The worst thing about online learning is that everything has become a video. Every code tutorial. Every design tutorial. Nobody actually writes out a guide anymore. It's just "hey guys welcome to my tutorial" and watching 10 minutes of content that isn't remotely relevant...
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@Daojoan @encthenet aka “See me do $something I haven’t done (in a long time/ ever before)
@Daojoan
I feel this. Tried to watch part of a 3h video on master class mobile phone networks, and there was so much I already knew that if it was a long blog post I could easily scroll past the parts I knew already saving me a lot of time. Instead I just bailed on the video.
(Probably doing videos for those sweet ad dollars.)
@Daojoan Videos are the worst for learning things like coding. How do copy some sample code? Or do some training things with answers.
@Daojoan I prefer my tutorials in written form as well. Video is a terrible medium for tutorials. It's a feeling I also get from audio books in general: it's just too slow compared to reading.
@Daojoan Why I put that shit in NotebookLM so you don't have to watch them.
Well, videos are good for bicycle repair, usually.
Not so good for coding. Why do I need to see someone type something on screen?
When you find the bit of info that you want inside the video, screen capture the important bits, and make a note in your favorite note-taking app (like #Joplin ) so you won't have to do it again.
@Daojoan the top-shelf content from @piccalilli is worth checking out.
@Daojoan
Funnily enough, I was ranting similarly earlier today. It’s so rude to waste so much of your audience’s time just because you can’t be bothered to write a text version.
https://mastodon.social/@KimSJ/116113853910864608
@Daojoan Absolutely! Good God! So sad honestly! I'm glad though that the 100 Days of SwiftUI is still text-based along with the video, but still... I know what you mean!
@Daojoan
Too right. Video guides are only one pillar of (potential) education.
@Daojoan I feel that and I am glad that we convinced a bunch of people to write tutorials: https://oemof-solph.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials.html
@Daojoan You are onto the truth. I love the convenience and art of video/film. However, "educational film and tv" are time consuming and frequently/usually unclear. While I use maps for navigation instead of a list of directions, I much prefer a guide with good clear drawings to a video tutorial. The latter are to keep viewers online while data harvesting. It's the tyranny of the filmmaker to control how viewers are fed information. As kids, we mocked "educational films" as time out.
@Daojoan I swear I'm constantly running into a theme, were something that's better off as text is made a video and then some complicated disassembly tutorial again is in text form that is so vague most of the time I have no idea what's been referred to, especially when it's put through a machine translator first.
I remember, that I had to find a certain function on a device I own.
Explaining where to find it, takes two simple sentences in English, maybe 200 bytes.
The only thing, I found on the net: A multi-minute #video. Megabytes wasted. Let's burn the planet.
@Daojoan And to make matters worse, there is fuck ton of stupid Ai generated generic slop videos that don't actually fix anything, it's just a generic video to fix some very broad issue and you can find like 15 same videos from different "creators".
@Daojoan
"Oh, I remember this video talked about that. Let me just ctrl-F the keyword to find the right part of the video..."
@Daojoan not to toot my own horn too much, but this has been annoying me for YEARS, and after pushing for way too long there's now interactive learning built into #Grafana.. as in, If you go to https://play.grafana.org/alerting , click the question mark in the upper right, and then select the interactive guide, it teaches you within the UI
@Daojoan the inability to process written language was the first slice at the throat, imo.
@Daojoan As if they are meant to be training some GenAI tool or something.
@Daojoan Now there is a AI button on youtube videos which you can use for summarizing the video or asking other questions.
FWIW, many educators also find this terrible from an instructor’s point of view. Of course, some enjoy it. But for many it shifts the focus from teaching, learning, and subject matter to performing on screen, which is not what we got into the field for in the first place.
Do not underestimate the extent the ongoing “pivot to video” reflects what can be monetized rather than actual preference or effectiveness.
@Daojoan omg this. Every click to a link is painful.
@Daojoan yes! We had a discussion about this at my customer, and a user survey. The result has been 50/50 between video and written. We did a blended learning concept and we decided to choose the best for the users .
I agree , I like written as well more
@Daojoan I always hated video tutorials. Esp. because the format is inherently hard to adjust for updates.
@Daojoan Writing good guides is so much harder. Modern life gravitates towards the easy path.
@Daojoan Yes, I greatly prefer a concise, written 'how to' above the endless blathering on a video.
@Daojoan depending on what you want to learn I can suggest the Odin project if it’s software development you want to learn they have an exhaustive guide
@Daojoan Fully agree. Unfortunately most (AI gen'd?) websites also fail to get to the point efficiently, and ramble on around the subject for ages. Hence I prefer a short'n'succinct Codeberg/Github page or minimal blog post that dives straight into the issue and be done with it.
