yeah but it doesn't tell you the point.

i don't have 40 minutes to watch a long-form video essay about detergent.

give me the gist, which based on context is that powder works better and is cheaper

This whole thread is kind of infuriating.

The gist you took away is not quite right because of course you didn’t watch it.

Why does everything have to be summarized? If you want to see the content watch the content. Technology Connections videos are interesting, entertaining (to nerds at least) and a lot of effort goes into them.

Watch them at 1.5 speed if you’d like.

Or don’t watch them at all.

But the “give me a transcript because I want to watch but don’t want to watch” thing is so annoying.

YouTube also provides a transcript on the desktop version of the site, by the way. So this entire thread is pointless.

I want my whole life to be optimized, so that I can consume far more but get nothing out of any of my consumption. Anything that requires art, ingenuity, and human effort can be compressed to a simple bullet point summary.

I don't care that Technology Connections is the perfect blend of campy midwestern technical pedantry, substantive detail, great editing, understated humor. It must undergo machine digestion, its humanity stripped, before being fed to me as a flat slurry. This way, I can optimize my consumption of slurry without ever encountering any of that pesky 'human spirit.'

Because that is optimal.

I hope you had fun making one of the most-straw strawmen I've seen all year.

I did. But also, it's instructive. This mindset is everywhere.

People don't have infinite time. A mindset of never appreciating works on their artistic merits is terrible. But a mindset of appreciating with some works, while for other ones you just want the info please, is a perfectly reasonable way to operate.

Someone that just wants to wash dishes better shouldn't be forced to watch a 40 minute video to learn how. It doesn't mean they want slurry.

Or to put it another way: Imagine you had to watch a video essay to check the weather forecast. It would suck, even if they're good essays. Even moreso if you already have other essays you want to watch.

Wanting a summary that includes the results of the research of the 45 minute video doesn't seem pointless...

Well Citizen Kane is 119 minutes long should I summarize it for you?

He dies and then Rosebud.

If I wanted a summary of Citizen Kane, I would expect it to include the ending, yes.

The value in the content is experiencing it.

The moment some long form content comes out we are all TikTok kids who want a five second summary.

Never mind the fact that YouTube provides a compete transcription that you can copy/paste and dump into an LLM, making this entire thread, as I mentioned before, pointless.

The people asking for a summary are lazy people who want to be spoon fed trivia dopamine hits.

To some audiences, sure. Obviously the other guy gets value out of the content of the content, not just 'experiencing it'

That's EXACTLY what he's doing, right? Get the transcript, pipe to an LLM, determine if it's worth his time. You're on HN, we like to use scripts to automate those sorts of things.

Nobody is demanding a summary from the OP. The AUDIENCE MEMBER went out of his way to determine if the content is worth his time. Its no different than checking reviews before you watch a movie

Sometimes people just want to learn a thing.

That is okay.

Better than okay, learning is a good thing. And it's extremely impossible to watch every quality video.

Tangent but it is funny to me that we focus on tiktok but the news is as bad or worse in terms of super fast tidbits interspersed with ads, tragedy, and local weather

woah there, didn't watch it yet, how about a spoiler warning?

ah but you forget this is from the no-effort november collection.

Are you really infuriated by a complete stranger writing a script you don't like and then mentioning it in a message thread? Just curious.

I’m not literally infuriated I’m Internet forum infuriated.