Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I’m allergic to them.
The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It’s an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
My wife sends me couple of shorts each day and sometimes it’s even interesting content-wise, but I absolutely hate this horrible format, procrastinate watching them and wish back a world where this form of media did not exist. It all started even before shorts in the way people did videos, and somehow it spiraled into this kind of hell scape.
Anyone else feeling like this?
EDIT: thanks everyone, now I feel validated, thought maybe I’m the odd one with so strong negative feelings about them! And sorry about the confusion about pants and stocks (that provoked some funny answers though so no regrets). Yes - as you have all figured out, I’m talking about the annoying short videos almost everyone seems to be addicted to.
I’m glad to find other people with similar experiences to mine trying out short form video. I tried TikTok a few years ago when I realized how big it was and that I was missing out on entire cultural touchstones but I just couldn’t. Too much music I don’t like, too much randomly clicking and hoping I like a video, too much visual and audible noise.
Seriously why can’t I just see the title and uploader of a video before I click? What if I don’t want to watch this person or this particular video? Why do I have to decide while watching the video instead of relaxing with a bit of silence between videos?
Honestly the whole UI was just mentally and visually exhausting. I think I made it about 20 minutes of trying to get into TikTok before I finally just said “not for me” and gave up entirely
“Shorts” / “TikToks” / w/e are just short form multimedia content taken to their logical extreme. Small tidbits of context free, useless information, slammed into your soul so fast you miss all of the important bits and just get the buzz.
I only watch shorts from creators who I know generally make quality long form content (
Red NileNileRed, Miniminuteman, etc); then it’s usually something that actually is a short topic they wanted to present, not something they’re just trying to cram as much into it as possible in 60 seconds.NileRed/NileBlue is who you’re looking for. If you’re watching a channel called Red Nile, you may be watching stolen content…
No, you’re right, I’m sleep deprived as shit right now lol
Shorts sre awesome, way better than pants unless it is cold out or I am doing something that would scratch up my legs.
Oh, you mean the youtube shit. It is the worst of that video format and they all suck.
I can’t wear shorts, people ask if I’m riding a chicken.
Man I was sure this was about shorts vs pants too. Pants all day every day. Is that another adhd thing now?
I thought it was about the stock market. And I haven’t the faintest of clue what a short is, except that it’s used in films about the stock market lol
I know you didn’t ask but an opportunity to info dump is always fun.
Shorting is basically borrowing stock from someone, selling it. and then buying it back later before the person wants their stock back. Since (mostly) all shares are equal, as long as I return to the same stock, there’s no reason to hold onto a specific share.
If a stock is going down, if I borrow a share for a week, sell it for $100, then in 6 days buy it for $50 and return it to you, then I’ve just made $50.
It’s a way to make money when the stock market is going down, but is often riskier because with buying stock, you can just hold indefinitely. If I buy a $100 share, and the price goes to $0. I just lost $100. The most I can possibly lose is $100. (edit: and I sell at any point in the future when I decide. Could be 1 week, could be 30 years.)
But when shorting, you have to return the shares to the actual owner at some point, and since you sold the shares, you MUST get them back. But if I sold your $100 share, and in 6 days it is now $10,000 (this wouldn’t happen, but for example), and I don’t have $10,000, now I can’t return your share to you, and I’m in REAL big trouble. The amount of money I can lose is technically infinite, and since I don’t have infinite money to lose, it probably just devolves into legal issues.
So I essentially bet that the market crashes and thus make bank on it?
Shorts or longs…I hate the click-baity ones.
Every few days I find myself losing a few hours to them that would’ve been better spent doing literally anything else. So yes, in that sense I hate them.
I especially can’t stand it when either of these two things happen:
- The subtitles show one word at a time (???)
- The subtitles are animated
The one word at a time is because studies have shown it improves reading speed with no loss of comprehension.
That is what I thought looks like those speed reading techniques, but by force. So annoying. Not sure the “without loss of comprehension” is so true, all that I read says that speed reading is pseudoscience
I didn’t say anything about speed reading. I said it improves reading speed. It lets people read as fast as someone is talking, which is important in videos where people aren’t talking quickly and aren’t enunciating each word.
Speed reading is something different, all this method does is give your brain one word at a time to focus on.
But what you say IS a kind of technique that hyped for a while in the “speed reading community”, e.g. here is an implementation https://codepen.io/keithwyland/pen/yLyLNz
Or a post about it https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ye6583/whatever_happened_to_spritz_rsvp_kindle_word/
I personally find it exhausting.
I despise them because they’re shallow as fuck, “content” that requires zero brain to enjoy (I do enjoy some of that shit on occasion, but not in the form of short videos, I prefer the lazy approach of putting something on and not having to move a finger for 10+ minutes).
Another thing that makes me hate that kind of video is that it’s a breeding ground for “reacts”, as if the longer form of that wasn’t already a piece of shit. Neither of these problems are exclusive to YT, they’re just following on Tiktok, like Instagram didReaction videos are the worst, in any form. I’m waiting for the day until there’s a reaction video loop referring to nothing than other reacts in circle and nobody knows what the actual underlying video was. The recursive reaction from hell.
The only type of “reaction” content I like is experts validating or refuting non-experts’ videos in their area of expertise. I think they add a lot of value to these platforms by promoting critical thinking and the value of experts.
Then again, I hate shorts, so I rarely see even those. So maybe I’m off base.
Yeah agreed, but that presupposes that the person watching can distinguish someone just babbling and someone who actually is someone qualified to comment on some topic. And I guess the latter kind is a drop in the ocean, because expertise is a limited resource but opinions and bullshit are cheap.
I use ublock origin and you can add a custom filter. They put the shorts in a specific panel that you can block easily.
Am I a bad person for considering doing this to my partner’s computer without their knowledge or consent?
I totally understand. I dont think you’re a bad person for toying around with the idea if it’s hurting them.
I’ve thought about doing the same thing to my mom’s phone on her ReVanced app and then just go "huh, I guess YouTube broke something for everyone in ReVanced again. Sorry! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ " since I’m the one that sets it all up for her and researches and fixes it when it breaks. She has super bad untreated ADHD and she gets sucked into them super easily and ends up spending tons of time watching and getting worked up about nonsense, harmful, ‘conspiracy theory’ garbage made to target, upset, manipulate, and take advantage of people like her… It’s concerning me. It’s wrong.
But it also feels wrong to lie to her and make changes to her phone without her consent, ya know? I don’t know…
I’m curious to know if you end up doing it, and if so, how it goes.
*Edited to add: oh god I didn’t realize how long and rambly this comment ended up until after I posted it WHOOPS! 😅 My apologies. I guess if any community will understand, it’s this one, ha!
It might be worth considering telling her that you think it’s unhealthy, and asking if she’d be up for testing blocking them and seeing how it makes her feel. After a month (or whatever you decide) if she wants them back you can do that.
Knowing my parents, they wouldn’t agree to this no matter how good or reasonable it seems. They aren’t addicted to shorts, but they are to conservative media, and it seems really unhealthy for them and seems to have made them worse people. Maybe you’ll have better luck though. I think if you do it without her consent it’d be even worse if/when she finds out.
I too absolutely despise the whole format.
First time I saw them I could see immediately it was YouTube trying to be TikTok, so I just blocked them with uBO. Haven’t seen one since.
Youtube shorts are like Instagram reels, nobody likes them but they are probably good for “engagement” aka keeping people on the site for as long as possible.
“nobody likes them but keeps watching them” - that confirms my theory that it’s digital crack. I intuitively want to stay away because I feel that it cannot be good for my brain
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I like them.
