Video title: “How to unlock the demon door on the fourth level of Demon Smasher Elite”

“Hello, video game fans! Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Last week I posted a video that isn’t relevant to this video, but I need to drag out the time on this one to game the algorithm, so I’m going to rehash and plug that video. I’m going to shout out to my Patreon subscribers with ridiculous usernames I won’t pronounce well. Now let’s get to the part you’ve waiting for: I’m going to play through the entire thirty minutes worth of level four before you get to the demon door and I will stop to make useless commentary on the bad guys you encounter. Okay, now you’ve skipped forward to what looks like the area before the demon door part of the stage, but I’m going to talk about some unrelated anecdote about this game or maybe the game devs, and then plug my Patreon account and mention a completely different game that I’ll be streaming next. Oh and here’s the five seconds of the video you wanted to see when I tell you to click the right mouse button on the hidden lever next to the demon door in order to open it, except you aren’t seeing it because you skipped forward too far and gave up. Don’t forget to like and subscribe! This video has been brought to you by Nord VPN.”

Drives me crazy when I see this kind of format for things like programming. Nothing like pausing the video and trying to see what their code says.

1996 is on the latter end of what I consider the early internet, but I really miss the Video Game FAQ Archive (GameFAQs) which was murdered by a thousand cuts culminating in the death of the gamefaqs.com domain. FAQs used to be so good, these days the same information is dispersed over 50 pages of an HTML “guide” that is more ads than information, and often for less complete information, if it’s not just a YouTube video that’s even worse and shows you things but doesn’t explain them at all.

Wikihow is pretty good. Most offer a written and illustrated article as well as a video

Same. I missed those days where you can just control F to the part of the page and get the info you wanted. Now it’s wait for 2 ads to play, scroll through the intro and then a bunch of scrubbing to find it.

Has writing really become that hard to do?

It’s probably more to do with discoverability and monetization. I’m generalizing a ton, but I feel like there isn’t even a ton of super useful YouTube tutorials outside of beginner content because that gets the most views.

@bstix @Provider Strongly endorsed. For me, watching a video is possibly the least-effective way to learn how to do something. Learn to write or find someone to write for you if you want me to use your stuff.

@bstix @Provider 👏👏👏👏

I have resorted to going to the YouTube video page and reading the garbled bot translation underneath because it’s still better than sitting through a video with a bunch of filler.

@bstix

YES. And when you find a written version you have to scroll past a mile of backstory to get to the point.

@bstix Yes. Also when you’re blind, software tutorials in particular are either 15 minutes of nothing but music, or someone going “to do x thing, all you need to do is click this button, drag this slider to here, click this until it says this, type this into there, and you’re done.”

YES, this is such a peeve for me!!! I’ve developed an aversion to viewing video content unless it’s for something I truly need to see done. And even then, I’m more likely to check wikihow and endure their gifs than I am to watch someone’s video. It’s just so overdone.

@bstix soon will be very hard to find written ones that aren’t done by AI and full of dubious info.

@bstix damn, I thought I was alone with this. It’s incredibly frustrating that everything is a bloody YouTube. My theory is that people dream of those €€€s coming in from viewers.

@bstix @Provider Trying to copy snippets of code to try / adapt out of the video sucks as well. I often don’t need/want to download an entire sample project from a link in the description.
Plus, given time constraints, I occasionally try to grab a few moments for tutorials while hanging out with family, sitting at a restaurant, or whatever else, so I’d have to watch videos muted as well.
Definitely always look for written form.

@bstix It’s that writing doesn’t earn money like YT does. :(

Yeah, you could skim pages, or read thoroughly, search in the text, easily jump back to the previous paragraph to skim a bit again, google (or DDG) for terms you remember from an article to find it again, etc.

Not just tutorials, I enjoyed reading tech or product reviews, like the original Anandtech when Anand was there, that all seems to be going the way of obnoxious youtubers.

@bstix@feddit.dk @Provider@feddit.de

Written tutorials are not hard to do, but before I tell you what they are, just a reminder to like and subscribe to this post, it really helps me out.

Now let’s dive in!

