me_irl

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.

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 hate it when I'm looking for a single piece of information like how to change a specific setting on 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."

😡😡😡😡

Also, I want to see the video. Not the video with someone next to it making faces as they watch the video.

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

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.

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:

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

Millennial weebs read twice as fast as Gen x. Those fanmade anime subs can roll through quick.

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

I'm millennial and i hate those videos too

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

"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.

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

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)

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/

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.