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
I keep turning them off in YouTube but that doesn’t stop them coming back. Good to know I’m paying for a hostile product. I won’t forget it.
You can use a patched YouTube client that removes ads and shorts. A few minutes worth of work to set up but worth it imo
https://github.com/KobeW50/ReVanced-Documentation/blob/main/YT-ReVanced-Guide.md
I detest them. Some science YouTubers have begun using them too, and too often they’re either just cut from longer videos I’ve already seen - and hence wasting my time until I realise that - or they contain no explanation at all because of the length.
Yeah in the best case it’s just a promotional teaser. Obviously you cannot explain anything non trivial in that amount of time.
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.
Eat my shorts
Don’t have a cow, man
I too absolutely despise the whole format.
Shorts or longs…I hate the click-baity ones.
“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.
Yeah, useless time sink with lots of flashy distraction. The people who envisioned and built the internet surely did not anticipate it will evolve into THIS.
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
It also makes my head hurt
Man I was sure this was about shorts vs pants too. Pants all day every day. Is that another adhd thing now?
No, shorts are awesome.
Especially booty shorts.
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.
Oh I love an info dump. Thank you for taking the time to explain it. It sounds like a twisted way to fuck yourself over financially or hit it real big.
… I’d rather take my chances at a craps table, sheesh!
Thanks again!
In theory, if you are following a company’s public financials very closely and keeping track of things, not all of the stock market is completely unpredictable.
Some companies do certain things on predictable cadences. Every year at WWDC, apple announces a new iphone, and every year the stock price goes up a bit as a result. You’re not going to triple your money in a week, but if you can get 5% in a week, you’re already doing as good as most banks offer for a whole year.
Knowing too much information is illegal. That’s “insider trading”, at which point it is completely not gambling because you already know if the stock is going to go up or down, and that’s just cheating.
That’s makes a lot of sense. Thank you for informing me!
It’s far more complicated than I have made it sound. it’s not just “once every year apple go up”. You’d need to be following as much public information about a company as possible, and be keeping track of trends. Keeping track of those things is a full time job. Especially since you need to keep track of many companies. And then that will still often only get you a slight edge.
Craps table look mighty good right about now then, eh? Lol
I get why Wall Street in the films is a nightmare of yelling and phones tho. Sounds too frustrating to me. I hate gambling. Not on a moral authority or nada, but on the basis that it’s just dumb lol. Sounds like stocks is just a more complicated dumb.
So I essentially bet that the market crashes and thus make bank on it?
Oh man, same. I’m new to the culture, and I thought this was another thing I have to get into now. It’s like a friend of mine who married into a Jewish family and now has to learn all this new stuff and he’s always like oh so this is a thing?
I thought you meant the short pants. I love them. I’m so sweaty all the time and long pants feel uncomfortable on my legs even if loose. Only wear them when necessary. Shorts are a godsend.
Ah so that is where this reference is from! I’m too uneducated / young, only played the GBA Generation games
You could’ve seen it if you played Fire Red/Leaf Green ;)
Ugh! My work uniform is technically PPE, so I’m required to wear it…black T shirt, black trousers that are too heavy for summer and too light for winter, and a black coat. The labourers get to wear shorts. They don’t use power tools and mostly just run materials around in a truck with AC… bastards…
For patriotic reasons I am against them, only children and tourists wear shorts in my country.
What country is that? If you don’t want to share I get it. I only ask because that’s what everyone said about Spain, and everyone I travelled with refused to pack shorts except for me. It was the height of summer, in the middle of a heat wave. Literally every single local was wearing shorts.
I went to India. 42 °C in the shade. Had the opposite problem.
That is an insane temperature. I was in the high desert in California when the night temps never really dropped below 37.8C and day temps hit that, but it was a super dry heat. 90% of the time I was just day drinking in a big assed metal barrel full of water so it wasn’t too bad. I can’t imagine doing tourist stuff in a place i want to explore in those temps.
It was work stuff, but also super dry heat. I would have died otherwise, probably.
Funny enough, it is a Spanish-speaking country
Haha that’s crazy. It was like 38C when I was there, if it was that hot in your country people would really still be wearing full pants? I admire the dedication but I don’t care if I look like a tourist, a child, or a tourist child I’m going to be comfortable. Unless I’m going to an event or place that has an actual dress code I guess. I’ve been to weddings and funerals in 38-39C temps and I suck it up out of respect. But on vacation? Miss me with that pants shit fam.
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.
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.
Tragically when I first switched to Lemmy, my friends convinced me to get Instagram to stay in better contact with them.
The difference in how much I engage with Instagram reels Vs YouTube shorts is huge. YouTube shorts suck and I get cripplingly bored or annoyed with them after 2 minutes, where as Instagram reels suck and I lose multiple hours to that fucking app. Fortunately I run a version of the app without ads etc so I’m only rotting myself and not contributing as directly to the end times.
I never tried tiktok and I’m too low willpower to stop using Instagram until they make it too shit to put the effort in, but I do feel that YouTube shorts sre the worst interation of this shitty format.
They’re comfy and easy to wear!
I can’t wear shorts, people ask if I’m riding a chicken.
Seriously though, shorts are bad pants. Do you want ticks ? That’s how you get ticks !
I never wear shorts.
I basically only watch YouTube on my TV via Roku, I hate shorts and wish there was a way to block them on the Roku app.
If google really wants to push shorts then make it a separate app. If someone is watching on a TV then chances are they aren’t looking for short form content, so stop pushing it on that medium.
They had one years ago called Vine.
I remember that being an ok way spend a smoke break, I couldn’t imagine living on it the way people use shorts/Tik Tok. The algorithm must be way more intense now.
I get what you’re saying but Vine was an independent company that got bought by Twitter then killed.
I was thinking that Google should make their own app called YouTube shorts and take on tiktok that way. Google/YouTube is trying to have an all in one app, the problem is that muddies the waters and when you stand for everything you stand for nothing. Not to mention that YouTube spent years promoting longer for content and that’s what the user base thinks of now when you say YouTube.
You can play off the YouTube brand with a separate app and still get the branding boost. But actively muddying the waters and annoying your user base is just… well I would say bad business… but given their track record, it’s pretty on brand for a Google property.
Ah, I’d forgotten that Vine was independent at first. Thanks for the correction.
It happens, I wouldn’t even want to count how many times I’ve mixed up my facts in the last year. I have no idea why, since I never used Vine, but it’s history is a useless factiod that is forever stuck in my head.
Instagram’d algorithm, at least, will prioritise reels over everything else - leading a lot of accounts to post still images as “reels”
