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jonplackett • today at 7:10 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

The thing I like about an explainer video is the personality and insight of the person giving it.

Like Marquise Brownlee just has opinions I care about and I watch his videos for this reason.

If a video just explains something I could just read all I’m getting is a layer of obfuscation.


Replies

nonethewiser • today at 7:28 PM

Presumably you also like that they are explaining things right? I mean that seems like the more critical step. Otherwise if it's just Marquise Brownlee, you could just watch Marquise Brownlee say the same sequence of random words for 3 minutes a few times per day.

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xp84 • today at 7:26 PM

All of what you said is great, and I especially detest the proliferation of slop videos on YouTube, where it makes no sense to drown out the ample supply of such personalities and insights with AI voices summarizing wikipedia or Reddit threads over AI imagery slideshows.

But given how good a job this seemed to do at giving me more than just headlines, I'd love to have maybe even just an audio podcast feed of the top 10 stories like this compiled a few times a day. I would listen while I'm doing things when reading isn't practical.

tl;dr agree that we don't need this to replace reading, but I see that it can be a useful tool.

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