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.
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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 totally understand. I dont think you’re a bad person for toying around with the idea if it’s hurting them.
I’ve thought about doing the same thing to my mom’s phone on her ReVanced app and then just go "huh, I guess YouTube broke something for everyone in ReVanced again. Sorry! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ " since I’m the one that sets it all up for her and researches and fixes it when it breaks. She has super bad untreated ADHD and she gets sucked into them super easily and ends up spending tons of time watching and getting worked up about nonsense, harmful, ‘conspiracy theory’ garbage made to target, upset, manipulate, and take advantage of people like her… It’s concerning me. It’s wrong.
But it also feels wrong to lie to her and make changes to her phone without her consent, ya know? I don’t know…
I’m curious to know if you end up doing it, and if so, how it goes.
*Edited to add: oh god I didn’t realize how long and rambly this comment ended up until after I posted it WHOOPS! 😅 My apologies. I guess if any community will understand, it’s this one, ha!
It might be worth considering telling her that you think it’s unhealthy, and asking if she’d be up for testing blocking them and seeing how it makes her feel. After a month (or whatever you decide) if she wants them back you can do that.
Knowing my parents, they wouldn’t agree to this no matter how good or reasonable it seems. They aren’t addicted to shorts, but they are to conservative media, and it seems really unhealthy for them and seems to have made them worse people. Maybe you’ll have better luck though. I think if you do it without her consent it’d be even worse if/when she finds out.
“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.
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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
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.)
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.
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 ;)
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.
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…
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
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?
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 thought it’s about pants too xD. Damn shorts with their quick cutting and cropped style!
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
yes. after you get used to it, it sucks you in for hours on end and you don’t even notice.
all with completely useless “content”. there is some interesting stuff, but you can get it in regular videos better.
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 like shorts because they are comfy and easy to wear
Especially when it’s hot outside, they’re very refreshing!
Fair point, clothing shorts are good shorts. The summer beginning is marked by me switching from jeans to shorts!
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.
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.
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…
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 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
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.
