Anyone else hating Shorts (the videos, not the pants or financial instruments)?
1y 1mon ago by feddit.org/u/zenforyen in adhd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I'm allergic to them.
The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
My wife sends me couple of shorts each day and sometimes it's even interesting content-wise, but I absolutely hate this horrible format, procrastinate watching them and wish back a world where this form of media did not exist. It all started even before shorts in the way people did videos, and somehow it spiraled into this kind of hell scape.
Anyone else feeling like this?
EDIT: thanks everyone, now I feel validated, thought maybe I'm the odd one with so strong negative feelings about them! And sorry about the confusion about pants and stocks (that provoked some funny answers though so no regrets). Yes - as you have all figured out, I'm talking about the annoying short videos almost everyone seems to be addicted to.
Shorts sre awesome, way better than pants unless it is cold out or I am doing something that would scratch up my legs.
Oh, you mean the youtube shit. It is the worst of that video format and they all suck.
They're comfy and easy to wear!
I can't wear shorts, people ask if I'm riding a chicken.
Tragically when I first switched to Lemmy, my friends convinced me to get Instagram to stay in better contact with them.
The difference in how much I engage with Instagram reels Vs YouTube shorts is huge. YouTube shorts suck and I get cripplingly bored or annoyed with them after 2 minutes, where as Instagram reels suck and I lose multiple hours to that fucking app. Fortunately I run a version of the app without ads etc so I'm only rotting myself and not contributing as directly to the end times.
I never tried tiktok and I'm too low willpower to stop using Instagram until they make it too shit to put the effort in, but I do feel that YouTube shorts sre the worst interation of this shitty format.
I thought you were talking about short pants for a second before I read the body.
And yes, I do hate wearing shorts, because I have ugly knees.
I also came here to say I don’t wear shorts.
Only for sports. And reluctantly.
Haha shorts, as in short pants, I actually like in summer :D Did not want to insult a perfectly fine piece of clothing. But it's also totally cool not to like them ;)
I don't know how these below 2 minute videos are called in general, like the Reels, TikToks, Shorts, it's all the same thing to me (or I don't know the difference)...
Are they comfy and easy to wear?
I thought it's about pants too xD. Damn shorts with their quick cutting and cropped style!
Same. Ugly knees. It's a shame because I have amazingly muscular calves I could show off. Don't even work out. They are literally almost as thick as my thighs.
I only watch shorts from creators who I know generally make quality long form content (Red Nile NileRed, Miniminuteman, etc); then it’s usually something that actually is a short topic they wanted to present, not something they’re just trying to cram as much into it as possible in 60 seconds.
NileRed/NileBlue is who you're looking for. If you're watching a channel called Red Nile, you may be watching stolen content...
No, you’re right, I’m sleep deprived as shit right now lol
Youtube shorts are like Instagram reels, nobody likes them but they are probably good for "engagement" aka keeping people on the site for as long as possible.
"nobody likes them but keeps watching them" - that confirms my theory that it's digital crack. I intuitively want to stay away because I feel that it cannot be good for my brain
Yep. My guess is that the entire purpose of them is that they aren't fulfilling enough on their own to satisfy you, so you just go to the next one, ad infinitum. It's the media equivalent of potato chips.
I absolutely hate these shitty little fucking videos with a passion. Which is why I told them to piss the fuck off with YouTube ReVanced.
I'm going to be a lot more comfortable with shorts after bottom surgery
You know they sell shorts in most stores, right? You don't have to cut the bottom off of pants to get short pants.
FB shorts? i hate that people who dont have ADHD make ADHD video pages where they just do random stupid shit and then attribute it to their self-dianogsed ADHD. making ADHD/autism/OCD your entire personality when you dont even have it is one of the cringiest things ive seen adults doing online.
Kinda like all the memes in this /c/? I have a hard time believing that every meme here was made by an ADHD person.
I'm ranting about any kind of shorts on any platform :D
Except for the clothing, those I like.
