this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Boomer take
With the attention span of Zoomers and younger generations, TikToks will be everything that anybody needs as nobody can watch videos longer than 3 minutes anyways
There are two types of videos. 3 minute ticktoks and 2 hour video essays about "Hegelian philosophy hidden in the Adventures of the Gummi Bears"
There are also 10-hour "analysis" videos of video games that are inexplicably just narrating a playthrough with almost no actual analysis present.
The first channel that comes to mind is Joseph Anderson. I have no idea how his videos became so popular when his "critiques" are just reciting the plot of games.
He's got some good videos, but I agree that the Witcher stuff (the bulk of his output for the last three years) is definitely like a shitty abridged LP
Actually the bulk of his output for the last three years has been weeb streams.
There's a few of these that immediately come to mind, like the Oblivion one that was 12 hours long or something.
I think it would be much better if the first section of the analysis was a brief rundown of the game and its content, and then the rest of the video was devoted to certain themes, where those themes take place (by bringing up some parts of the content in more detail) and how those themes are used by the game developers intentionally or unintentionally, but that's considerably more work than just narrating over a Let's Play and saying "This is good" or "This sucks"
People keep saying this but it really doesn't hold up. Moistcritikal videos get viewed like crazy and the guy posts 2-3 videos of himself rambling at a camera every day, each 10-20 minutes long, no jumpcuts or loud noises either. The daily Hasanabi videos are all easily 30 minutes long. Hell, MrBeast videos are all well over 10 minutes long as well. Wendigoon has seen a meteoric rise over the past year and his videos are all hour long stories about creeypasta stuff etc. Iceberg videos have been a huge trend and those are all really long as well.
The theory that people's attention spans keep getting shorter and people can't watch longer videos anymore doesn't match up with the trends on Youtube. Videos are not getting shorter, not at all.
People have been saying this about the attention spans of the youths at LEAST since Television dropped, and probably since books dropped
Yep. Plato wrote about being worried that the rise of literacy rates among the youth would rot their brains, because they'd never have to memorize stuff if they could just write it down.
There's actually some merit to that. People have a harder time remembering things that they know are written down and retrievable (because there's less need)
Absolutely. There's also some merit to similar worries about television and the internet. It's just never the civilization-ending infocalypse that it's cracked up to be (or at least not so far).
well... there's a few things about that. Within youtube itself there are different incentives than there might be on other platforms, and changes in rules, recommendation algorithms, and advertising methods have all contributed to shaping what kind of content does well as much or more than people's attention spans or preferences. There was a time when short videos were king, but changes to monetization and such shifted away from that.
But if you look industry wide there has been an explosion in the short form stuff. it's not prima facie evidence of declining attention spans but it is a real trend that has probably brought the average down.
IMO it's just two different ways to retain attention: a long drawn out explanation or story with the promise of some payoff where it all comes together or builds to a big moment (often lacking), versus rapid fire content coming at you so fast it doesn't even really matter if its that good as long as its stimulation.
the "declining attention span" thing feels real in other ways though. Most people I know couldn't sit down and read a book for any length of time if they tried.
Absolute horseshit, the kids watch long form content at 2x speed. They still want it, they just want it 'faster'. This will also continue to change when they get old and everything slows down for them.
I watch stuff on 2x speed because people speak at 1/2 pace. I think people do it because it increases the video length for ads
Youtube has that fake tiktok "shorts" feature, but I'm pretty sure it's just people reposting content from tiktok and other short-form video sites.
Back in my day, we didn't have 5 hour video essays, we only had 10 minute videos. And even that was considered too long back then.
I still remember RLM's Plinkett reviews being cut into separate 10 minute uploads
We used to watch horrible quality uploads of anime fansubs uploaded to YouTube in three parts.
There are a couple youtube natives who make the original content there and then export to tiktok
TikTok pays like shit.
Video essays remain a very popular and successful medium. Channels like Caddicarus have actually SWITCHED from frequent shorter content to occasional longform content because it does better for them.