this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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me_irl

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 hours ago

I hate it when I'm looking for a single piece of information like how to change a specific setting in my device and there's no text available, just a highly rated video that goes like:

"Hey guys, it's your boy ManualExplainer here and welcome to another video. Be sure to like and subscribe to my channel. And remember to click on the little bell icon so you get notified whenever I put up a new video. All right, let's get to it. But first, a word from today's sponsor."

😡😡😡😡

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago

I'm millennial and i hate those videos too

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

Amen to that, brother.

I fear for the future, because this generation won't know something if it hasn't been tictokified or taught by an "AI".

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

I can send you the article, but you're going to get two "would you like to subscribe" popups and dozen more ads sprinkled between every third sentence.

Like, I get that the video shit is annoying. But it almost feels like a competition in print media to make it worse.

Case in point:

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 hours ago

Firefox reader mode FTW.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Ublock origin is your best friend

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

(Press the image if compression quality really bad)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

I usually block this popups too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

Can try the anti-adblock-adblock list lol

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Millennial weebs read twice as fast as Gen x. Those fanmade anime subs can roll through quick.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Ikr, fuck ticktok i can SPEED through text!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Hi, millennial here. Do you know why some millennials and a large portion of gen z suck at reading? Because their boomer/gen x parents didn't read to them as a child.

I grew up on my grandmother's lap, with her actively making reading fun and encouraging me to read along - I was reading, and comprehending, YA novels by grade 2.

My little brother though, who did not have a parent/grandparent to teach them to love reading, can't read worth shit. He was well into highschool before he even attempted a book like animorphs, and still didn't really comprehend the plot any better than grade 2 me.

So no, this is not a generational/phones bad problem, it's just another example of how boomers and gen x let their children down when it came to raising them with life skills, and then making fun of them for it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

Gen X. My parent and grand parents didn’t do shit. It’s not generational. They weren’t bad , just not great. That’s pretty universal.

They didn’t read to me, and I’m an avid reader.

I read to my kids, but they all lost interest in it pretty quickly. Only one of them does it as an adult.

It’s all situational my dude.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

Because their boomer/gen x parents didn’t read to them as a child.

As a gen-Xer, this hurt to read. If I knew my classmates were going to grow up to be such dipshit parents, I would have slapped some sense into them. I mean, a lot of them were already pretty awful as teenagers... but, that wasn't a phase? Man, I am sincerely, deeply sorry.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 hours ago

This is the type of boomer engagement bait you'd see on Facebook. It's basically "UpVoTe If YoU aRe GeNx!1!1". Sure, the discussion here is higher quality, but it still makes me cringe to see this kind of stuff being posted unironically on a site I use.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Lmao, "for the love of bananarama" "in Prince's funky name, amen." Who types that?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 hours ago

A millennial pretending to be gen X.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 12 hours ago

If you see a millennial doing that then slap them and call them an embarrassment for me

[–] [email protected] 16 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Post a pithy hot-take in text? Nobody reads.
Post a screenshot of the same text from a social media site? That’s bussin!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I do wonder how much of video's proliferation is because we (in the US at least) fucked up teaching a generation of kids how to read. I'm told one of the dominant strategies for teaching reading was just bad. Well meaning people went all in on it, and then kids just didn't learn to read well.

You can read about it here, or listen to it as a podcast https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

This is just appaling to read. No wonder the US education is so fucked.

Just to further push the point, it took me 40 minutes to read 3 transcripts. Each transcription is of a roughly hour long podcast episode. So 3 hours down to 40 minutes and English is my second language. It stresses me that people can't recognize that reading is the closest thing humans have to a superpower.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

As a xennial with ADD, send me the short, I'll watch it, hunt down the article, read it, then spend 3h down a rabbit hole to understand the validity of the claims and the bias of the news outlet, then I'll get bored and stop typing in the mid

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 16 hours ago

hv;dw (hate videos; didn't watch)

[–] [email protected] 42 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Also, I want to see the video. Not the video with someone next to it making faces as they watch the video.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 14 hours ago

The only reaction video worth watching is someone from that profession reacting and giving additional context as to why it works or doesn't

[–] [email protected] 18 points 16 hours ago

“[video] REACTION!” And it’s just someone’s head in the corner as they raise a finger to point at the original video

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

I wish to buy this person a beer. Also send me tech docs and not a YouTube tutorial where I have to jump ahead of all the bullshit while trying not to miss the useful details.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

I know plenty of people that "can read fast." Unfortunately, they don't comprehend anything they read until they slow the fuck down.

[–] [email protected] 125 points 20 hours ago (13 children)

I don’t like these generational generalizations.

Not an xer but I feel the same. I’d rather read twenty minutes than watch a 5 minute YouTube video.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 20 hours ago (9 children)

“Elder millennial”/Oregon Trail generation here, and I’d generally rather read it, too. I’ve found it often only takes 5 minutes to read an article where the video would be 20 minutes. Sometimes a video works better for a how-to, but often an article will be a faster choice.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

The worst is instructional manuals being replaced with videos.

Going back 10 seconds, 20 times, so that you can visually see how two pieces fit together is way more annoying than just looking at a visual diagram on a printed page. Especially when you've got both hands full with stuff.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 12 hours ago

I put something together I got at Walmart like 10 years ago and it came with print instructions that had links to .gif files that were short and looping showing each step clearly

I though "oh wow if some random Chinese product does this surely it'll spread" and now feel so dumb for having thought that

[–] [email protected] 29 points 18 hours ago

I like a combination there. I want a diagram of the parts and how they fit, and a short video of installation or removal. Just like a picture describes a physical scene better than words, a video describes a changing physical scene better than a picture.

I still want text describing the steps of the process and a diagram showing what it should look like when I've done it right, I just also want someone to show me how to actually execute the tricky bit.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

I have no problems with videos but ya'll better have a better fucking source.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

Gen Z'er here, and well, it depends on the topic. TBH I don't read much news at all, unless I see it on social media I'm not gonna know about it. But I will read an article if I care enough. Sometimes I want a quick overview, and some channels/reporters can do informative yet brisk news reports.

But when it comes to educational stuff, me and my fellow high school classmates hated watching a video for homework, and would usually just read the transcript of the video instead (and with ctrl + f, you save even more time). This was funny to my xillennial teacher, as he said schools started using videos because kids hated reading textbooks. And I'm not gonna lie, I fucking hate reading textbooks in college. So we're going full circle it seems.

[–] JackbyDev 1 points 8 hours ago

It's funny that they think there's any sort of easy way to get from a TikTok to an article.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 16 hours ago

Also: Please just give us the f'ing text instead of a screenshot of text.

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