Yeah that half baked mental health content by people who have no clue is absolutely horrible. Might be it starts the path to actual diagnosis for some, but it's also a rabbit hole of misinformation and stereotypes...
There are creators around Adhd and autism that aren't shit. But you need to find them. There are probably more without credentials, but I follow a lot of the ones that has.
can't stand them cause i hate vertical videos. at first they were restricted to vine, then tiktok... then they broke containment and every video service out there wanted to stuff them in their app whether people asked for them or not.
If anyone is looking to block shorts, there’s a cool uBlock origin list for it; https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
Man I was sure this was about shorts vs pants too. Pants all day every day. Is that another adhd thing now?
No, shorts are awesome.
Especially booty shorts.
I thought it was about the stock market. And I haven't the faintest of clue what a short is, except that it's used in films about the stock market lol
I know you didn't ask but an opportunity to info dump is always fun.
Shorting is basically borrowing stock from someone, selling it. and then buying it back later before the person wants their stock back. Since (mostly) all shares are equal, as long as I return to the same stock, there's no reason to hold onto a specific share.
If a stock is going down, if I borrow a share for a week, sell it for $100, then in 6 days buy it for $50 and return it to you, then I've just made $50.
It's a way to make money when the stock market is going down, but is often riskier because with buying stock, you can just hold indefinitely. If I buy a $100 share, and the price goes to $0. I just lost $100. The most I can possibly lose is $100. (edit: and I sell at any point in the future when I decide. Could be 1 week, could be 30 years.)
But when shorting, you have to return the shares to the actual owner at some point, and since you sold the shares, you MUST get them back. But if I sold your $100 share, and in 6 days it is now $10,000 (this wouldn't happen, but for example), and I don't have $10,000, now I can't return your share to you, and I'm in REAL big trouble. The amount of money I can lose is technically infinite, and since I don't have infinite money to lose, it probably just devolves into legal issues.
So I essentially bet that the market crashes and thus make bank on it?
The market, or a particular stock. But yeah. If you think something is going up, you buy low, sell high. and if you think something is going down, you short it and sell high, buy low (this is not financial advice).
Oh I love an info dump. Thank you for taking the time to explain it. It sounds like a twisted way to fuck yourself over financially or hit it real big.
... I'd rather take my chances at a craps table, sheesh!
Thanks again!
In theory, if you are following a company's public financials very closely and keeping track of things, not all of the stock market is completely unpredictable.
Some companies do certain things on predictable cadences. Every year at WWDC, apple announces a new iphone, and every year the stock price goes up a bit as a result. You're not going to triple your money in a week, but if you can get 5% in a week, you're already doing as good as most banks offer for a whole year.
Knowing too much information is illegal. That's "insider trading", at which point it is completely not gambling because you already know if the stock is going to go up or down, and that's just cheating.
That's makes a lot of sense. Thank you for informing me!
It's far more complicated than I have made it sound. it's not just "once every year apple go up". You'd need to be following as much public information about a company as possible, and be keeping track of trends. Keeping track of those things is a full time job. Especially since you need to keep track of many companies. And then that will still often only get you a slight edge.
Craps table look mighty good right about now then, eh? Lol
I get why Wall Street in the films is a nightmare of yelling and phones tho. Sounds too frustrating to me. I hate gambling. Not on a moral authority or nada, but on the basis that it's just dumb lol. Sounds like stocks is just a more complicated dumb.
Oh man, same. I'm new to the culture, and I thought this was another thing I have to get into now. It's like a friend of mine who married into a Jewish family and now has to learn all this new stuff and he's always like oh so this is a thing?
I use ublock origin and you can add a custom filter. They put the shorts in a specific panel that you can block easily.
Am I a bad person for considering doing this to my partner's computer without their knowledge or consent?
I thought you meant the short pants. I love them. I’m so sweaty all the time and long pants feel uncomfortable on my legs even if loose. Only wear them when necessary. Shorts are a godsend.
