I hate shortform video content
There, I said it. Are you happy?
I can't stand how flashy and fast-cut it is. I can't stand how (often) low effort it is. I can't stand how I'm unable to rewind. I can't stand how it auto-plays and somehow always manages to have sound on to scare the crap out of me.
I have ADHD. People seem to think that I would LOVE those sub-minute videos on TikTok and YouTube shorts. People seem to think it's MADE for people who "can't pay attention". These videos are WORSE for me BECAUSE of my ADHD. I get very overstimulated but because of the dopamine hit of "finishing a video", I keep doomscrolling through this garbage and am then stuck in a veritable loop of useless content consumption.
I watch a lot of video essays about video games on YouTube. Oooh, that video is 40 minutes? It's almost TOO short! I like snuggling into my chair and really sinking my teeth into a video. I like skimming the comments to see who agrees and disagrees. I like thinking, learning, and hearing peoples' opinions; shortform video content cannot give me any of those experiences. I feel like "the point" of the video is sifting like sand through a sieve -- and the sieve is my brain. It's gone. It's completely gone and I have no idea what I watched and nothing made an impression on me and now it's been an hour and I can't tell you what I've been imbibing on the interwebs for that time.
When I was focusing on my writing, I kept seeing blog posts and articles talking about booktok -- or whatever the TikTok book domain's tag happens to be. When I was streaming, I knew I should probably cut up some shorts to shovel onto YouTube or TikTok to get some offline engagement. I just couldn't do it. My distaste for the medium was SO GREAT it repelled me from using those apps and services. (I did download TikTok and I think I might have opened it ONCE, but then promptly discarded it.)
I hope I'm not alone in thinking this. It's just gotten so egregious and has suffused so many content mediums that it's getting exhausting.