Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
view the rest of the comments
True. The way content was consumed back then was more enriching I guess compared to the short video format now in days.
You can learn lots on YouTube and other simular platforms like LBRY. You can't learn much on Twitter or Facebook. Tiktok "learning" is short clips oviously like "Did you know" or "Here are 3 thing you can do with your phone" but this is not deep as watching a 20 minute YouTube video on WWII history for example.
You have to start somewhere. Learning something on tiktok is the start of the process, not the end.
You start with a thread and you pull and you pull and you pull and pretty soon you have enough thread to sew yourself an entire wardrobe.
You can't start at the end or the middle or a third of the way through. You start at the beginning. You can't research something if you don't know it exists. You start with an idea, a question, not the answer.
You are looking at this like an adult looking backwards, not a young person looking forwards. You can not learn in reverse.
Tiktok is a feed. You watch a clip under a tag and then swipe to the next one, right? This is not designed to learn. If there is a way to search and interact like YouTube, I sure do not know about it and it is not used often since most people will just scroll though the feed.
On YouTube and LBRY, you search for something and watch it. Yeah you can have a feed too with YouTube and LBRY but this is optional.
Another thing I do not like about TikTok is you cannot browse TikTok in the browser, they force you to install their app, which is one reason I don't use it.
How can you search for something that you are unaware of?
You gather ideas, ask questions, and then you take them somewhere else.
Again, you are thinking in reverse. An adult with a few decades of experience under their belt. Tiktok, in part, appeals to young people because they inherently have a beginner's mindset. Everything is new and there's much to learn.
Are many tiktok users gathering ideas, asking questions and looking into this stuff further? I do not see this at all. I did not see this with Vine users when Vine was around and I do not see this with Instgram users which is simular to Tiktok, being a "scrolling feed platform".
I do see YouTube users and LBRY users having the most curiosity compared to other platforms.
I get it, many YouTube users watch a few videos they maybe suggested to them by an feed or algorithm, then explore this further. How Tiktok and Instagram are designed, it a feed.
You make a point that it could get an idea planted in your head. However to my understanding the user will need to go to another platform like YouTube to explore an idea further since Tiktok is not designed for this.
Yes. You don't see it because you don't use it.
You can very much search and follow creators and topics. You can view a feed of just subscribed profiles. I do wish there were ways to make lists of profiles to have more focused feeds at different times, but that's hardly a scathing indictment.
Have you used TikTok? How long do you think videos can last? Because they can be up to 10 minutes; plenty of time for quality content. Not to mention, many longer videos are broken into multiple smaller parts (similar to tweet threads).
To your specific point, there are some excellent WWII scholars producing TikTok content on topics such as countering Holocaust denialism.
Beyond that, there are many things people can learn more efficiently outside of long-form content. Recipes are a great example: search engine algorithms have made recipe websites a complete disaster. Literally no one wants to read (or write) about my step grand uncles 3rd cousins summer cabin, but SEO demands bloat. In a short form video, there's not as much time for algorthmically mandated filler.
No I do not use TikTok but I do know videos can be 10m long. However many TikTok videos do end up outside of TikTok like on YouTube or LBRY and they are usually under 1m.
I am sure there are lots of WWII channels on TikTok, but the tall video format, and the effects are just annoying.
The video format is made for the device format where most people consume it. It's just as annoying when someone clips a widescreen formatted video on TikTok. The ability to learn from something isn't affected by the video being horizontal or vertical.
If you look at most videos on the internet. Videos that are tall are not usually educational compared widescreen videos. If a content creator wanted to make a video on WWII, they will likely use video editing tools and whip up a widescreen video. When people want to share how their day is, they do not use a video editor, they open up an app and record themselves.
I find tall videos annoying, even on smartphones.
There's more widescreen content because it's an older format. A video creator doesn't innately prefer one format or another; they use the format of their platform. This argument is no different than saying "if someone wants to educate, they'll never use videos, they'll only use books".
So I guess after this whole thread, the thing we land on is: agreeing to disagree that "vertical videos are annoying".