Ah so that is where this reference is from! I'm too uneducated / young, only played the GBA Generation games
You could've seen it if you played Fire Red/Leaf Green ;)
Ugh! My work uniform is technically PPE, so I'm required to wear it....black T shirt, black trousers that are too heavy for summer and too light for winter, and a black coat. The labourers get to wear shorts. They don't use power tools and mostly just run materials around in a truck with AC..... bastards.....
For patriotic reasons I am against them, only children and tourists wear shorts in my country.
What country is that? If you don’t want to share I get it. I only ask because that’s what everyone said about Spain, and everyone I travelled with refused to pack shorts except for me. It was the height of summer, in the middle of a heat wave. Literally every single local was wearing shorts.
Funny enough, it is a Spanish-speaking country
Haha that’s crazy. It was like 38C when I was there, if it was that hot in your country people would really still be wearing full pants? I admire the dedication but I don’t care if I look like a tourist, a child, or a tourist child I’m going to be comfortable. Unless I’m going to an event or place that has an actual dress code I guess. I’ve been to weddings and funerals in 38-39C temps and I suck it up out of respect. But on vacation? Miss me with that pants shit fam.
It's humid here so the heat index gets into the high 30's regularly, and people still either dress formally for work or wear jeans, it is kind of nuts
I went to India. 42 °C in the shade. Had the opposite problem.
That is an insane temperature. I was in the high desert in California when the night temps never really dropped below 37.8C and day temps hit that, but it was a super dry heat. 90% of the time I was just day drinking in a big assed metal barrel full of water so it wasn’t too bad. I can’t imagine doing tourist stuff in a place i want to explore in those temps.
It was work stuff, but also super dry heat. I would have died otherwise, probably.
i fucking hate short videos. it's the most vacuous thing invented thus far.
i literally block or dim the thumbnails with ublock origin.
then again i also hate long videos with slow talking and tons of useless and filler segments such as:
- intro montage
- recap
- sponsor product ad
- channel subscription begging
- alternate channel subscription begging
- off topic rambling/ranting
- outro montage
(thank you ❤️Freetube & ❤️Sponsorblock)
Anyone else hating Shorts?
Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I'm allergic to them.
The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
What does this have to do with shorts? Mine only make a swooshing sound depending on the material. Maybe get some nicer ones?
I too absolutely despise the whole format.
I especially can't stand it when either of these two things happen:
- The subtitles show one word at a time (???)
- The subtitles are animated
That is what I thought looks like those speed reading techniques, but by force. So annoying. Not sure the "without loss of comprehension" is so true, all that I read says that speed reading is pseudoscience
But what you say IS a kind of technique that hyped for a while in the "speed reading community", e.g. here is an implementation https://codepen.io/keithwyland/pen/yLyLNz
Or a post about it https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ye6583/whatever_happened_to_spritz_rsvp_kindle_word/
I personally find it exhausting.
It also makes my head hurt
I like to wear them.
Watching the short form content video kinda thing… no thanks. I refuse to touch those with a 10m stick, I also find it quite irritating when my gf watches them in bed. Every 2 seconds I hear some entirely different scenario, pretty stressful for me.
If I want to watch videos, I usually just take some time for that. I’d say my average video length on YouTube is about 30-45min
Yep, that could be me!
Below the infinite trash stream of the algorithm there is still some actually good content in sane formats that does not taste like greasy mind fast food.
First time I saw them I could see immediately it was YouTube trying to be TikTok, so I just blocked them with uBO. Haven't seen one since.
i have had this conversation with my wife before when she used to show me one specific person who had very quick cuts of about a second each. i hated it so much, i would feel anxious and it would take me a while to calm down. and in that case there was no voiceover to keep track of.
I totally feel you. My wife was also confused why I suddenly was somehow frustrated and angry. Glad I'm not the only one.
Death by a thousand one-second cuts
"Shorts" / "TikToks" / w/e are just short form multimedia content taken to their logical extreme. Small tidbits of context free, useless information, slammed into your soul so fast you miss all of the important bits and just get the buzz.
Yeah, useless time sink with lots of flashy distraction. The people who envisioned and built the internet surely did not anticipate it will evolve into THIS.