@Daojoan to be fair, video *tutorials* have worked better than written *tutorials* for me in many occasions. What I really struggle with right now is finding something that *isn't* a tutorial when all I need is concise, high-quality, up-to-date, structured and easily searchable reference material. Especially when it comes to web development.
@Daojoan Oh hell that is so true! It drives me bloody insane!
Ten minutes of video drivel that could be condensed down to a couple of pages of text and a few diagrams - all of which might take just a few minutes to read, understand and act upon.
I know about learning styles, etc. and that video instruction works better for some people, but give the rest of us the option FFS!!
@Daojoan Most people would rather die than write. Fake“professionals” prefer to ramble the same inane bs many times over writing it down once.
@Daojoan Absolutely correct
Food bloggers used to write things down. That is, they used to teach you how to cook. Nowadays, that still write, but it's like every article starts with, "I was born on a farm in Nebraska..."
For me it has been a blessing. I've always struggled to keep focused when reading walls of text, but now I can get a visual guide.
For quick "was it Y?" I've never failed to find a brief written answer (usually in SO, reddit or the rare forum post).
For long tutorials, I've managed to find stuff that gets to the point very fast. SponsorBlock for YouTube is also pretty good for skipping meanderings.
We have choices now. What works for you is good, what works for others is also good.
@Daojoan makes me want to make a tutorial video that's just the text of the tutorial slowly scrolling past
@Daojoan My brain can very easily retain information I have read in text. I have a very hard time remembering what somebody said in spoken words.
@Daojoan German #music #education for #free in written form:
Have fun, people. 👍
@Daojoan if it's a video 9 times out of 10 I will not view it. If I must view it, I will not play it, but skip through it as fast as I can.
If it's on YouTube? Forget it.
@Daojoan Roots feed the branches, and during any 'leap' change, as has been the computer age, there requires a countermeasure to fill the gap/deficit that's left in said "leap".
And as a byproduct of millions of years, of harder physical differentials, placing too much weight on software, and far less on hardware, results in the inevitable asymmetry we're seeing now.
May as well be a brain in a vat, while cockroaches inherit your past potential.
@Daojoan “Could this 10 minute video have been a 2 minute read?”
Are you setting up your AI skills.md file so that it only gives you the advertisements and weekly drama you're interested in instead of random ones after you ask it to write out a guide for you?
@Daojoan
once upon a time I lamented about this,
explaining the time and energy lost (to make and consult this), the inability to search for keywords.
nowadays I getvthe answer 'shitGpt can sum up for you, then search in it'.
I quit.
Creators profit from YouTube's garbage business model to the detriment of those looking to actually learn anything.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/drqk8f/10_minute_videos_for_monetization_still_a_thing/
And if they do, it's AI slob which starts explaining how to turn on a PC, the history of computers in general, why <your problem> matters. Then there's the solution: click on <menu => option that doesn't exist>.
@Daojoan what might help is to try different search engines that focus on blogs and lower the ranking based on ads and tracking.
The big two trackers (google & bing) actively give big tech and ads supported websites higher ratings, leaving independent blogs in the dust, at page 8.
@Daojoan I agree. I usually put extra time into searching for text-based alternatives to these videos 
@Daojoan I only recently started realizing that more often than not, people are surprised to find that for the presentations I give, there usually is a full text written version, and that the references are links to actual text resources.
@Daojoan I can't agree more! I in particular do best learning through text and am good at scanning a document quickly to find what I need. I hate watching videos produced by amateurs with annoying speaking habits who spend the whole video drawing imaginary circles with their cursor around the menu item they are talking about!
@Daojoan No worries, we now have VibeMaster 2000™ to transform video tutorials into badly written and half-wrong written guides!
@thomasfuchs point me to it, oh wise one.
@Daojoan I dont know if is this or that Discord replaced so many forums, that many problem solving answers and learning material is not searchable or will get lost forever.
@Daojoan A guy I now work with documents internal procedures by linking to YT vids. I'm about ready to rewrite all our wiki pages
@Daojoan We should just return to minimal text pages. No beautiful design, just straight to the point information.
@Daojoan
But every information is repeated 5 times, to get the 10 minutes video filled up.
With garbage.
@Daojoan Ugh, so true! I hate watching long videos when I just want quick steps. Give me a simple guide please — my brain can’t handle all that fluff!
