Why does everything have to be a _video_ these days?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

IDK why I’m complaining here.

I very much prefer to just read a tutorial, manual, etc.

So I search for stuff and avoid clicking on YouTube videos (or anything else that looks like a video), site says something like “How to Quux a Frobnicator”.

I think to myself, “Great! Someone wrote up a tutorial!”

One click later it is an entire web page dedicated to telling me how the great big honking video covering a quarter of the screen (and embedded from YouTube, no less) is going to teach me everything I’ll ever want to know about quuxing a frobnicator.

Right. I don’t want to watch a ten minute video.

Once I get recommended the same video about five times from no fewer than five seemingly different sites (== two different sites, usually), and I realize I have already spent ten minutes looking for readable sites when I could have used that time gainfully watching the stupid video… I’ll sigh and click.

Only to watch a ten minute video that tell me no more than the absolute basics about the frobnicator I already knew — I knew it because I glanced over the falutin’ manual twenty minutes ago! It took me all of seven or eight seconds to read it. And because it lacked the detail I wanted I went looking for an actual tutorial.

Mind you, nothing so far mentioned how to quux the thing, even though I know full well that it is commonly quuxed, and is the reason I’m looking for a tutorial about it.

When did we all get so stupid?

No one reads anything anymore?

Two days later I’ll find something about frobs that explains how to quux a frobnicator, with easy-to-find and obvious title and everything, but no search engine thought I might actually be looking for pages with the words “quux” and “frobnicator” in relation to Blender on it, apparently.

Maybe it’s just me who’s dense.

12 Likes
2

I don’t know who did this word stuffing first, the Tutorial Bros or the Cooking Recipes.

It seems like every cheesecake recipe requires a 500 word diary entry of their last trip to a pumpkin farm as a prefix.

And when you finally find the “jump to recipe” button, it jumps to the anchor with an ad which you must close before it reveals the recipe as an embedded video…

If you’re lucky, the text version is further down…

4 Likes
3

YES, as a person who likes baking random things that look delicious from the internet… yes.

Why, world, why?
Just tell me how to make the delicious food.

3 Likes
4

All I can say is that I’m a visual learner. It’s easier for me to learn from a video than from text. Not that I can’t learn from text, but when it comes to visual stuff like Blender, I prefer to actually see the viewport and what the person is doing rather than just read about it. So, to answer your question, I’d guess there are more visual learners than people who prefer text-based tutorials. Not that there’s anything wrong with learning from text. I’m definitely not trying to imply that

3 Likes
5

I’m guessing content creators make more money from you watching their videos than they do from you reading their text.

10 Likes
6

I, uh, hate to break it to you, but there’s no such thing as a “visual learner”.

Everyone needs multiple modalities to learn well. The problem is that modern teaching methodology (and errors due to this thinking), plus a whole lot more I don’t actually want to get into, have changed the way we all think about learning over the past forty years.

You are more than capable of learning without a YT video. Easily, too. What the video does is provides you a modal workflow that you find easier to follow on first pass. But people who exclusively follow YT tutorials are often missing an important part of the learning process that comes from forming a non-scafolded correlation.

IOW, YT videos aren’t bad, they just kind of hold your hand differently than textual information does. Sometimes I need that and will watch several videos. But most of the time I can get through text so much faster and learn just as well.

It is a skill, though, one that is lost on a lot of people today, so they feel it is more difficult.

Maybe I’ll go outside now and tell the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.

:rofl:

5 Likes
7

I feel you. It’s one of the only things that I use the YT ai for. Summarizing videos is a fantastic tool to save a lot of time. And with how extractive of your time some content creators can be, it’s nice to be able to actually skim a video and find out why that clickbaity thing is so darn clickable.