I despise them because they're shallow as fuck, "content" that requires zero brain to enjoy (I do enjoy some of that shit on occasion, but not in the form of short videos, I prefer the lazy approach of putting something on and not having to move a finger for 10+ minutes).
Another thing that makes me hate that kind of video is that it's a breeding ground for "reacts", as if the longer form of that wasn't already a piece of shit. Neither of these problems are exclusive to YT, they're just following on Tiktok, like Instagram did
Reaction videos are the worst, in any form. I'm waiting for the day until there's a reaction video loop referring to nothing than other reacts in circle and nobody knows what the actual underlying video was. The recursive reaction from hell.
Shorts are way too short to learn anything, I find most of them useless or stupid trash. I only seen a few good shorts. Ugh so bad. Also isn’t YouTube loosing money on shorts, just to compete with TikTok… ugh
I hate them so much for all the reasons you mention and a few more.
But there are times that I prefer them over a 2-3 minute vidoe padded to 12-15 minutes for monetization.
I honestly prefer text over either of those options. Saves time and doesn't over stimulate. Plus, if I lose focus I can just go back, which would be tedious in a video.
More importantly, you can search text to get straight to the point you need. Doing that in video or audio is not possible, you have to memorize timestamps
This, 100%
Yep. Absolutely despise shorts. For all the reasons you say, on top of the fact that 98% of them are bullshit and wrong.
Which is bizarre, because I get sucked into facebook reels once in a while. I blame the cat clips.
(I always browse with the volume muted. I despise shitty sound effects like the fake laughter, shitty music, or the AI voice.)
Fast cutting is a well-known and widely used filmmaking technique:
This method creates a rhythm or pace that can heighten tension, convey action, or suggest urgency within a scene.
It’s often used to keep viewers engaged and emotionally connected to the content on screen.
https://filmlifestyle.com/what-is-fast-cutting-in-film/
Unfortunately, "content creators" know this too and use it to manipulate viewers.
If it is done in some tense scene in an action movie, it's fine.
If it's your default mode, it loses any kind of narrative effect and is just hectic + cheaper because you don't need to many takes and just chop good pieces together -> faster and lower effort.
I have nothing against fast cuts as an actual artistic device.
I basically only watch YouTube on my TV via Roku, I hate shorts and wish there was a way to block them on the Roku app.
If google really wants to push shorts then make it a separate app. If someone is watching on a TV then chances are they aren't looking for short form content, so stop pushing it on that medium.
They had one years ago called Vine.
I remember that being an ok way spend a smoke break, I couldn't imagine living on it the way people use shorts/Tik Tok. The algorithm must be way more intense now.
I get what you're saying but Vine was an independent company that got bought by Twitter then killed.
I was thinking that Google should make their own app called YouTube shorts and take on tiktok that way. Google/YouTube is trying to have an all in one app, the problem is that muddies the waters and when you stand for everything you stand for nothing. Not to mention that YouTube spent years promoting longer for content and that's what the user base thinks of now when you say YouTube.
You can play off the YouTube brand with a separate app and still get the branding boost. But actively muddying the waters and annoying your user base is just.... well I would say bad business.... but given their track record, it's pretty on brand for a Google property.
Ah, I'd forgotten that Vine was independent at first. Thanks for the correction.
It happens, I wouldn't even want to count how many times I've mixed up my facts in the last year. I have no idea why, since I never used Vine, but it's history is a useless factiod that is forever stuck in my head.
Instagram'd algorithm, at least, will prioritise reels over everything else - leading a lot of accounts to post still images as "reels"
I keep turning them off in YouTube but that doesn’t stop them coming back. Good to know I’m paying for a hostile product. I won’t forget it.
You can use a patched YouTube client that removes ads and shorts. A few minutes worth of work to set up but worth it imo
https://github.com/KobeW50/ReVanced-Documentation/blob/main/YT-ReVanced-Guide.md
The worst kind of shorts are the ones pretending to present serious content.