Written tutorials are just not as easy to “monetize”

@bstix @Provider hear hear. Fucking video tutorials… they always skip over the one tiny thing you need to know …

@bstix

OMFG this so much. Especially since most tutorials are ponderously slow and tedious. At the other extreme, are the ones with no subtitles and no sound where you are expected to follow a cursor flying around the screen clicking on things and are supposed to understand what happens. Those in particular should die in a fire.

@bstix
@Provider @bursaar Agreed! There’s no CTRL+F on a video, either!

@bstix everyone wants to be a movie star

@bstix

Worst I remember was a printer Manual that explains the error codes. As Slides, in a video. So you cannot even really google it.

@Provider

@bstix @Provider @gvwilson writing is as hard as it ever was, but monetization of ad-hoc tutorial content is far easier and more lucrative on youtube. People are literally being paid to pollute your search results with video.

I’m actually optimistic; I think eventually youtube will face too much flak for this kind of garbage, it’ll start affecting viewership, they’ll tweak the algorithm or the partner program to punish bad tutorials and there’ll be a renaissance of the written stuff.

@bstix @Provider Writing was always hard for most technical people. Technical writing was always a nightmare to read. Noone has ever cared about language.

Bad Videos are just easier to produce than bad written docs, and they don’t reflect back to you as bad as bad written docs do.

@bstix @Provider Chances are three video doesn’t contain the answer anyway. It’s all about monetizing your tech support needs.

@bstix couldn’t agree more!

Most of my students preferred video, even if with very few exceptions slides + text was better for them (for the stuff we did).

Also *good* video takes forever to make, good text+image tutorials slightly less forever but the search is much easier!

@bstix @Provider @benjiweber

You also can’t “copy and paste” code from their video screen.

@bstix best example ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ZTGpRMU04

@bstix
And wondering why you need X or Y that doesnt relate to what youre doing only to find out it was a commercial 🙃
@Provider @rhinocratic

@bstix @Provider

Well, we write detail rich, history filled, alternative versions presented tutorials and how tos all the time on CoffeeGeek.

They can be found here:

https://www.coffeegeek.com/guide/howtos/

@bstix @Provider it drives me insane that I can’t type text into a box and have an article come back to me. I’ve found videos that explained a thing beautifully, and then I can never find it again because the phrase I remember wasn’t in the tags.

@bstix @Provider I was trying to work through an online class on Python, and every hour video included ten minutes of encouraging the viewer to keep at it, and five minutes of lame puns. The actual instruction was fine, but text would have been much easier.

@bstix

I know what you mean. “-site:youtube.com” has become part of a lot of my Google searches.

@bstix @Provider not to mention the dreadful wait to see whether this tutorial is even applicable to your situation 🥴​

or when something is updated but you still only find videos about the old version because videos can’t be edited after the fact 🥴​🥴​🥴​

@bstix The ones that annoy me are the youTube videos that are text on the video but just a music overlay… no verbal instructions at all and since Ic an’t see the video period it is useless to me.

@bstix @Provider same for most other written content. Everything is a Podcast these days … very annoying as you can’t search for content in those …

@bstix @Provider I love Instructables.com

@bstix @Provider yes, even written tutorials with a few photos.

Also, I cant remember coming across a written tutorial & abandoning it because of how it’s written, but there’s been multiple times I’ve left a video because I can’t listen to that presenter any more.

@bstix @TechEnthusiast 100% This is especially annoying when I’m trying to find out how to do something in Python or whatever programming language I happen to be playing with. I am blind and use a screen reader. If the text is written, I can review word by word, line by line, character by character, ETC. This is important when trying to learn programming.

@bstix @Provider I read considerably faster than people talk, so written information is a lot faster for me to get. Written tutorials are way better too because you can easily re-read difficult parts.

@bstix @Provider I’m guessing a big part of it is that writing blog posts doesn’t pay ad revenue these days. Also most text tutorials are drowned out by algospam and your content will probably get scraped and reposted with better SEO and worse ads the moment it’s out. :/

@bstix @Provider God yes. I recently bought a bottle of rum that has a ridiculous ball valve built into the neck so my first attempt to pour it yielded nothing. Googled it & a YT video came up—something ridiculous like 7 minutes or longer—that could have been handled by a single sentence on the label. (Or better yet, not using a ball valve)

Has writing really become that hard to do?

The cynic in me says yes.

