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How I spend less time on YouTube

pawelurbanek.com

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Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#121

Post by throw10920 »

aulin wrote: post #75
scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

I believe it's a generational thing. We, in our late thirties, didn't have so much video content, we studied from books, learned from written content. Younger generations adapted to use videos as a learning aid, sometimes as the main learning platform. We won't ever be able to understand how they work. Their brain just adapted to this kind of learning medium. For me video talking about code is slow, unsearchable, uns…

I'm in my early 20's, grew up watching YouTube, and still find textual documents superior for learning in almost all cases (with the exceptions being concise and intrinsically-animated things, like a lot of 3b1b's videos).

I don't think that there's nearly as much adaptation as there is just people getting used to watching video content and liking it more. That is, greater enjoyment, but not greater comprehension.

I suspect that nearly everyone who thinks that they "learn better from videos" just enjoys the videos more (which affects how well they perceive their own learning efficiency - humans are notoriously bad at self-assessment especially in the cognitive realm) and/or has attention issues that are mitigated by the more engaging nature of a video.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#122

Post by Tempest1981 »

thorin wrote: post #57
slig wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen Ben Eater's videos?

Wow, this guy makes me a bit sad, because I did a 4 year Elec Eng degree and the guy that taught semi conductors was so bad. Almost everyone failed the exam because they had no idea what he was talking about (lots of the other modules were good). I (re)learnt more from watching a few of these videos than I did in a semester at university.

Are there any websites/services that curate the best videos on specific school topics? With broader coverage than Khan Academy?

Searching on YouTube find thousands of matches, and I am exhausted after 20 minutes of previewing search results.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#123

Post by lambic »

scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

I'm older than you and I definitely prefer text for programming related tutorials but I'll jump straight to videos for more practical things.

Reading a recipe is fine for a lot of cooking, but some things like "How to spatchcock a chicken" benefit greatly from a video demonstration.

Similarly I took up knitting a while ago, and watching videos was the only way I could learn the techniques, trying to do it from written instructions was impossible.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#124

Post by dncornholio »

scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

Always text over video. When people say they prefer video, they don't know better, haven't actually been learning anything or are extremely lazy.

For example, to do a gradient in Gimp, you should know a few shortcode keys. Now how do I look up which key to use again? Load the video and keep fiddling with the player until I hit the right moment where he explains this little detail? It's extremely annoying to look up anything in a video.

You also waste a shitload of time because you can't just skim through all the stuff you already know.

Video tutorials are only popular because Google boosts Youtube videos over text in search. The creators don't care that it's a bad medium for you, because it's an excellent medium for them. Way more revenue to gain from a Youtube video then some blogpost

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#125

Post by JasonSage »

mill wrote: post #64

A really convenient workaround is the extension called Unhook. It's very neat and lets you to control many aspects of your Youtube experience. Available both for Chrome/Firefox: 1) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unhook-remove-yout... 2) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

This looks really nice, so I'm going to give it a shot.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#126

Post by kurthr »

scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

For mechanical stuff (dis/reasembling equipment) it makes some sense, because diagrams are never as good as an HD video at showing where that screw hole is or how to pop off a clip. At the same time, I can't watch most of those videos at less than 1.5x!

Often, the first google hit on "how to do X" is a video when, as you say, a bulleted list would be easier to follow. Maybe ads are better monetized on video so the incentive is only to create that content?

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#127

Post by Plasmoid »

allenu wrote: post #88
scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

I’m old too (43) and I enjoy short videos that get to the point as well. If a video is too long or takes too long I’ll just skip ahead and until I hear them talking about specifics. There was a point a few years ago where there was this sudden shift to longer videos on YouTube. I think part of it was greater engagement is seen on such videos, leading to more ad time. As a result though, the actual quality of the cont…

Youtube changed their advertising rules such that videos of less than 10 minutes didn't get ads so everyone padded their videos to be at least 10 minutes long.

They also prioritize watch time as a metric (and a payout stream for Youtube Red)

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#128

Post by rtsil »

aulin wrote: post #75
scoutt wrote: post #31

> Am I the only one who launches YouTube just to watch a single tutorial and ends up devouring dozens of fine-tuned recommendations? I'm hitting 40 next week, and seeing others asking for recommendations of videos on "programming a microcontroller" (or programming related) is something I can't understand. One day I sat and watched some of the videos they were recommending, and in most of them there were a person talk…

I believe it's a generational thing. We, in our late thirties, didn't have so much video content, we studied from books, learned from written content. Younger generations adapted to use videos as a learning aid, sometimes as the main learning platform. We won't ever be able to understand how they work. Their brain just adapted to this kind of learning medium. For me video talking about code is slow, unsearchable, uns…

It depends on the type of activity for me. For maths or computing, I prefer a text by far, video is too slow and doesn't allow me to go to the essential. For jazz guitar and bike repairs, video is where I learn the most.

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#129

Post by tryauuum »

mediocregopher wrote: post #77

PSA for all, you can go into your YouTube settings and disable Search History (and a bunch of other things? It's been a while), and surprisingly the algorithm more or less respects that. It completely neuters the algorithm, it won't target you worth a damn, and YouTube becomes a lot less engaging overall. Highly recommend for everyone.

Pretty much. My life went downhill after I discovered that I had disabled search history and re-enabled it

Re: How I spend less time on YouTube

#130

Post by cwkoss »

scrollaway wrote: post #44
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #20

The best way I’ve found to spend less time on YouTube is realizing that the vast majority of content is pure garbage and just stay the hell away from it. These days I only visit it when I need something specific (a tutorial on how to do a particular thing, a video the kid wants to watch, etc). And of course uBlock origin is enabled to spare me from the “unskippable ads that are longer than the video itself” experienc…

YouTube has some of the best, highest quality free content available on the internet today. Stay away from the crap, remove it from your recommendations, subscribe to some good channels. It’s that simple. Don’t if that’s not your thing but you’re missing out. If you change your mind here are a few exceptional channels to get you started, they should cater well to a HN style audience: Technology Connections (misc tech…

Kirsten Dirksen (tiny houses and alternative architecture) https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen/videos

Matthias Wandel (wookworking) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCckETVOT59aYw80B36aP9vw

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