Of course you crammed all related parts about any current war into a maximum of 60 seconds or summarized the latest news.
Fuck you to anyone doing this.
Depends on the content. For cooking recipes i actually prefer them. I don't have to skip through multiple minutes of fluff. I get the ingredients, the steps, quick and easy (ofc some creators don't give measurements in shorts but we just block those ones)
Same with looking for a new show, quick clips give me an idea if i may be interested, have found a lot of shows that way. Various hobbies also have great little intro howtodoX short videos.
But 99% of shorts are not those, and imo are worthless trash
the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
This, 1000%. They're trying to use every "engagement" technique in the book, all at once. Shit's exhausting.
This is exactly why I hate TikTok and FB videos too, and once Instagram started hopping on that train I quit and never looked back.
If the information you want to share is worthwhile, it’ll be written out where I can read it at my own pace.
The excessive speed and nightmare for reasonable accessibility (not to mention the self-censoring that screws up the point of subtitles) makes me instinctively upset too. You’re not alone.
Shorts are cancer and vertical videos need to die.
Word. We should start a political party.
PLT: some plugins of YouTube revanced allows you to remove anything related to shorts from your YouTube android app. So you can spend more time on regular-sized videos c:
Sometimes I get clickbaited into watching one because yt doesn't let me hide them forever (is there an extension for that maybe? Surely it's doable with css or something), and they've been alright. Though the ones I clicked on have only been from one creator and I don't mind fast talking (not sped up) and those didn't have the fast cuts.
I also really don't get the appeal of the format. I've been sent shorts from other creators and it just feels worse than the same thing as a proper video. It doesn't overload me because it's essentially how my brain operates anyway, but that's also why I want things that make me take a break from constantly thinking in overdrive by simply being slow.
I use a Firefox extension called Youtube-shorts Block that does what it says in the name. I think my ADHD brain rejects them for the same reasons a lot of other people are mentioning here...
Thanks, I'll have to check that out
I wasn't sure if this post was about the media format or the piece of clothing, but my answer is the same for both: They're annoying and of limited use, and I absolutely hate them.
Made me crack up a little :D
I did not want to start a fashion war here :O
The only thing I like about them is that there's no ads.
With an ad blocker there are also no ads on normal YouTube ;) and there is even an extension called sponsor block that can help skipping over in-video ads
I know, I do like supporting creators though.
yes. There is a youtube extension called unhook (?) which lets you remove them from pretty much anywhere on the site.
I like some Shorts. Long-form videos are great, but way too often I see 15+ minute videos about a topic that shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to discuss.
Eat my shorts
Don't have a cow, man
No portrait-orientation video is worth watching.
Edit about the article of clothing: men's legs and feet look weird and so I don't like going out in public without long pants and shoes.
I'm glad to find other people with similar experiences to mine trying out short form video. I tried TikTok a few years ago when I realized how big it was and that I was missing out on entire cultural touchstones but I just couldn't. Too much music I don't like, too much randomly clicking and hoping I like a video, too much visual and audible noise.
Seriously why can't I just see the title and uploader of a video before I click? What if I don't want to watch this person or this particular video? Why do I have to decide while watching the video instead of relaxing with a bit of silence between videos?
Honestly the whole UI was just mentally and visually exhausting. I think I made it about 20 minutes of trying to get into TikTok before I finally just said "not for me" and gave up entirely
I like them. Sometimes I want to watch videos, but not get super involved in a longer production. Plus, youtube shorts, at least, often have links to the main video they were clipped from, which I'll throw into my "watch later" playlist.
Not everybody likes shorts, and that's fine, but I make them work for me.
Worse: my wife watches shorts on the TV, wasting 75% screen real estate
They should create vertical TVs. It's insane, but at the same time, it would be actually less wasteful.
Being forced to watch hours of vertical videos on a horizontal screen is probably one of the rings of hell.
When one of your relatives films a family event for half an hour in portrait mode and later shows everyone on the TV.
They already did - Samsung Sero.