@bstix @Provider Same. I hate video tutorials. I play a lot of video games and sometimes I need to look something up, which sometimes means I get lucky and someone has written a decent walkthrough down, but often times means I have to start and stop a damn video over and over and over to get the information at the pace I need.

@bstix Yea, searching is basically slow, and unsearchable.

However, a proper setup tutorial has the virtue of being complete. People will typically forget to write ‘import random’ in their python docs, or ‘systemctl restart transmission’, because they think it’s obvious.

With video tutorials, you get the whole thing, and you can literally see where you’re deviating from the script.

Of course that’s possible with written text, but I seldom find it.

@bstix @Provider I can’t see any of the responses (must be a mastodon thing) but I can tell you that this not the first time I’ve seen this complaint and it has had an impact: I had several tutorials to produce this summer and planned on doing them as videos. As the summer approached I saw comments like this and switched to blog posts instead. So, I just wanted to let you know you’re not shouting into the void.

I love Whisper for this. Turns these videos into nice transcripts that I can search through.

@bstix @Provider

I find that very annoying too… The search engines are not like they used to be. They are all turning into clickbait sites.

@bstix 💯 embedded videos forced to fit into 256x256 pixels where you can’t read shit.

This is one oft the longest Threads I’ve eher Seen in lemmy.

@bstix @Provider
Totally agree, it’s awful. I recently noticed that the YouTube android app seems to have built in auto-transcription that is often (but not always) searchable. I haven’t been able to find this on the desktop webpage, only on the mobile app.

@bstix A friend once said “videos are for marketing; text is for instruction” and it made it all make sense.

@bstix @Provider This! I’m not sure who is more at fault. Is it that writers don’t want to write or that readers don’t want to read (causing writers to shift from writing)? Either way it is torture. I’m a fast reader. Videos go at their own agonizing pace. Who thought this was a good idea???

@bstix @Provider Agree, provisionally. I mean, I do a lot of stuff where the visual element makes a great big honking difference & if someone tries to describe it in words & aren’t absolutely amazing at it, meaning can get really lost in written directions.

On the other hand I absolutely adore the printed how-to book that came with my 50’s sewing machine & it is, in fact, very meticulous in describing the physical situation (OK, it also has some drawings) 😊

@bstix @Provider it really makes it hard to learn at your own pace. Rewinding the same part of a tutorial video over and over again to get what a particular section is saying is just tedious compared to a quick Alt+Tab to reread a paragraph.

@bstix @Provider

Oh gosh, this! I am way better at picking up what is relevant to me in a text article while scanning a text than waiting for thing to happen in a video. It’s so infuriating sometimes. Also, video streaming is using so much data that I would rather not do it when I am using mobile internet… So yeah, bring back text based tutorials…

@bstix @Provider I wish the videos would all simply have the written directions in the description so regardless of how a person absorbs best it’s there.

@bstix @Provider sometimes I want a video to walk me through it and *still* get irritated by trying to drop it in exactly the right spot 50x to execute the steps. . . Give me written instructions any day. And link to the damn video.

@bstix @Provider video is better for certain things, but does not replace a written tutorial at all. If anything, they complement each other.

@bstix @Provider I’ve been a programmer for over a decade. I inevitably spend part of every day searching the web for very specific or very general problems. Not once have I watched a video to find those answers. There is nothing more boring than watching someone else write a todo list app (seriously, stop making these) for exactly 10:01 minutes.

@bstix @Provider

I hate YouTube tutorials. Because I can read a lot faster than the tutorials can speak.
I am also perplexed by the rise of audio books. It is not a good idea for a driver of an automobile to listen to an audio book. Otherwise I do not see the point

@bstix @Provider I’m dyslexic and even I can’t stand these Youtube tutorials. The irony is probably that the script they write to make said tutorial is likely many times more useful than the tutorial itself, just because it’s a video…

@bstix @Provider

It seems so, and this is not good because many times written tutorials (including technical ones) are better.

@bstix
I couldn’t agree more. I want a manual. A text. But I don’t think it’s writing that’s become hard to do - a lot of people just really hate to read.

@bstix @Provider oh god I hate it when I try to look something up and the only thing I can find is some awkward person going “so uh, you uh, click on this and then, uh, type uh that.” Like why can’t they just type somewhere in a blog or forum or something “type X in a console”?