4 Likes
8

Semantics aside, these days when I want to learn how to do something in Blender, it’s less about solving technical details and more about an artistic approach, for lack of a better term. Less tutorial, more inspiration. But when I was learning the technical side of Blender, I still relied on videos and used text to supplement them, but the videos were essential for me. When I see someone do something, it’s easier for me to remember it and repeat it myself. I can vividly remember some tutorials, like for example, how to paint a skin texture in Substance by Jared Chavez on YT. I still have the visuals and the knowledge it conveyed in my head. If I only read about how to paint a skin texture, I’d miss the visual part, which for me is very important in helping me memorize and truly engrave something in my brain. If I only read the text, I tend to forget it after a while, and it’s harder to recall without the visual memory of seeing it done

3 Likes
9

And not only that every video is explaining about open source, telling you how to download the app.. install an addon.. or do some “preparation” before addressing the topic of the video-title.. so “the thing” is only 20% of the whole video.. if at all.. and then it does not really “solve” the advertised task. :pouting_cat:

I very often ask myself: why is the tutor doing this now..

..for example divide the 3D Viewport and switch one to a Geometry Node Editor instead of “directly” switching to the Geometry Nodes workspace.

Dito with Shader Editor..

Sometimes i think the tutor has to learn this too.. :thinking: or is (s)he only repeating some other video ??

(In fact i “know” one who “evolved” a lot since i first saw something from this one..)

..well using blender from somewhere before 2.49 (maybe even 2.37) :thinking: .. memory gets “cloudy” after decades i guess..

1 Like
10

To be fair, the people making videos about stuff have often just learned it themselves and wish to share the knowledge that they struggled to learn.

The people who understand everything about it often do not have the same time to spend on making “how to” videos for noobs.

Meaning that often enough a tutorial is fairly basic or shows a suboptimal workflow. I think it is important to remember that tutorials are rarely ‘gospel’, but useful for gleaning information about a task anyway. Hobbyists are like anyone else: most people will be satisfied using an application at its most basic level. Weirdos like me want to understand the tool well enough to not have to click through menus just to do stuff a single shortcut key can get me to.

For example, I can’t stand the transform gizmos. They get in the way. First thing I do is turn them off. But for a lot of people the gizmos are life savers.

(I’m the same way with text editors. I have zero interest in an editor that doesn’t have nearly every key combination mapped to a useful function. It makes life sooo much easier to be able to just <insert line above without moving caret> instead of having to <go to beginning of line>, <enter>, <move caret up>, etc. Sure, it takes a moment to remember it all, but that is easily done with only little time using the thing.)


Some videographers do have a good sense of humor about it all, though. I just watched a video the other day where the guy was like:

All right, let’s delete the default cu— no, wait, we need a cube, so don’t delete it.

…which takes me back to an older one where the (different) author was like:

OK, let’s delete the default cube. Right, now, add a cube…


I think my issue is mostly that it has somehow become easier for people to run screen-capture software with a microphone and edit a video and upload it to youtube than to write up a textual tutorial with a few pictures.

Of course, now that I am writing it out I can think back to how much time I have spent formatting a web page or response to produce readable information instead of a dense wall of text…

lol

1 Like
11

I like videos, because I can watch them while doing something else unimportant, like work for example :laughing: Cannot read something and work at the same time… :laughing: :laughing:

I don’t like beating around the bush in the videos and every time I hear "without further ado " I silently shout in my head “That is further ado!” …and then wonder what “ado” really means, because English is not my native language and it’s a word I have ever only heard used in that phrase… :laughing: :laughing:

1 Like
12

Preach :folded_hands:

Yes and no, depends entirely on the creators approach
My videos are made script first for example because I can’t stand the unstructured “hit record and just talk while I do this thing”

3 Likes
13

About phrases:
Of course you could also watch this ten hours video:

:rofl:

2 Likes
14

I guess it´s way easier to monetize content via Youtube. I think the explanation is simple as that. You are paying for free stuff with your attention/time. Does it suck - yes. Especially when you finished the video and your question was not answered.

For me it´s still a blessing to find that much (video) tutorials - compared to back in the (pre-Youtube) days…

2 Likes
15

And we store information in the modality it is in. It’s not at all a bad idea to learn visual things visually. Software UIs are visual for example so video tutorials are great for learning software. And information… Text is just a medium to carry it, it doesn’t matter if it’s written or spoken, so videos cannot really hurt. Less mental effort spent converting what we see into what we think even if reading is not really a lot of mental effort, it is extra. Text is not really a modality at all, we convert it into however we process ideas. Reading is an extra step from cognitive perspective. So videos win most of the time as something to learn from. It’s just more efficient. Maybe the issue is poorly made videos. There is plenty of that.