No idea, never watched them. Now that I think about it, I've been watching less and less youtube this last months to a point I think I wouldn't miss it much if it went subscription only or I couldn't block ads.
I detest them. Some science YouTubers have begun using them too, and too often they’re either just cut from longer videos I’ve already seen - and hence wasting my time until I realise that - or they contain no explanation at all because of the length.
Yeah in the best case it's just a promotional teaser. Obviously you cannot explain anything non trivial in that amount of time.
Couldn’t tell you as I don’t watch them.
I couldn’t care less about the stupid shit on there people provide as “content”.
I refuse to browse/watch shorts directly; probably because I know I'll get sucked in to it for several hours, but I also know there's very little useful/valuable info there. I will however occasionally watch other typically gaming YouTubers, reacting to collections of shorts.
I like shorts.
They're comfy and easy to watch.
That doesn't mean they're all good. Just like everything else, there's a few things that are good and a whole lot of things that suck, hard.
Shorts or longs...I hate the click-baity ones.
Do none of you remember vines??
I've watched enough of them that I can tell which ones are good within the first 2 seconds. The YT algorithm is crap and gives me a lot of garbage to swipe past anytime I open Shorts.
The way I see it is to choose a normal length video, say 30 minutes of content, and watch that, or to scroll through Shorts for 30 minutes and maybe find a few good ones. It's a terrible tradeoff.
Every few days I find myself losing a few hours to them that would've been better spent doing literally anything else. So yes, in that sense I hate them.
I used to feel that way, they didn't have the depth I wanted.
My wife has sent me so many tiktoks that I got used to it.
Now I still don't watch them, but because I'd get stuck in them. Whatever my wife sends, and specific ones from content people I know make quality, and that's about it. Once you get past them being presented in a new way, they're more addicting to ADHD brains.
I will say that if you were gonna pick your minute long vertical video platform, tiktok is the best one, YouTube the worst, but Facebook and Instagram are a lot closer to YouTube shorts than tiktoks. I'm reasonably confident it's because YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram see it as a way to extend your stay on a platform with other content, while tiktok focuses on it exclusively. Their algorithms are doing different things.
I can't get over how it feels like it wants to take over my senses.
I also hate voice messages. I ingest content on my terms and at my pace, thank you very much. And both rambling voice messages and short, absurdly dense but still shallow videos both disrespect me in different ways. One is usually too slow for my attention, the other too fast.
There are no videos or podcasts that are addicting to me, I like reading and writing more than listening. My ADHD brain can't listen unless you talk to me in the right way to get and hold my focus, i.e. interesting information presented at the right pace.
Reading lets me be me - I can skim it, I can re-read it, I can find it later.
I feel you. I used to be the same. I got used to audiobooks in the same way, but only because I had to, when I had my kid, and I couldn't spare the hands to read. I could, however, get some sport headphones, bone-conducting, so I could hear the baby if she cried but could hear my book without disturbing her, and once I was used to that, that became my preferred way to read.
Maybe that made me more adaptable.
Either way, if you don't need to adapt, there's no harm in not adapting. Live your life, you'll adapt when/if you need to.
I quite like shorts, but I only watch specific videos. I watch woodworking and Minecraft build videos to see if the technique is something that I'd want to try myself, and then either watch the longer version, or find other ways to try it out.
I seriously thought you were talking about pants until like halfway through and was going to be like shut your mouth.
But yeah the majority of short form content sucks ass
The only Shorts I ever enjoy are from a sketch comedy channel I like, Almost Friday TV. They're not just shortened/cropped clips like most other channels do.
It's literally the only exception to my anti-Shorts rule
I don't mind some of them but the obnoxious subtitles, they just put me off so much and the video controls that are just always there getting in the way.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I believe they're talking about YouTube shorts.
Ah, I've never seen those. Between Youtube that asks for login when on VPN and uBlock origin I don't recall ever seeing these.
I love how someone can unironically not know what I'm talking about, even though I thought I'm a rare weirdo reading blogs via RSS feeds without actively using any social media except for reddit and lemmy
Yes, absolutely.
I like them.