@bstix @Provider I was one of the guys who used to write those, for Microsoft and others. I was at Microsoft when the boom dropped and most and most written documentation projects in favor of minimal on line help files and CBT (pre-video scripted feature demonstrations. The project (the Word for Windows technical manual) was shuffled to Microsoft Press, which didn’t want it, leaving me in the middle. Fun.

@bstix @Provider
Heard on NPR this morning, that UNESCO has declared “computer learning” ineffectual. It goes with a study I read some years back that showed that retention is poor when reading from a computer screen instead of textbooks containing the same information. Physiologically speaking (brain function), a textbook provides tactile and spatial memory “hooks” that the sameness of a computer screen does not, that enable superior recall at a physical level. “Muscle memory” if you will.

You can chatgpt it

@bstix @Provider I think that it is that a lot of people don’t want to read (they’d rather be read or talked to). Back in the day, I created written notes to all my classes, courses, and design tutorials. It was a feature! But it is only valued by a few.

@bstix this trend makes me crazy. There are some cases where video is quite useful but they are few. Apart from how painfully slow the video versions are, there’s also no way to watch them if you happen to be in a public place (coffee shop, airport lounge, etc) without earphones. I mean unless you’re one of those sociopaths with no respect for those around you. I hate it.

@bstix @Provider
Many YouTube tutorial videos include the transcript in the “comment” or “description” areas of the video. (I agree with you.) Reddit is also a good source for this kind of info.

@bstix @Provider

Writing hasn’t become that hard to do. Plenty of writing still occurs. The old writing still exists. However, it gets constantly harder to find written content with search engines, which make their money off ad content.

Videos monetise much, much better. So does wasting more of your time.

@bstix @Provider I am SO with you on this.

@bstix @Provider writing clearly has *always* been hard. For a lot of people.

Making videos has become super easy, so I don’t blame people for resorting to it… even though I, too, prefer a short writeup.

@bstix @Provider Good technical writing is expensive. Bad technical writing is ineffective. Video is cheap and gives the illusion of being useful.

@bstix I usually run youtube tutorials through https://github.com/obra/Youtube2Webpage to convert them to a usable format.

@bstix @Provider I miss the writing, too.

@bstix @Provider it would be great to have the best of both worlds: written instructions supplemented by short videos of the most complicated steps. By short, I mean a minute at most— probably no longer than 30 seconds in most cases, only illustrating a single step.

@bstix I don’t think it’s because writing things is hard but people have become increasingly passive. Why sit down and read for an hour when you can just have someone explain it to you in only 15 minutes

@bstix @Provider Don’t forget that the first minute of the 3 min tutorial is bumpf promoting the channel.

The worst are the videos that are little more than a Windows desktop and a syntesized voice of a tutorial that could be written. Additional negative points for instructions writen on Notepad on the screen on that video.

@bstix @Provider I also prefer text tutorials too. Only this way I can skim through the contents and find what I need quickly.

@bstix @Provider SAME!
I don’t want to watch a video. I want something I can read in 60 seconds so I can move on.

@bstix God, I feel this. It doesn’t help that many written tutorials have been ceded to sites with sketchy or flat out wrong information.

@bstix Sometimes it really is easier to show than to tell. Video tutorials make a lot of sense for navigating complex bike maintenance procedures. Much easier than reading the documentation provided by SRAM, for example.

@bstix I HATE written tutorials. They have their place but I’d rather someone physically show me something than me reading up on it and oh I did it wrong cause I don’t understand what they meant.Videos can be slower but they are more clear on what to do and how to do. I can’t get a frame of reference from a text description.

@bstix @achisto I guess the monetization on YouTube is a given but ads on blogs are not welcome or blocked away therefore the Author has to use patreon or something to regain some of the invested time, not every person does it out of pure enjoyment nowadays

@bstix @Provider People are still writing, but that isn’t what Google wants to show you.

@bstix @Provider
Such an incredibly loud AMEN to this!! 😡😡😡

@bstix @Provider Half of it is SEO garbage and no substance. The other half is written by people who’re apparently completely incompetent.

