| ▲ | everdrive 3 days ago | |
>to be designed to psychologically torment you with videos "buffering" for 10-60 I don't mean this as an attack on you. I find it perplexing that this could be such a difficult thing. If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching? Consider a comparison to reading a book or watching a DVD. With the DVD you must stand up, walk to the DVD, remove the plastic wrap, turn on the DVD player place the DVD in the tray, wait for the tray to close, load the DVD, wait for the main menu to load, and finally press play to watch your movie. (potentially after navigating through settings to configure audio / subtitles / etc) The DVD experience could obvious be _better_ (and if you don't care about picture quality you might be shocked how much more convenient a VHS tape is) but this hardly strikes me as any sort of real problem. Youtube might actually be doing you an accidental favor here; it is the extreme reduction of friction which degrades your impulse control, and is part of what keeps you on the platform too long. By imposing an small but perceptible cost, they might actually keep from your zoning out and watching and instead intentionally watching only the videos you care the most about. | ||
| ▲ | dns_snek 2 days ago | parent [-] | |
> If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching? I won't know that until the video starts playing. I'm not watching a 90 minute movie here and I don't know if the video I'm about to play is the one I want. Spending a minute setting up a 90 minute movie is very different than spending a minute waiting for a video to load that I'm likely going to spend <30 seconds on. Maybe I'm learning how to use certain software and I'm trying to find a video that demonstrates how to use a specific feature. In that case I might be clicking through 10+ videos to find the niche thing I'm looking for. If I was just vegging out on Youtube this wouldn't bother me nearly as much. And don't forget that the time penalty doesn't only apply to the initial load, it would pause and fake-buffer every time I jumped around the video. | ||