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Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

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Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#41

Post by CM30 »

Damn, this is a video I didn't want to see today. I love Tom Scott's videos, and just about everything he's ever made has been a great watch. I still remember the VPN videos debunking common myths about them, and the one about how electronic/online voting was a bad idea.

But sadly, I get what he means here. YouTube has basically split down the middle, with the assumption being that you'll either pump out content quickly without much time to prepare, or you'll work on more infrequent essay length videos on a monthly basis or longer. And in both cases... the expectation seems to be that most videos are a professional endeavour now, created by a team of people with pro level editing skills and different people working on things like the script, research, getting the footage needed, etc.

It honestly feels like the platform isn't 'fun' anymore, and the kind of content we used to visit for is becoming less and less common by the day.

Regardless, enjoy your break/retirement Tom! You've made some incredible videos over the years, and I'll be excited to see what you create in future too.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#42

Post by CooCooCaCha »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11

What struck me was “it’s either keep growing and become a manager or stop and do smaller projects” As someone who many years back looked at a team of 40 developers I was leading and went “nah, I want to be an IC again” that resonates

I'm not sure I buy his reasoning there. He said that he uploads a video every week which is a brisk pace. Why not a video every month? Every quarter?

Perhaps he really just wants a break and this explanation sounded the most reasonable. But I hope he didn't get burned out because he was afraid of switching things up.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#43

Post by georgesimon »

Waterluvian wrote: post #31
graypegg wrote: post #12

Tom Scott’s work stands out as some of the best examples of how interesting and valuable web content can be. In a sea of short derivative junk-food content, he made things that i honestly learned from, without demanding more than 10 minutes of my time a week! There’s of course a lot of people also doing the same sort of great content, but it does feel like a slowly dying breed. Tom definitely deserves an indefinite b…

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

Are those fifty Tom Scotts all competing with each other to become 'experts of the week' on the same topics in slightly different ways? (that's what my 5 or 6 Tom Scotts do)

I wish YouTube channels could be viable by following the Periodic Videos model - stick to a single domain but keep it fresh by improving on old content.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#44

Post by brucethemoose2 »

phillryu wrote: post #39
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

Yeah but the burden is now on you to sift through the garbage to find the good stuff, especially since it's mostly mixed together in recommendations or search results etc. It feels more limited to me the other way around, like yes we have added some more good stuff, but good luck finding it. If my favorite hobby store kept on expanding and expanding and the ratio of great stuff to garbage kept going down, I would def…

This affects the other end too.

Quality niche creators are partially motivated (and sometimes supported) by viewers. The bigger the sea of garbage they are swimming against, the less inclined they will be to start or continue.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#45

Post by kbenson »

phillryu wrote: post #39
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

Yeah but the burden is now on you to sift through the garbage to find the good stuff, especially since it's mostly mixed together in recommendations or search results etc. It feels more limited to me the other way around, like yes we have added some more good stuff, but good luck finding it. If my favorite hobby store kept on expanding and expanding and the ratio of great stuff to garbage kept going down, I would def…

Is it really on you to sort and sift, or is it on you to find a good guide? In the hobby store example, there are other people around to ask, and I think that is similar as well.

The future is more content, not less, so finding mechanisms to cope with that is well worth the effort.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#46

Post by graypegg »

Waterluvian wrote: post #31
graypegg wrote: post #12

Tom Scott’s work stands out as some of the best examples of how interesting and valuable web content can be. In a sea of short derivative junk-food content, he made things that i honestly learned from, without demanding more than 10 minutes of my time a week! There’s of course a lot of people also doing the same sort of great content, but it does feel like a slowly dying breed. Tom definitely deserves an indefinite b…

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

That’s a good point, it’s the absolute numbers that give a bad impression. I think the main thing tainting my feeling about the whole situation is TikTok/Reels/Shorts content. Feels like the sort of video I like just can’t exist in that sort of format, and it’s a pretty over-emphasized format currently. (at least in the YouTube app)

still though, so many cool and interesting things to learn online from interesting folks! :)

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#47

Post by CM30 »

supernova87a wrote: post #16

I remember asking at some point what seemed to make Tom Scott so successful compared to the thousands of others who have probably tried to make it big on Youtube/social media. Was it the format/length/style, the topics, the camera work, the commentary/research, etc? I think the consensus was that he came out with generally interesting content, but most of all, predictably and sustained , which generated viewership. I…

Yeah this makes sense to me. He covered interesting and unique topics, and posted about them on a regular basis. That's extremely difficult to do in any medium, let alone something like video where filming and editing demands are significantly higher and a well researched piece just takes far longer to put together.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#48

Post by omsimun »

chubot wrote: post #30
janvdberg wrote: post #17

Tom is why I understand UTF-8 [1]. And it is not so much WHAT he explained but HOW he explained it, what really made it stick. It was his sheer unbridled genuine enthusiasm that put him on the map for me. One of the best to do it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MijmeoH9LT4

This is a great video! I’ve been writing about UTF-8 on my blog and I noticed that many programmers don’t understand it, after 10 or 20 years The main impediment seems to be that languages like Java, JavaScript, and Python treat UTF-8 as just another encoding, but really it’s the most fundamental encoding. The language abstractions get in the way and distort the way people think about text Newer languages like Go and…

It's misleading to describe UTF-8 as "the most fundamental encoding", because of the existence of UTF-32 (essentially just a trivial encoding of "raw" Unicode code points) and UTF-16 (which has certain limitations that later became part of the specification of what code points are valid in any encoding)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16#U+D800_to_U+DFFF_(surro...

UTF-8 is the most ubiquitous encoding on the web, but that doesn't make it more fundamental than any other.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#49

Post by M2Ys4U »

janeerie wrote: post #40

I'm glad he's still doing the Lateral podcast (as that's the only thing I know him from). I do wish he would get somebody besides Youtubers as guests, though. It's frustrating to hear 20-somethings with very little cultural and historical knowledge try to work through the problems.

He's had a few "mainstream" people on as guests. Professor Hannah Fry is one guest who's a pretty established broadcaster (in the UK at least).
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