said schools started using videos because kids hated reading textbooks. And I'm not gonna lie, I fucking hate reading textbooks in college. So we're going full circle it seems.

So long as it's not behind a paywall, or the "article" is just a literal transcription of a video.

I have no problems with videos but ya'll better have a better fucking source.

It's funny that they think there's any sort of easy way to get from a TikTok to an article.

You're supposed to watch tiktoks at 2x.

Ugh. Hate that so much info is forcing search results to lead with video results because adspace. 20 minute video on how to fold a towel when a single image with a few lines of text would do.

Absolutely.

Yay, more forced myopic generational divide!
- It's the 1% vs the working class, not generation vs generation.
- be as cool as gen X and we'll let you in the club
  
  I’m good.

When I'm looking at my phone, I want the original text so I can ~~read~~ skim it myself.
When I'm not looking at my phone, I want the video so I can continue not looking at my phone.

Ehh some articles are full of useless fluff with like a single paragraph worth of info that I actually need, but I have to read from the start to figure it out, at least on the video I can jump at different points to quickly find where the useful info is
- Who are you, that can skim a video faster than skimming text? That's, like, the complete opposite of my lived experience 😂. What a rich melange of folks make up this world, eh.
  
  Step 1 start video
  Step 2 skip all introductory bullshit, usually about 5 mins
  Step 3 - if pointless stuff is still playing jump further 5 to 10 Mins until worthy stuff starts playing.
  Step 4 - repeat step 3 as needed till end of video
  P.S. - Install Sponsorblock extension for YouTube. Which auto skips useless Ads and pointless section of any video that was voted for by the community of users

Nobody is saying or implying videos are a more efficient way to consume information than reading... it's not this or that it's two different forms of media. Absolutely dumb tweet.
- There are people who absolutely prefer videos to text.
  A few years ago at work one of my tasks was writing up technical documentation. I'd write it up, get feedback, make tweaks, report complex errors upstream to improve or eliminate error messages, basically make the text as simple and straightforward as possible.
  But over the years we'd get feedback, "Can this be a video?" and I didn't get it. I figured I must not be writing it correctly. I'd chat with people, I'd gather more feedback. People still wanted video. I asked people for video how I could improve. They literally just wanted me to read the text I wrote. I didn't get it.
  Other folks on my team decided to make a few videos. The videos were just pictures of the text, the same pictures already included, and people reading it verbatim, plus a little background music. People loved it. Many people ignored it, but those that watched it, loved it. I still don't get it.
  
  It depends what it is for me but text can be frustrating for learning. I don't retain read information well, I read slowly, I get distracted and can't multitask to focus when my eyes are locked up with text, and it all kinda blurs together and feels samey. With audio I can set it to double speed and still process well making it way faster to process than my read speed, I can multitask to stay focused better, I'm less likely to get eye strain, retain the info better. With audio and video I can link changes in the screen and audio in a broad sense to what was being said. Like "oh this part where the music changed right before switching from the three paragraph page to the four paragraph page is extra important" which helps me retain the topic while also giving me clues as to where to find information without running into all the text being samey

I don’t know a single millennial that uses TikTok. This is such a weird generalization.