@bstix i totally agree with that. videos are ok if they demonstrate how to do manual things like repairing a bike chain or drilling holes or even cooking things. but with cooking the usefulness of videos ends. mostly a written receipt is much better, more informative and faster to get than a 20 minute video of how to make pancakes. and videos that imitate computer tutorials are absolute nonsense. maybe for repair work like switching ram or installing some hardware, but even then i’d prefer a written instruction. you can’t really fast forward videos but you can easily skim a text or search for special words in it.

@bstix @Provider

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@bstix @Provider I really dislike video tutorials, when I can read the same content in much less time. I always wind up taking notes, since that way I can remember what was said.

Other thoughts (from the days of tape)- fast forward, or speed up play time. Then pause, and take screenshots.

@bstix
Y.E.S.!
@Provider @Rusty_invader

@bstix @Provider I’m so glad I’m not the only one!

@bstix @Provider writing isn’t any more difficult, but the switch happened when YouTube views started paying more than banner ad impressions.

@bstix @JenWojcik Agreed, life’s too short to watch people’s tedious meandering videos.

@bstix @Provider @Textzicke so true

@bstix @Provider I think they’re still there but the steering to the video is more aggressive

@bstix Thank you! Same here! I hate those stupid youtube tutorials. Who wants to listen to all that crap if you just need a 3 second detail? And then having to listen to the whole video several times because you miss the detail… arrghhh…
@Provider

@bstix @Provider Absoltely agree with this.

@bstix @Provider Maybe that’s one things ChatGPT would *actually* be useful for (unless it “hallucinates” a lot of fake stuff and people start inadvertently breaking shit.).

@bstix @Provider I use YT videos sparsely and when I feel lazy

@bstix @Provider this is part of why I’ve started publishing my own tutorials to the web.

@bstix @Provider I always skip those. Indeed terrible and useless.

@bstix @Provider
Same, I prefer written instructions for most things. I don’t want to keep pausing, rewinding. That’s fine for work tasks, when I’m learning a new method, technique. Still lame to do the pause/rewind, but that’s necessary when it has to be hands-on.

@bstix When I learn something new I write it down and hope to put it somewhere on the web where people find it. Sadly shit like steck exchange don’t allow that. So I have some blog entries and some github snippets and other things. Just hoping the search engines will find that.

Sadly they all return youtube videos because google needs to make money and doesn’t care about search anymore …

@bstix @Provider I suspect the first video provider that provides searchable captions to jump to a point in a video has a chance to beat out YouTube.

YouTube does have automated captions, and Google leverages this for some searching, but looking at a specific video and trying to find the relevant part is…more complicated, even when the video creator makes chapter bookmarks.

@bstix @Provider I worked with many young workers explicitly wanting video tutorials instead of written ones. Still don’t understand why this would be better 🤷‍♂️

@bstix @Provider Not that it has become hard to do, just that it is easier to monetize a popular video I guess

@bstix I absolutely prefer written tutes, but youtube makes it easy to get paid for content, so there is incentive to favor video. Those of us who prefer the written form need to think about how to achieve similar compensation for a given time investment by creators.

@bstix @Provider nope, but reading

@bstix @Provider writing a blog post doesn’t pay writer’s bills, YouTube does. Most people who can afford blogging for free are busy. So most blogging now happens on YouTube, where creators can actually make some non-trivial money. It sucks but us geeks seem to have given up on inventing a good way to pay authors.

@bstix @Provider
People are probably hoping for youtube adsense money or something

@bstix @Provider yes

@bstix if people don’t read articles, more than “hard”, writing has become not sustainable.

@bstix @Provider for programming/ game dev / graphics, check out https://blog.demofox.org :)

@bstix @Provider I think video’s just gotten too easy.

@bstix @Provider Amen!!!

@bstix @Provider When I do a written tutorial no one pays much mind. The two YouTube tutorials I’ve done have gotten in the 5 figures in terms of views. I prefer doing written content but it is what it is.

@bstix @Provider And you can’t Ctrl-F a video to quickly find relevant bits.

Chances of the creator utilising the chapter markings (just edit in timestamps in the description) are slim for these things.

@bstix I have watched some very good video tutorials on how to do stuff in Excel and how to make things in wood. But I agree that it does depend a lot on the person doing the video, and the majority are really bad and to be avoided

@bstix @Provider

Or how they waste your valuable time begging you to subscribe, click the bell, become a patreon supporter, which really is just padding to get the time past a certain point for monentization, and they also need the subs to achieve that goal.

