They've changed since they originated, and we need to distinguish between what these platforms are offering today and what they offered in the past. The fact that Twitter now allows people to post larger amounts of material doesn't change the fact that you could only post smaller amounts when the platform originated. And now that people can post more, how many users make use of that feature? The large majority of users don't post anything. And among those who do post, probably the large majority of those individuals still just post brief comments, often one sentence or a fragment of a sentence, typically without any supporting arguments, documentation, etc. And when a user posts something lengthier, there will often be complaints that it's too long, even if it's only a few sentences or some other small amount. Similarly, the fact that you can get somewhat good transcripts of YouTube videos today doesn't mean that you could do so when YouTube originated or that more than a small percentage of users access that feature now that it's available.
In recent years, there's been a tendency to move from text to videos, then from videos to short videos. It's evident what direction we're headed in. It's probably not just a coincidence that the growing popularity of videos, followed by the focus on shorter videos, has been accompanied by the popularity of Twitter, a writing platform that's characterized by brevity. If there's too much of an accommodation of the desire for short videos, we can expect short videos to lead to shorter ones. These things aren't neutral. They have implications regarding our priorities, our time management, apathy, laziness, the depth of our research, the depth of our thinking, how much we retain over time, etc.
When I think about issues like these, something that often comes to mind is the situation in the 1980s, when I was in my adolescence. As far as I recall, there was somewhat of a consensus that it was shameful for people to say that they didn't read, but instead got their information from television. Since then, especially with the popularizing of YouTube, overreliance on videos has been mainstreamed to the extent that there's much less of a social stigma than there used to be. That's happened with a lot of other things as well (e.g., how sex outside of marriage has become more accepted).
There are good reasons for using a platform like YouTube. It seems to be popular largely for bad reasons, though.
The most popular videos in YouTube's history, last I saw, were all music videos, with every song being of a secular, shallow nature. Sensationalism draws a much bigger audience for a video (sensationalistic topics, sensationalistic video titles, sensationalistic thumbnails). The large majority of people who watch a video don't click the like button for it, only a tiny percentage post a comment, and the vast majority of the comments add little to a consideration of the topic. In fact, the comments below a YouTube video often make the situation worse rather than better. Much of the time, the most popular comments consist of something like an attempt at humor or remarks about the personal traits of the channel host or somebody else in the video (his demeanor, his tone, etc.). Comments that are far more substantive frequently get much less of a positive response. The quality of YouTube comments in general is really low. Frequently, neither the video nor any of the comments below it will make some of the most significant points that ought to be made about the topic at hand. I often see people refer to how they've searched YouTube for some kind of information they're looking for, without any reference to looking for it in textual sources, as if videos are all that's available. I frequently see people struggling with issues on YouTube that they shouldn't be struggling with if they did more reading. Often, issues that are seldom covered on YouTube or are absent there are available in a text format and have been there for a long time, frequently in a place where it's easy to find. But if you limit your search to videos, or one video platform in particular, there's a lot that's available that you won't come across.
Think about the most popular material on the internet: music, pornography, humor, etc. There are some common threads in much of that material. Something a large percentage of it has in common is that it gives people instant gratification. That's probably part of what makes sensationalism so influential on YouTube and elsewhere. It moves people's emotions in a way they like. They'll often give up something better over the long term to get something inferior that they want in the short term. They'd rather spend their time on a song, a pornographic video, or a joke than research a theological issue.
I have the impression that emotionalism and laziness are big factors in making video platforms as popular as they are. People like having their emotions moved by audio and video, even if the audio and video components don't add much in the contexts that are the most important. And people like having the ability to accept or reject what a video is saying based on shallow criteria like a host's physical appearance, demeanor, facial expressions, or tone of voice. Often, something like a vague impression that a YouTube host is tough, confident, or whatever will be assigned more significance than it deserves. The people who produce the videos, unlike the audience, are burdened with the inefficiency of having to handle audio and video issues every time they post something, even though the audio and video components usually don't add much or anything substantive. The audience prefers having those components, though, probably largely for bad reasons. And there are some ways in which reading is more difficult. You have to move your eyes across the text at a pace you're responsible for, in an orderly way, line after line. You have to put some physical effort into turning pages or doing some equivalent in a digital format, such as clicking a button or scrolling. By contrast, you can be more passive in such contexts with audio. An audio or video file you listen to moves at somebody else's pace, you can let your eyes and mind wander if you want, there are things like music and visuals to move your emotions and distract you along the way, and there's no equivalent of turning pages.
But the popularity of videos gives people an incentive to produce most or all of their content in that format. For those who are making money in these contexts, there's more of an audience in videos or audio than in text. And people can have non-financial reasons for wanting a bigger audience. There are tradeoffs, of course. Getting your material to a bigger quantity of people typically involves an accompanying reduction in the quality of the audience. And the bad reasons people have for making so much use of videos, such as emotionalism and laziness, are likely to get worse the more the desire for videos is accommodated. The same is true with other things involved, like the desire for shorter videos, moving the camera around a lot, and engaging in sensationalism.
When a platform like YouTube or Twitter gets better over time, such as in the ways I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we need to keep in mind that the improvement could be due largely or entirely to the influence of a small minority of people. If a small minority of people want more text on Twitter or better transcripts for YouTube videos, it doesn't follow that everybody else using the platform, or even a majority, wanted such features. In fact, those people often continue to behave as if they have little or no interest in those new features. So, we can't excuse the bad motives people probably have had for moving to certain platforms by appealing to better features those platforms now have.
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