@Daojoan Really annoying
But luckily I have found an exception for coding: 
Codecademy
No video, just text and coding exercises. Directly on their platform. You code following the exercise, it corrects you and you can test yourself directly on their platform
I have a love/hate relationship with them: I love the fact that it is practical, no 30 minute video course, but the pace is really slow.
But if you want to tackle a new topic in coding, it's just great
@Daojoan
Heartily agreed! While -some_ things benefit from video (like "How do you take apart this thing?", though well made photos do the same), most things really don't need a video and bad voice over.
FWIW, there is this script:
https://github.com/obra/Youtube2Webpage
which converts YT videos to a series of screenshots along with the subtitled text. I have not tried it, so I don't know how well it works.
Or if you do find a written tutorial, it's written by AI, so you can't trust it.
@Daojoan true. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't pad it out so much with useless ramblings just to stretch the useful bit.
@Daojoan I blame the platforms (Coursera, Udemy, etc). They all enable mediocre quality video peddlers to make a fair amount of money.
A course-creation/monetization platform that didn't rely on video would probably be beneficial.
@Daojoan I like the use of #video as very short clips embedded in a text narrative or instructions, along with still #photographs.
As used by the @bbc in the early days of the Web.
Stills are often best for showing which part is where, video is a good way to see how someone skilled does a particular tricky move, words convey #structuredinformation, and best printed.
@Daojoan Very much agree. I'm a visual person, but in the sense that I scan a well organised text much, much faster than a rando with a webcam can explain it.
@Daojoan all compounded by the fact that the vast majority of people uploading instructional videos are *monumentally fucking shit* at instructing. Teaching is a skill, and most people who try to do it just leave you wanting to punch them repeatedly for being so obliviously bad at it
@Daojoan and the first two minutes telling you how "we're gonna jump right into it."
@Daojoan but on the plus side: you can use the YouTube "ai" to turn the video into a longer-winded text full of errors!
@Daojoan Videos are so slow! I’d rather read quick steps than watch someone talk forever. Where’s the simple guide when you need it?
@Daojoan That is so true. I believe it's all about two factors, the easier "stream of thought speaking" (against writing a correct text) and the desire to show off themselves, before any technical content
@Daojoan it sure does look like that a lot of times, you are right. Awful...
"How to save your Google Doc"
00:00 Why digital files need to be saved
07:24 A history of save icons
23:32 Formats used by different office tools
31:56 Famous errors caused by not saving files
58:45 Saving files in Google Docs
And all to say "they save automatically".
Like and subscribe!
@Daojoan I so much dislike this fact, stopping and starting and going back over the video, the irritations like voice tone and speed, the digressions and emotional notes, ugh, please, just express the knowledge in clearly written form.
The video is interrupted by an advertisement every few minutes. Very irritating.
@Daojoan My own experience is that if you maintain a technical blog then bots will turn that into video anyways. One of them was kind enough to mention my unique username, and so I found it when doing an egosearch for that page to send someone a link.
@Daojoan Absolutely agree. To everyone making tutorials, DON'T START WITH YOUR LIFE STORY!, just get to the point.
It should be noted that they got it from somewhere; user manuals are also almost always paragraphs or pages of barely subject-adjacent slog before getting to anything the the thing does & even then it's somehow over- & underexplained at the same time.
There's a reason teaching is something you train for; it's actually pretty difficult to do well.
@Daojoan
Truly the pivot to video is complete.
One of the worst things about this timeline.
@Daojoan forget code, it takes me *forever* to learn video games now for the same reason.
@CartyBoston @Daojoan
I understand that a factor in that is that "Fandom" (nee Wikia) goes out of its way to attempt to buy every single wiki for every single game, and tries to find excuses to sue any they don't own (like someone phrasing the same basic info the same way). I've heard that they own GameFAQs these days too, which is part of why people barely contribute to that anymore.
Wish I had ideas for how to shatter that particular master of the universe.
@Daojoan forget code, it takes me *forever* to learn video games now for the same reason.
@Daojoan Big part of the problem is how they monetize information. A video forces you to "stay", whether 5 mins or less. A text, like others commented here, is more difficult to monetize. I miss the old days of the internet when it was truly about sharing knowledge and info, far away from metrics and clicks
@Daojoan drives me nuts. I can skim text and pick out the necessary info in seconds, but video takes *forever* even at 3x speed where they sound like rabid chipmunks
@Daojoan oh god I hate this. This ten minute video could have been two or three sentences. I am not going to subscribe to your channel, I only came here to find out how to replace my car headlight bulb - I do not want to be notified when you post more car videos!!
@Daojoan it also doesn’t help that people are discouraged to write because LLMs will just swallow it up and use it for themselves.