@bstix @Provider Totally agree. And the bad vocal cords hurt my ears. 👂 🙉

@bstix ☝☝☝☝ THIS!! THIS!! THIS!! THIS!! THIS!! THIS!! 💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

@bstix @Provider Agree. However, written manuals don’t generate revenue for the maker (and Google).

I used an installation technicians’ manual today to troubleshoot one of my heating/cooling thermostats. The manual was smaller than A4, printed double-sided in a small font with small pics. It contained a busload of useful information. For the makers of such devices, enabling technicians to use and troubleshoot them easily, massively improvers their market adaptation and number of support calls.

@bstix @Provider Flip side: I started a project to teach people obscure skateboard tricks (blatant plug: www.freestyletricktips.com). I wanted to cover both sides, so I made videos, took screenshots from them, and made a website to write detailed information that was easily skimmable, searchable and translatable.

Something like 90% of the audience go straight to Youtube - and then ask questions covered on the website! It’s maddening.

@bstix @Provider no, writing has always been hard. However, a video is easily monetized whereas a text post is not.

Welcome to late stage capitalism.

@bstix @Provider 😂👍

@bstix I agree, but note that YouTube pays people who create popular tutorials, something that was never as lucrative for people writing

@bstix @Provider Yes!

YES!

@bstix @Andrewhinton So say we olds.

@bstix @Provider i think i like a mix of both, a written tutorial with a video just in case you cant understand something, tho yeah it’s becoming harder and harder to find a written one, thats why usually i just go to the comments and seek if someone has the same problem as me LOL

@bstix @Provider Yes, but you can slap 4 ads on a 8 minute YouTube video that should fit in a toot

@bstix this, but also sometimes I do need the video tutorial for certain things

@bstix @hugo has AI not yet reached the point where it can watch video tutorials and provide a written summary. I mean, not just a transcript, but actually *watch* it describe the visual aspects effectively in the form of a step-by-step howto?

@bstix @daviddlevine 💯 And you didn’t even include text searchable!

@bstix @Provider Not hard to do, but hard to monetise.

@bstix
This!!

I read faster, than I show video.

@Provider @boris

@bstix @Provider it’s harder to stuff ads in written docs 🤮

@bstix @Provider it’s easier to monetize a YouTube channel?

@bstix @Provider I feel like they’ve caught on because cookie notices/inline ads are more annoying than youtube ads

@bstix @Provider
Do both.

A written tutorial is quick to skimm for those that know, what they don’t know.

But if you don’t really know, what you need to know, a video can be life savior. I’m sure you’ve tried desperately to figure out, where that exact setting is located, when the written tutorial is a bit vague about it. Or the system has changed, since it was made.

@bstix @Provider

Then there’s the utterly bizarre way that people feel compelled to have lift muzak playing in the background while they speak…

@bstix @Provider I find written tutorials about as useful as videos at this point.

@bstix @Provider Agreed! I have often wished the video maker would take the time to add chapters/time stamps and titles to their videos allowing viewers to skim back and review the sections they want to. As an educational tool, this is essential.

@bstix @zoomar Please. A manual, written by someone involved in the making. An index.

@bstix @Provider

Agree 100%.

ONLY time video is better is when it’s a navigation guide. Like for a game.

Much easier to find that hidden bonus item if you follow a video than to try to follow a description.

@bstix @Provider 👍

@bstix @Provider this ^

@bstix @Provider @stuartl yes unfortunately.

https://flameeyes.blog/2021/10/05/reader-is-dead-but-what-about-writers/

(Don’t get me started on bad video tutorials https://flameeyes.blog/2017/11/29/are-tutorials-to-blame-for-basic-it-problems/)

@bstix @Provider

I’m with ya here. I should have the option to, not HAVE to, watch a video on something. I’d rather skim text.

@bstix @Provider
I generally prefer written instructions over video, too. Talking heads especially, no thanks.

@bstix @Provider
This!
(Also I dislike video as a medium. It’s too easy to manipulate the viewer.)

@bstix @Rose_On_Mars I agree, but as a creator, I also understand why: You have to sit down and do the thing anyway.

