Ultra-long (2hr+) YouTube Video Essays

Max Chill

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My take on this is mostly on irl essays. My problem is that most of these hour long essay formats are made by 20 year olds. I have severe doubts on whatever 20 year olds would give advice on life. This doesn't mean I automatically nullify anything they say, but most of these are at best just not that valuable (at least in respect to my needs and my standards). Almost as if this was the contemporary equivalent where Socrates would be calling out the youth imitating actual philosophers, mimicking the eloquence but never the value that the words should or could have contained.

There's a reason why most of my feed are mid-adult and old men giving advice and lessons. They were in the forays of life. The 20 year olds do it cause its fashionable. Even if I were to give something in advice, I'd rather it remained in a conversational context because pretentiousness and pretense of aged wisdom would kill me.

Easiest way to filter them is to asses what their lifestyles are, then maybe you can decide if they're worth your time.
 
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My take on this is mostly on irl essays. My problem is that most of these hour long essay formats are made by 20 year olds. I have severe doubts on whatever 20 year olds would give advice on life. This doesn't mean I automatically nullify anything they say, but most of these are at best just not that valuable (at least in respect to my needs and my standards). Almost as if this was the contemporary equivalent where Socrates would be calling out the youth imitating actual philosophers, mimicking the eloquence but never the value that the words should or could have contained.

There's a reason why most of my feed are mid-adult and old men giving advice and lessons. They were in the forays of life. The 20 year olds do it cause its fashionable. Even if I were to give something in advice, I'd rather it remained in a conversational context because pretentiousness and pretense of aged wisdom would kill me.

Easiest way to filter them is to asses what their lifestyles are, then maybe you can decide if they're worth your time.
"look! i am reneissance man! i am master of none!", while cant stop yapping and taking attention to himself - as if that wasnt the point, the reneissance man was(nt) the point of to lead by example, and not to argue about culture with kids his age! "look how *le smart* i am!"...
> if you really are [what you yourself believe in you are], then, how comes everyone (else) see thru this cheap *mask*!? > no need to (do all this peacocking), if you "got rizz!"???!"...
 
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CognacDefender

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I can understand watching one of these AFTER you've played/watched/read whatever the video's about, but most people don't do that. I can't tell you the number of times I've been talking with friends, and the topic of certain games or comics comes up and they're like "Oh yeah, I saw a two hour long video on that one, it's incredible/ass" and I ask them if they played/read it and they said no. We are at the point where people would rather watch an even longer summary of movies and vidya where they're told what everything means and represents, rather than experience them on their own. It's literal NPC behavior and I hate it.
Some examples of this I've seen on a larger scale:

View: https://youtu.be/JyKliIF49JQ?si=nIln5oA67LNj8gn2

Most people who shit talk the Boys comic haven't actually read it, they've just watched this video and then get mad at the things that are different from the show because it's not uwu wholesome to have Homelander say the gamer word.

View: https://youtu.be/tYk0BS84ItY?si=7ChpBAWDyQR0M8Ms

I can assure you, not a single person who talks about how Specs Ops The Line is a masterpiece has ever played it. I haven't, because its gameplay looks unappealing and I already know the twist, so why play it?

View: https://youtu.be/51o5J0XVGoc?si=Cch1Ji5aJnAfdM0i

This video is particularly egregious to me, personally. You see, I played Cruelty Squad on my own, without watching any guides or videos about it, I enjoyed it but didn't unlock all the secrets. Some months later a friend comes to my house and we play Cruelty Squad, and he's all like "No, dude you have to watch Pyrocynical's 4 hour long video to understand the meaning of everything and find all the deep secrets and know how to perfectly finish each and every level without dying once" (not the first nor last time this has happened)

I DON'T NEED NOR WANT TO WATCH A 4 HOUR LONG VIDEO TO ENJOY FUCKING SHITPOST FINNISH VIDYA FFS

>watching some fat, brap obsessed pedophile's 4 hour long pile of slop over civvie11's immaculate 45 minute review.
Your friend bottomed out.
 
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The Chibi One

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My problem is that most of these hour long essay formats are made by 20 year olds.
There are 12-year-old's LARPing on TikTok with Andrew-Tate-styled rants. "Oh I thought I had time, but as it turns out I don't." And then a quick montage of journalling, punching air in their backyard, drinking Starbucks slop. S-tier content.

