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269 points youz | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.529s | source | bottom
1. lurk2 ◴[] No.45688541[source]
Controversial take but short form video content is the best thing that ever happened to the internet and if you disagree your memory is failing you or you’re nostalgic for a time you didn’t live through.

I have noticed the people who don’t like it are usually highly neurotic to begin with and then blame their neuroses on social media. People were talking this way about Instagram before Reels even existed, and the platform was awesome back then. If you’re seeing things that make you upset, you take a break and wait for the algorithm to reset.

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2. casey2 ◴[] No.45689088[source]
It's just this generations equivalent of rock and roll. It's just so silly cause the reasons for hating it have to get ever more complex and nonsensical. Before it was temptation+satan, now it's temptation+fake_brain_science_woo. Ironically societies collapse when the current structure become unsustainable and the younger generation can't adapt quickly enough.

In an information dense world with very little shared context you need a short attention span to get anything done. Breadth over depth. Previous generations, on the whole, lack the shared cultural empathy to thrive in the modern world. At best they could conquer their enemies and force them to consume their cultural artifacts. The new generation lives in tens of thousands of disparate cultural contexts. In many ways the "deep" knowledge is handled for you by the algorithm, in the way that a village elder would handle it for you in the past. The amount of deep though necessary goes down when an AI can translate every language, dialect and lingo even drawing. This makes gatekeeping much harder which lets be honest, is the main reason people "think deeply" in the first place.

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3. yoyohello13 ◴[] No.45689966[source]
My hot take. If all electronic entertainment just disappeared overnight most people lives would actually improve.
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4. lurk2 ◴[] No.45691395[source]
Both of these things can be true.
5. csin ◴[] No.45693396[source]
I think the better analogy is newspapers vs tv.

In the old days, people who read newspapers looked down on the people who stared at the "boob tube".

People who consume long-form youtube videos are looking down on people who consume shorts.

6. gausswho ◴[] No.45693606[source]
Well put regarding Shorts and TikTok as the evolution of breadth-first cultural transmission.

I'm curious at what points, and in what ways, do you choose depth?