With a video, you basically record & publish that (with some editing, which is often done by a second party, or not at all).

In written form, you only start there. You now have to take notes and screenshots (and hope you took all of them), and then write the whole thing.

So if you don’t have much time, a video tutorial is the quickest way to at least get the info out there.

@bstix @Provider A 3 minute video where someone shows you how to change your car’s headlights does tend to be better than a text description.

But it’s no longer a 3 minute video. It’s 25 minutes with a 5 minute sponsor segment, 15 minutes of faffing about, 3 minutes to plug pateron, 1 minute of intro and outro, and then 1 minute where they show the changing of the lightbulb but they cut away to a wide shot so the host can be shown clowning around and you can’t tell what he did.

@bstix you’re absolutely not the only one

@bstix
As a technical writer, I can’t agree more. Video tutorials are time sinks for most topics. I absorb a lot more information if it’s text I can refer back to.

@bstix YouTube offers free hosting and a social network with a powerful search engine. I don’t know of any coding website that offers free tutorial hosting for any level of programmer/developer with anything similar to the robust visibility of YouTube. Stack Overflow is the closest analog, but it’s a question-based website, not an answer-forward tutorial website.

@bstix Absolutely agree.

@bstix @Provider I agree. It’s terrible time management. Just give me written instructions and it will take two minutes. I shouldn’t have to sit through a fifteen minute video just to learn one move!

@bstix @Provider Not to mention the onslaught of video ads. I am already at a point where I am not watching videos because I can’t bear the unskippable ads 🤮

@bstix @Provider I suppose it’s hard to earn money on written tutorials. And everything is about earning money nowadays.

@bstix @Provider There are times & situations when a video demonstration of how something is done is very useful, but for the most part clear, well-written instructions w/ a clear illustration/diagram or two beats having to watch someone sell their YouTube channel for 10 mins before they breeze thru 2 mins of poorly filmed instructions.

(Also: why do people think it’s necessary to insert painfully unfunny animations, sound effects, etc to keep viewers entertained in a video <10-mins long?)

@bstix @Provider When I do use a video to learn I am a fan of the double speed option or sometimes 1.5x if they speak a bit faster.

@Provider @bstix It’s even worse for those of us who can’t see the screen. Oftentimes Youtube tutorials rely heavily on visual graphics and screen grabs which are barely even alluded to in the narration, if at all. This is a serious disadvantage to blind folks like myself.

@bstix @Provider Writing doesn’t pay. Youtube does, or at least can.

@bstix this, oh my goodness, this.

@bstix @Provider agreed. Also online courses like Udemy, often only give you the video content. Would prefer some of the more important bits to be in a handout PDF at least

@bstix I’m so, so glad I’m not alone in feeling this way. This is why I will always read the transcript of podcasts and videos if
available.

@simon @bstix @Provider hard to write? no. But most people no longer read. So… tutorials become movies, t seems toe easily attention than written text, sadly

@bstix @Provider This and onobstrusive javascript.

@bstix @Provider “Has writing really become that hard to do?” Yes, reading is harder now for them, so you can imagine how hard writing is. Not only that, for the newest generations even watching a long video can be hard, what would explain the success of tiktoks, reels and all that crap.
Even worse, in a short time, if not already, AIs will read for them and will explain as if we were 5 year-old kids.

@bstix @WideAperture true that. “I’m a visual learner “ is all well and good, but why not cut to the chase, with your eyes? 🤷

@bstix @Provider
Ugh yes I completely agree.
Especially when you have to pause the video to see the exact command being typed, and then you have to manually re-type the same (complex) command, rather than being able to cut-and-paste. ☹️☹️☹️

@bstix @Provider Yes, here a discussion https://forum.waarneming.nl/index.php/topic,505255.msg2568877.html#new about the document manual

@bstix @Provider written is bad now too. try looking up a recipe. you are assaulted with ads, and a long useless story while trying to get to the actual data.

@bstix @Provider Absolutely, and not to forget, these videos need all the wdf/IDF keywords to rank properly. So they need to blow them up like hell, make it nearly impossible to extract the badly needed information… omg, I hate it too

@Provider @bstix I simply don’t watch Youtube tutorials.

