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 too absolutely despise the whole format.
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
Eat my shorts
Don’t have a cow, man
“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.
Man I was sure this was about shorts vs pants too. Pants all day every day. Is that another adhd thing now?
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?
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.
So I essentially bet that the market crashes and thus make bank on it?
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!
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.
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.
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.
It’s humid here so the heat index gets into the high 30’s regularly, and people still either dress formally for work or wear jeans, it is kind of nuts
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.
It also makes my head hurt
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.
Shorts or longs…I hate the click-baity ones.
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.
I can’t wear shorts, people ask if I’m riding a chicken.
They’re comfy and easy to wear!
deleted by creator
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
I hate them so much for all the reasons you mention and a few more.
But there are times that I prefer them over a 2-3 minute vidoe padded to 12-15 minutes for monetization.
I honestly prefer text over either of those options. Saves time and doesn’t over stimulate. Plus, if I lose focus I can just go back, which would be tedious in a video.
More importantly, you can search text to get straight to the point you need. Doing that in video or audio is not possible, you have to memorize timestamps
This, 100%
