alt Hacker NewsThis really highlights the misalignment between information density and monetization mechanisms.
Text is random-access, searchable, and respects the reader's time (I can skim a blog post in 2 minutes to find the one command I need). Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment.
It is somewhat tragic that the format which is often technically superior for documentation and reference (text) relies on the format that is optimized for engagement/retention (video) to subsidize it. Kudos to you for maintaining the blog-first workflow despite the incentives pulling the other way.
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It’s because a video can be passively watched when doing chores while reading text is an active … activity. The former requires less energy and commitment than the latter.
It also means that if YouTube displays an ad while I’m washing the dishes, I’m not stopping to press the skip button (unless it’s one of those silly ads that last an hour) which probably inflates the stats quite a bit.
It's nuanced but for me it boils down to: prefer videos for novel information/narrative, docs for something I know
> Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment
I recently saw that YouTube allows you to “chat” with videos through AI and can surface random content from the middle of the video if you ask it to.
You put into words what I often felt. I can’t CTRL+F a video per se. And a 30 minute video is too high a bar to learn it didn’t answer the question
> Video is linear and demands a fixed time commitment.
Because people like video. I'd rather watch a video where the narrator shows me exactly what's happening and where, over text that I have to read. Many on HN like the opposite but don't seem to have the charity to understand the point of view of people like me.