@bstix @Provider

Yes! Amen.

@bstix @Provider I almost never will give a video presentation even a smidgen of attention. I AM NOT INTERESTED! Give me something to read, and please make it succinct.

@bstix @Provider written has become hard to monetize

@bstix @Provider From a creator’s perspective that sounds rather ungrateful. Why not be happy that people take the time to create free tutorials at all – in the way they see fit? We look for tutorials because they shorten the time we would otherwise need to figure things out. So it’s weird to say “you helped me save 2 hours of trial-and-error, but it took 3 minutes instead of 1, so damn you!”.

@bstix @Provider I personally feel combo of both works in some scenarios. But I agree, I dread the fact that all tutorials are on site that can remove them any minute.

@bstix @Provider You can use ChatGPT for written tutorials, which have shown excellent results and, in my opinion, are better than video tutorials and the help sections within the software and hardware. Alternatively, you can skip the videos to view specific peaks, as most people face the same problems.

@bstix @Provider
Well said

@bstix @Provider Oh wow, I don’t want to think what my first forays into Linux would’ve been like had it been like this. No longer stacks of HOWTOs printed onto fan-fold, but links to YT… 😔

@bstix @xjki nobody pays for writing. YT pays for views.

@bstix

Hard to monetize a 15s read on a forum. Easy to monetize that YouTube video.

@Provider

@bstix @Provider Video tutorials are the thing to do now because they can be packaged into a saleable course, and also because it’s easier to be discovered on Youtube than on the open web. It sucks because coding and related topics definitely work better in written form. Most of us are able to read faster than watch.

@bstix @Provider producing a quality video is harder than writing. One reason why these videos proliferate is that for many use cases, showing is a more effective means for teaching than telling.

@bstix @Provider Agreed. There are a few things it might be helpful to see done but mainly I read and scan much faster than people talk and can search for text in a way that isn’t yet common for videos.

@bstix @Provider I can only study with music, it is impossible to do with video tutorials.

@bstix @Provider writing is hard, recording a stream of random stuff is easy.

@bstix @rubenerd Just on topic: https://phpc.social/@grmpyprogrammer/110780220649682965

@bstix @Provider
@bbak

YT-Tutorials are like Voice-Messages … more important for senders as for the “audience”.

@bstix @Provider
Especially given that a good video is scripted, which means that before it was a video, it was…

…wait for it…

…written. It was a written document. Just give us the written document. You already have it. You made it. It must exist in order to make the video. If you still want to make the video, fine, go ahead. It might be fun. People might enjoy it. But you have a written document, so make that available too.

@bstix @Provider
I created an hour-long tutorial to answer that very question.

@bstix @Provider it’s harder to monetise

@bstix @Provider Too many people’s attention spans are mangled beyond repair by TikTok culture, which is a purposefully brain degenerative thing. I feel so strongly about this stuff I will usually unfollow someone who posts primarily video clips. When I want a video, it’s because it’s something I went looking for on purpose. Not because I can’t follow linear thoughts. (Yeah, color me crabby, but since you brought it up…)

@bstix Oh my god yes. I spent $60 every few months on one of those thick-ass “How to Adobe Photoshop” books with an included CD, and worked through the tutorials chapter by chapter, and that’s how I learned every computer skill until the early 2000s. Textual tutorials that are well-written and well-edited are POTENT because they deliver skills into your head as quickly as you can absorb it.

Bonus: *paper* books have the advantage of sitting NEXT to your computer and not taking up a third of your screen real estate, which was super important 30 years ago when screens were tiny.

@bstix @Provider YouTube provides ad revenue in a predictable way; there is no equivalent platform for written conten

@bstix @Provider a thousand times this!

@bstix @Provider I’ve talked with several people who have multimillion follower accounts on youtube, and their experience is just like mine: you can spend x amount of time on writing a detailed blog post with pictures, or you can spend 3x that time making a video, and the video will get at _least_ a thousand times more viewers than the blog post.
One of my videos has gotten approximately a quarter million more views than everything I’ve ever written online, combined.

@bstix I feel like the basic unit of communication for young people now is the video and not the written word. IMO it is inferior but so it goes…

@bstix @Provider Yes! I can skim read for what I want *much* faster than trying to scrub through waffle in a youtube video.