Many people are now talking about the “death of the ad-supported internet model,” and I can only say that it can’t come quickly enough.
The main reason why it all switched to ad-supported is the massive costs of storing and streaming all that high-definition video. And for what? So I can see every pore on Joe Rogan’s face while he sits in front of the mic and talks for 3 hours?
Or so that some video game dweeb can read his essay about why an obscure JRPG is the height of postmodern art over 30 minutes of game footage. Or all the channels trying to imitate Kurzgesagt with shitty animation and information they gathered from browsing Wikipedia.
Face it. Most of this video is unnecessary. 99.9% of all possible information can be relayed through text, pictures, and the occasional sound file.
Furthermore, most video content creators are unnecessary too. I can just read about a laptop’s specs and the reviewer’s experience with it. I don’t need LinusTechTips to stare at me with his reptilian eyes while he destroys the inferior product with an oversized novelty mallet.
Most of what’s on YouTube and other video-heavy social sites is not insightful, not creative, not informative, not fun, not sexy, and honestly shouldn’t exist at all.
My current company makes mobile games. We’re supported entirely by ads, because even our IAPs are indirectly dependent.
Most of the Appstore and Play Store are like this btw, so those will go too.
And that would be amazing! All of our games are crap, all of the freeware is crap, it’s all garbage drowning out the 3-4 good, open source apps in each category. These are entire businesses and industries that don’t need to exist, don’t solve real problems, and one app at a time make the internet worse.
Oh tell me about it. I work in the content marketing industry. The whole field shouldn’t exist, and I hope ChatGPT just kills it. We made search engines crap with all our SEO and we churn out useless semi-plagiarized content.
I work in content marketing too; sounds like youre doing it wrong. There are absolutely causes that need professional help, and deserve it.
Kinds sounds like youre just telling on yourself here, but 🤷♂️
Probably not unpopular.
99 percent of what’s on youtube doesn’t appeal to a person.
Problem is that 1 percent that appeals to the person varies from person to person. (Still I’d say above 50 percent of videos on YouTube, only 40 percent or so get 300 views.)
I agree.
I still hang around on some oldschool forums (like, UBB or VBulletin) for niche topics because honestly it’s just way easier both to contribute and obtain information in the form of text or maybe text plus a couple of pictures. I don’t need a 15 minute video with intro, outro, cringe music, multiple pleas to like-comment-subscribe, and a plug for the Patreon. All I need one .jpeg that shows me where all the fucking bolts are hidden on the machine I’m working on. Etc.
It’s infuriating that this idea that “everything is easier through video” took such hold. Even in the corporate context. We now have “instructional design professionals” advising corporations to ditch manuals and handbooks in favor of videos. The company I work for took that to heart, and everything is a video.
Oh, you need quick info on how a small part of a process works? Watch this 3-hour video the CEO made that touches on every process in the company and no there isn’t a table of contents with timestamps.
I started using some software they bought at work and I hate it. They do not supply a user’s manual. You can watch their videos or pay them for training. Even clicking help in the program just takes you to their videos webpage. It’s infuriating to me that they pay an outrageous (in my opinion) amount of money to license software and the company can’t even be bothered to provide a manual. Software training videos are worthless to me.
I totally get where you’re coming from about the whole ad-supported internet thing. Totally not cutting it. I agree, most of the time, text, pics, and sound from podcasts, for example, can do the trick.
But, here’s the curveball: AI is changing the game. While I’m on board with your views, AI-generated stuff is kinda shifting my perspective. It’s pumping out texts and images that might not always be accurate, which is messing with the reliability of plain old text-based info. There’s this flip side where videos, despite the AI advances, are tougher for it to fake convincingly. So, oddly enough, if you’re after solid info, videos might be the way to go in this wild AI era. Old information though that was posted before this AI push, still the way to go.