Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I’m allergic to them.
The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It’s an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
My wife sends me couple of shorts each day and sometimes it’s even interesting content-wise, but I absolutely hate this horrible format, procrastinate watching them and wish back a world where this form of media did not exist. It all started even before shorts in the way people did videos, and somehow it spiraled into this kind of hell scape.
Anyone else feeling like this?
EDIT: thanks everyone, now I feel validated, thought maybe I’m the odd one with so strong negative feelings about them! And sorry about the confusion about pants and stocks (that provoked some funny answers though so no regrets). Yes - as you have all figured out, I’m talking about the annoying short videos almost everyone seems to be addicted to.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I believe they’re talking about YouTube shorts.
Ah, I’ve never seen those. Between Youtube that asks for login when on VPN and uBlock origin I don’t recall ever seeing these.
I love how someone can unironically not know what I’m talking about, even though I thought I’m a rare weirdo reading blogs via RSS feeds without actively using any social media except for reddit and lemmy
Shorts are cancer and vertical videos need to die.
I like some Shorts. Long-form videos are great, but way too often I see 15+ minute videos about a topic that shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to discuss.
yes. There is a youtube extension called unhook (?) which lets you remove them from pretty much anywhere on the site.
I hate them so much for all the reasons you mention and a few more.
But there are times that I prefer them over a 2-3 minute vidoe padded to 12-15 minutes for monetization.
I honestly prefer text over either of those options. Saves time and doesn’t over stimulate. Plus, if I lose focus I can just go back, which would be tedious in a video.
More importantly, you can search text to get straight to the point you need. Doing that in video or audio is not possible, you have to memorize timestamps
I thought you meant the short pants. I love them. I’m so sweaty all the time and long pants feel uncomfortable on my legs even if loose. Only wear them when necessary. Shorts are a godsend.
For patriotic reasons I am against them, only children and tourists wear shorts in my country.
What country is that? If you don’t want to share I get it. I only ask because that’s what everyone said about Spain, and everyone I travelled with refused to pack shorts except for me. It was the height of summer, in the middle of a heat wave. Literally every single local was wearing shorts.
Funny enough, it is a Spanish-speaking country
Haha that’s crazy. It was like 38C when I was there, if it was that hot in your country people would really still be wearing full pants? I admire the dedication but I don’t care if I look like a tourist, a child, or a tourist child I’m going to be comfortable. Unless I’m going to an event or place that has an actual dress code I guess. I’ve been to weddings and funerals in 38-39C temps and I suck it up out of respect. But on vacation? Miss me with that pants shit fam.
It’s humid here so the heat index gets into the high 30’s regularly, and people still either dress formally for work or wear jeans, it is kind of nuts
I went to India. 42 °C in the shade. Had the opposite problem.
That is an insane temperature. I was in the high desert in California when the night temps never really dropped below 37.8C and day temps hit that, but it was a super dry heat. 90% of the time I was just day drinking in a big assed metal barrel full of water so it wasn’t too bad. I can’t imagine doing tourist stuff in a place i want to explore in those temps.
It was work stuff, but also super dry heat. I would have died otherwise, probably.
Ugh! My work uniform is technically PPE, so I’m required to wear it…black T shirt, black trousers that are too heavy for summer and too light for winter, and a black coat. The labourers get to wear shorts. They don’t use power tools and mostly just run materials around in a truck with AC… bastards…
Ah so that is where this reference is from! I’m too uneducated / young, only played the GBA Generation games
You could’ve seen it if you played Fire Red/Leaf Green ;)
I basically only watch YouTube on my TV via Roku, I hate shorts and wish there was a way to block them on the Roku app.
If google really wants to push shorts then make it a separate app. If someone is watching on a TV then chances are they aren’t looking for short form content, so stop pushing it on that medium.
They had one years ago called Vine.
I remember that being an ok way spend a smoke break, I couldn’t imagine living on it the way people use shorts/Tik Tok. The algorithm must be way more intense now.
I get what you’re saying but Vine was an independent company that got bought by Twitter then killed.
I was thinking that Google should make their own app called YouTube shorts and take on tiktok that way. Google/YouTube is trying to have an all in one app, the problem is that muddies the waters and when you stand for everything you stand for nothing. Not to mention that YouTube spent years promoting longer for content and that’s what the user base thinks of now when you say YouTube.
You can play off the YouTube brand with a separate app and still get the branding boost. But actively muddying the waters and annoying your user base is just… well I would say bad business… but given their track record, it’s pretty on brand for a Google property.
Ah, I’d forgotten that Vine was independent at first. Thanks for the correction.
Instagram’d algorithm, at least, will prioritise reels over everything else - leading a lot of accounts to post still images as “reels”
Shorts or longs…I hate the click-baity ones.
Youtube shorts are like Instagram reels, nobody likes them but they are probably good for “engagement” aka keeping people on the site for as long as possible.
“nobody likes them but keeps watching them” - that confirms my theory that it’s digital crack. I intuitively want to stay away because I feel that it cannot be good for my brain
yes. after you get used to it, it sucks you in for hours on end and you don’t even notice.
all with completely useless “content”. there is some interesting stuff, but you can get it in regular videos better.
Yep. My guess is that the entire purpose of them is that they aren’t fulfilling enough on their own to satisfy you, so you just go to the next one, ad infinitum. It’s the media equivalent of potato chips.
i have had this conversation with my wife before when she used to show me one specific person who had very quick cuts of about a second each. i hated it so much, i would feel anxious and it would take me a while to calm down. and in that case there was no voiceover to keep track of.
I totally feel you. My wife was also confused why I suddenly was somehow frustrated and angry. Glad I’m not the only one.
Death by a thousand one-second cuts
The only thing I like about them is that there’s no ads.
With an ad blocker there are also no ads on normal YouTube ;) and there is even an extension called sponsor block that can help skipping over in-video ads
I know, I do like supporting creators though.
I thought you were talking about short pants for a second before I read the body.
And yes, I do hate wearing shorts, because I have ugly knees.
I also came here to say I don’t wear shorts.
Only for sports. And reluctantly.
Haha shorts, as in short pants, I actually like in summer :D Did not want to insult a perfectly fine piece of clothing. But it’s also totally cool not to like them ;)
I don’t know how these below 2 minute videos are called in general, like the Reels, TikToks, Shorts, it’s all the same thing to me (or I don’t know the difference)…
I’m glad to find other people with similar experiences to mine trying out short form video. I tried TikTok a few years ago when I realized how big it was and that I was missing out on entire cultural touchstones but I just couldn’t. Too much music I don’t like, too much randomly clicking and hoping I like a video, too much visual and audible noise.
Seriously why can’t I just see the title and uploader of a video before I click? What if I don’t want to watch this person or this particular video? Why do I have to decide while watching the video instead of relaxing with a bit of silence between videos?
Honestly the whole UI was just mentally and visually exhausting. I think I made it about 20 minutes of trying to get into TikTok before I finally just said “not for me” and gave up entirely
Every few days I find myself losing a few hours to them that would’ve been better spent doing literally anything else. So yes, in that sense I hate them.
I refuse to browse/watch shorts directly; probably because I know I’ll get sucked in to it for several hours, but I also know there’s very little useful/valuable info there. I’ll will however occasionally watch other typically gaming YouTubers, reacting to collections of shorts.
