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 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.
It also makes my head hurt
The only thing I like about them is that there’s no ads.
With an ad blocker there are also no ads on normal YouTube ;) and there is even an extension called sponsor block that can help skipping over in-video ads
I know, I do like supporting creators though.
i have had this conversation with my wife before when she used to show me one specific person who had very quick cuts of about a second each. i hated it so much, i would feel anxious and it would take me a while to calm down. and in that case there was no voiceover to keep track of.
I totally feel you. My wife was also confused why I suddenly was somehow frustrated and angry. Glad I’m not the only one.
Death by a thousand one-second cuts
I thought you were talking about short pants for a second before I read the body.
And yes, I do hate wearing shorts, because I have ugly knees.
Same. Ugly knees. It’s a shame because I have amazingly muscular calves I could show off. Don’t even work out. They are literally almost as thick as my thighs.
I also came here to say I don’t wear shorts.
Only for sports. And reluctantly.
Haha shorts, as in short pants, I actually like in summer :D Did not want to insult a perfectly fine piece of clothing. But it’s also totally cool not to like them ;)
I don’t know how these below 2 minute videos are called in general, like the Reels, TikToks, Shorts, it’s all the same thing to me (or I don’t know the difference)…
Are they comfy and easy to wear?
I thought it’s about pants too xD. Damn shorts with their quick cutting and cropped style!
I like shorts because they are comfy and easy to wear
Especially when it’s hot outside, they’re very refreshing!
Fair point, clothing shorts are good shorts. The summer beginning is marked by me switching from jeans to shorts!
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
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.
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.
yes. There is a youtube extension called unhook (?) which lets you remove them from pretty much anywhere on the site.
I’m going to be a lot more comfortable with shorts after bottom surgery
You know they sell shorts in most stores, right? You don’t have to cut the bottom off of pants to get short pants.
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%
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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 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”
Shorts or longs…I hate the click-baity ones.
