To not want to watch a video about things all the time

[Cheeseandlobster]

I find it so annoying sometimes when I am looking for info on the internet but the only options are to watch videos on it instead. I don't want to sit through adverts and then a 10 min video full of waffle to find info when I could skim read about it in 1 minute.

Today I was reading a page on sleep routines and without warning it switched to a clip of the writer talking about it instead. So that's me put off then. Does anyone else get annoyed by this or am I a grumpy old cow?

Very much agree. I wonder if there is a financial motive, i.e. you can squeeze more ads into videos.

I don’t actually hate videos. I am loving a series of history videos on YouTube. But I like to have a choice. Especially on news sites, I don’t always have time to sit an watch a video so if I click on an interesting story and find it’s a video with no text summary, I just click away again.

@startalovetrain I understand the life story on the recipe blogs. But it’s still annoying when you are looking for eg. How long to boil an egg and you have to scroll through an in-depth description of visiting grandma in Tuscany and the writers emotional connection to egg boiling first. I am more likely to click straight back and choose the next link.

Yay I have found my people!

I do like YouTube videos, but news sites and listicle articles being full of videos is so annoying. I did a brief secondment in digital media a few years back and they always used to trot out the line that by 2018 80% of internet data usage was video and how important they were. Problem is I don't really know anyone who likes them, I think the industry has pushed them themselves for ad revenue.

@startalovetrain

THAT must be what my 12yo DS was trying to explain to me, but I didn't understand. Bless him!

Completely agree.

Another skim reader here. I cant abide this move to videos for everything. One, it takes up valuable time, two, it takes up valuable bandwith, three, I cant always listen to noisy videos (at night/in public), four, I dont want to sit through minutes of adverts.

I think it may be to do with accessibility and how websites rank content.

A lot of people cant read to a high level and struggle to write properly. Filming a video of yourself is easy.

Video content is seen as more valuable by ranking algorithms.

videos which allow comments are valuable because one of the first comments is usually along the lines of ‘recipe starts at 6:03 minutes’

I ling for the days of linear menus, concise, but clever writing and simple lists and/or topics. I’m 50 odd. Sadly, vast swathes of the online space are now severely dumbed down.

@startalovetrain

If it's any help, I'm a recipe copywriter and the ridiculous length before the recipe is to do with google search engine optimisation, you have to have a minimum word count for their algorithm to pick it up so that's why you get so much waffling before the recipe!

Also many of them are free to use and make a small amount of money from ads, so by scrolling down you inadvertently see an ad for 2 seconds but it helps support the person who wrote it.

Hope it helps with why there's so much waffling

Does the SEO still work if you put the explanation first, and the back story afterwards? Because then I can get straight to the info I need, and the blogger still gets their SEO.

Same here. Work in a school (support staff) and our SLT have gone video crazy for staff training. I would much rather read. But I am older (in my 50s) and most school staff are a lot younger. It does seem to be a generation thing. My teenager loves videos for everything - and of course they think they can make money out of them!

Just worked out how to speed up the youtube videos thanks to this thread (it's under settings). Great!

Ugh, I am totally with you on that. I refuse to watch any videos on news sites unless it's actually some specific documentary I came looking for.
My workplace intranet section has a thing about people from different departments doing articles about what they do etc, which I skim read but rarely engage with, and they have recently started encouraging videos, which I also refuse to watch. Luckily, they also put a transcript alongside. Which proves that 80-90% of it is a useless waffle.

I do agree it's a generation thing.

I hate this so much. I don't want to spend 2 minutes watching a video that gives the same information that I could read in 20 seconds.

See also any recipe that includes the words 2/3/4 ingredient or vegan in the title.

I don't fucking care how many ingredients there are in the recipe and hate the insinuation that if there are more than a tiny number of ingredients in the recipe then people will not want to make it.

And you can usually work out from the title whether a recipe is vegan or can be easily adapted to make it so without the superfluous vegan signal in the title. Eg 3 ingredient vegan carrot soup, when carrot soup is always going to be vegan if you want it to be, ie by using veg stock and oil instead of chicken stock and butter as some might do.

@Asuitablecat

More effort to write though, isn't it? The videos push the effort onto the consumer. Interesting that speaking and listening is worthless at gcse, yet more relevant than ever. Maybe it needs to be given more prominence, with a focus on modern media. Exam boards are always so slow to catch up (yes, write an informal letter to a friend about your holiday, I'm looking at you).

As someone who works in a creative agency that creates both instructional copy and video content, I can tell you that we would charge you many multiples of the cost of writing in order to make you a video.

(I hope we would also advise you that video is a better medium for quickly communicating emotion and tone as well, obviously, for demonstrating physical processes, but that text is much easier to scan, browse, navigate and absorb at your own pace.)

@BelfastSmile

Yep, but they're usually run by ad content which they need you to see first (otherwise YouTube would save them all for the end right?) and sometimes "time spent on page" is a metric used to measure how successful a post/recipe/video is by advertisers, so it's unlikely they'll swap it round

YANBU. I never watch them. My boss is a bit of a video link sharer which can be annoying and a lot of work stuff is moving to video pieces instead of a quick summary. I don't routinely have headphones to hand and I want to know what I'm being presented with before I have it broadcast out loud. Over 50 here too.

Hope it helps with why there's so much waffling

SEO clashing with user experience. Bounce rate & conversion rate (whatever the conversion of choice might be) matter too though. I wonder what they’re like in proportion to amounts of pre-recipe waffle?

Totally agree. Writing is much more flexible, allowing you to pick out the instruction you need and re-read it as many times as you like. I don’t know why educators think video is the way to go for everything, except I know that in universities there is immense pressure to produce “wow factor” rather than actual education. Even more sadly some of that demand is driven by students who have been trained or enabled all their lives to view it as the most important element.

@TheGoogleMum

Its so nice to see most people feel the same way as me. Yes bbc content in video form I just ignore i kostly browse at work and don't want to do a video! I feel like videos need more concentration than reading a Web page for me? Becusse watching and listening. With audio only i don't take information in very well so just listening in the background isn't a good solution. I'm starting to wonder is video content better for more men and yet another way the world is making life easier for men and ignoring women?

Agreed!

This is such an interesting observation and is how I feel about auditory content.

I suspect the move to video is financially motivated mainly but also about inclusivity for those with learning disabilities.