Explainer videos are dark patterns that replaced written howto documents in order to serve ads. Not seeing them pop up any more in search results is one of the few positive outcomes of Google switching to AI-first search results.

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schnitzelstoat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Given we can write the documents in LLMs and summarise/explain the documents with LLMs one would hope we would go back to written documents instead of videos now.

Instead we've worked out how to get the LLM to make videos.

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bonoboTP 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People are bad at writing clearly what a new startup or product actually does. A video is a richer medium, it can show the thing being used, the UI during use, tell a clearer story with a person using it, some context etc. It also forces them to prioritize more, and have to distill their message down to a certain bounded timeframe.

Neither gives any guarantee. Both static text and videos can be done well and badly. But I usually find it useful to have both. A video is like being guided through their vision of what the thing is (a "push" message). This can be annoying to many nerd types who want to cut through all that and just want to "pull" the info they need, for themselves, at their own fast pace, quickly identifying it and not being spoonfed. But the typical user is not like this, and prefers the spoonfed/edutained approach.

	▲	ModernMech 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>But I usually find it useful to have both. Yes that's the trick. And much more. If you have any sort of content, you should express it as a slideshow, a white paper, a blog post, a video, a podcast, etc. Get it out in as many forms as you can. Maybe even performative dance or song if you've got that energy.

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AdamN an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

12.4% of the world is illiterate and I'd guess more like 20% would have trouble quickly taking text and turning that into instructions faster than a video could do the same thing.

	▲	LastTrain an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		An illiterate person has no interest in a 3 minute video on how to enable paste mode in VIM
	▲	LanceH an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The illiteracy seems to carry straight into video production. There are way too many 15 minute videos for 4 lines of instructions.

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bananaflag 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah because people don't like to read. They do it if they're forced to but no more.

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bitshiftfaced 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not saying you're wrong. But maybe there's a reason Tiktok got so popular. Maybe for many people this way of communicating information is more effective and doesn't feel as boring/tedious.

	▲	cafebeen 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder if those are more engaging or more effective, they could look similar if untested.

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DriverDaily an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What about teaching employees the basics of a job?

I love using notebookLM for orientation stuff.

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websap 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’d rather watch an explainer video that goes over how to build IKEA furniture, than try to follow those terrible manuals.

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AdamN an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Here let me make a video about how to respond to comments like this ... /s