Hi! We're a fairly diverse plural system with various origins and interests! ADHD, autism, likely BPD. Uhm... Yeah, gonna work on this a bit more soon?
What's funny is that, in my experience, ten minute "optimal marketable length" type videos tend to be way more bloated and poorly edited then hourslong video essays do.
Like those're the ones where you get basic ass content stretched to hell and back by annoyingly fake speaking patterns, repetitions that should have been cut the 8th time they were said, or obnoxious cutaway jokes that break the flow.
I fuckin hate That Kind of Guy, like at least I wish they would admit that they're just making garbage, the digital video entertainment version of popcorn, designed to be unremarkable but consumed in infinite quantity without really thinking about it, instead of having all the fuckin pretension about being brain genius mind educators of the future or whatever
if they weren't "good content" they wouldnt be getting enough views to make them profitable, right? like, people dont turn them off. there's a reason the standard episode lengths pre-advertisements are 22 minutes and 42-44 mins
i mean i'm not even gonna try and deny that i think tons of people have godawful taste and will watch anything, i think there's tons of sludge on youtube that shouldn't exist, but the idea that videos should be like 10 minutes tops "or you're making filler" is just asinine and divorced from reality.
we need one of those ww2 aircraft identification charts that are like "they may look alike- but only one is the enemy!" with "3 hour youtube video about a plane crash or whatever" on one side and "11 hour youtube video about picking through a 9 hour long youtube video by someone else frame by frame and reacting to every word they say with disgust and anger and also the 9 hour youtube video is the same premise except with a video by the people who made the 11 hour long one" on the other
Reminds me of the crypto guy (possibly Sam Bankman-Fried) who said that writing a book instead of a blog post was a waste of time.
This is really funny, because I feel like there is a ton of 10-20 minute videos that only have a minute or two of actual content, while a lot of multi-hour documentaries are essentially all killer no filler. Length does not strongly correlate with quality or information density either way on the youtubes, and this guy should know that.
man who has incorporated youtube's 10 minute video algorithmic incentive into his moral worldview
Please never stop making intense deep dives into utterly insane technology
Given this Guy exclusively posts about cars it makes sense he'd be bored of all the reviews of identical metal shitboxes padded out to half an hour so they can fit another twelve ad shows in the runtime.
that's an incredibly good point that I have to admit I hadn't considered
i feel like it's important to point out that a lot of extremely long video essays out there are actively preserving history. i've watched a lot of videos without breaking my attention from them because they're specifically written to point out every single small detail that may get glossed over in a shorter video if not completely left out. and sometimes, really small details matter!
like, idk. youtube video essays don't always have to be just for pure entertainment. sometimes a youtube video essay can be educational, which is what makes it entertaining!
without this kind of content my kitchen would never get cleaned
I mean, people say this, maybe it's true for the dregs of the platform, but... have you ever tried it? Speaking for only five minutes on a subject, to a general audience that might not have ever heard of what you're talking about before? It's all the effort of making a ten or fifteen minute video, except with a strong potential for people to come in and go "oh what's this about? no idea, guess i'll watch something else" and, of course, no opportunity to express yourself in any meaningful way. if I made five minute videos about anything, nobody would have any idea who I was, and I would be getting nothing out of it.
The short answer is: Yes, I have. The slightly longer answer is that ultimately I suppose it depends on whether or not you're trying to capture an audience in the long term or dealing with extremely specific, niche interest groups; my point was aimed more at the dregs of the platform to begin with which - in my circles - definitely on the increase.
that's entirely fair, as long as you've done it yourself i have no beef. i mostly just rankle at the enormous amount of criticism leveled by people who have never done anything like this.