You mean learning from videos lack thinking? Just easier to say… Yeah. I think that bit is true. It’s easier to mindlessly watch a video than to read something. Unless you are interested to learn the stuff and also listen and think. :man_shrugging: I guess reading will force to learn information better. I never need forcing myself when I want to learn something though. I guess there is a difference in teaching children at school and the way we learn as adults when we actually want to get the information and we want a lot of it and fast. Children resist :laughing: Reading forces to think.

16

If you read then you have to “process” the information.. if you “just watch” and especially think " i can watch this again" then most tought you will think is: “What was it again ?”

I do remember most of the things i had to read when starting using linux some decades ago and also most of the most common commands and options. Also the usage of some apps, but for some newer commands and apps..

It’s for example a bit weird with what “features” a browser is “loaded” nowadays.. or for example those “assistants” which do interupt my workflow by asking me if i do want to use some “feature” which mostly i simply never asked for and so bloating the apps..

On my first notebook with 2 GB i was able to run: firefox, blender, gimp, eclipse IDE and also some simple app i was “developing” (playing with) and of course playing some music.. then i needed something faster with 4GB.. and something faster faster with 8GB..

Now.. after “everthing got extremely expensive” people reconsider this “spiral of non-sense”…

..but this may be something for the next “old-man-rant-topic” :wink:

Just noticed how often i did hear the phrase “next generation” or “lifting to the next level”… and never telling at what “number” we actually are.. :unamused_face: .. but you have to watch these awesome video some people produce on a daily basis.. .

3 Likes
17

No, uh, no. I have to apologize and, forgive me for saying, you’re going to have to do some reading to make sense of what I said, so, uh, your current response is word salad. (sorry)

tl;dr: there are a number of different processes that must occur in the mind for efficacious learning. These are distinct from the senses used during instruction and also are not the same as the methods employed — though both have direct impact on those processes’ success.

The process of learning is not substantively different between children and adults — actively engaging in the learning process being the most important principle. So if you are following along with a video in Blender yourself, that is a significant step up from just watching, but is still missing several vital bits.

Ugh, sorry, I’m so tired right now I’m trying not to fall asleep while typing… so gonna have to leave it at that.

18

Videos are very useful when you want to illustrate something that’s happening in a space with more dimensions than the 2D an image can contain.
But I like them when they are part of some well written document, not much as a whole.

2 Likes
19

Might be hard to form a non-scafolded correlations about what I say because I don’t like fancy terminology for simple things so it doesn’t match the books you read word for word. :laughing: :laughing:

1 Like
20

Argh, still here.

“Scaffolding” is a (good) teaching methodology used to lead a (typically young) student through a process. It works by, metaphorically speaking, building a scaffold to support the ideas and methodology that are being conveyed in a way that helps the student learn the material.

The very first step of this is to explain and demonstrate the basics — this before the student gets to try it himself.

Once the student has been led through a variety of examples the teacher then begins removing the scaffolding so that the student has to work through the problem on his own, assisting only as necessary, until he does not need help to do it on his own.

An internet video skips all that. It walks you through some information, holding your hand all the way, then drops you off at the end with only a single pass at accomplishing something done one way with help — and you haven’t even gotten past the very first step (explanation+example/s) when the video terminates. An interested learner will have a copy of Blender open to get the hand-held version at the very beginning of the scaffolded steps, but again has no recourse but to rewatch the video or google around for another if they get stuck or lost.

The correlations are those that form in the brain between the material and understanding it and, after, variations on it.

That is not to say that a written page is any better. Just that the written page is a whole lot more condensed than the video version, and doesn’t have the shiny veneer of pretends to do a better job of teaching something.

Sorry for the short book. Specific words & phrases have very specific meaning, and what seems to be simple is often much more involved than it appears.

EDIT: linky linky for Instructional Scaffolding