I don't automatically assume 20-somethings don't know what they are talking about, and I would extend your critique of IRL essays to cultural products, particularly with regard to "retrospectives." The fact remains they haven't been around long enough to have experienced the zeitgeist when, for example, Majora's Mask came out. This is something you can only experience through mediation if you weren't around at the time. (And arguably it's vaporwave as fuck.) Sure, it might be interesting and lol to see a zoomer critique Morrowind's gameplay because they have no point of reference besides current-gen AAA titles, but an ultra-long essay is something I'm ultimately not interested in coming from a person without the lived experience of a culture forming.
 
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RainySky

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I have noticed a lot more long form videos the last years, yeah. Does anyone know about the economic side of these videos - what is most profitable for the youtuber in question to publish? Is this trend pushed by the demand for long videos, supply provided by youtubers who prefer to make long content or an algorithm/payment structure that makes such videos perform or pay better than alternatives?

I remember at one point ten minute videos were widely (perhaps not correctly idk) considered best for the algorithm, with almost all youtubers aiming to get just above ten. But I could see long videos making up for less people clicking on them simply by retaining viewers; I think it likely that a person three ten minute videos into a 60 min series might take a break or click on a different vid, while a person halfway through an hour long essay might feel they need to finish hearing it out. Im not sure how youtube pays, but they do show ads at regular intervals in long vids for those adblockless souls out there, so it might be possible that longer videos simply result in more ads and better payment. That being said this is all pure musing on my part - if someone actually has experience with monetisation and how it works Id love to hear their thoughts.
 
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manhattanparadox

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Plus my attention span has been fried to that of a goldfish via excessive internet usage, so anything too long in the 2+hr category and I am going to have to come back later if at all.
I so relate to this. Isn't it a shame? I really want to consume all the things and be like a giant sponge absorbing things, but then... SQUIRREL
 

Pluto

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The video essays I watch (or, frankly, listen to) aren't really the type people ITT seem to reference, but still,
My problem is that most of these hour long essay formats are made by 20 year olds.
I 100% agree.

I really like just, you know, learning about random stuff. So naturally my recs are full of video essays explaining physics or history or evolution or airplanes or whatever my hyperfixation for the week is. And the "20 year old moron talks like he's an authority" problem is out of control on that side of YouTube.
 

wavve-creator

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This is a lindy concept and has been around since people learned to speak, we are just doing it in video form. Old things new technology.

Just lectures in video format its's nothing new. It's even beneficial as it engages people for longer and allows them to learn to focus more on informative topics. Hell what do you think TLC used to be? Ever seen a murder documentary before? Just long TV length video essays.
 
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This is a lindy concept and has been around since people learned to speak, we are just doing it in video form. Old things new technology.

Just lectures in video format its's nothing new. It's even beneficial as it engages people for longer and allows them to learn to focus more on informative topics. Hell what do you think TLC used to be? Ever seen a murder documentary before? Just long TV length video essays.
the times TLC was The learning channel
(utopian scholastic era)
 
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Ashman

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Thinking about it I realised the point of these videos (The media types) apart from background:

It's because you are too lazy to consume the medium itself so you need someone to re-digest it for you. This mainly happens with video games.
 
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RisingThumb

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To me the issue with video essays is they are very hard to break down, and tend to be better done as a regular written essay. In most cases they are better done as a written essay, and suck for not having a transcript.
One weird thing I notice is that everyone who claims to hate this type of long video listens to podcasts on a regular basis.
If it's a podcast on youtube that's different.
And as a few other people have noted, Podcasts are different. Personally, I don't really watch podcasts or video essays, most video essays are lazy summarisations of the topic that do a worse job than even Wikipedia(which is pretty amusing since wikipedia is so bad), but they also end up going half way into being a review of sorts too, but fail as a result because of how reviews give you the quick rundown of whether it'll be interesting so you can engage with it yourself.

Twitch streams are comparable because of how much dead air is in them, that I can compare them to Podcasts too. So because of it, I'm glad people take these and cut them up into 5 minute-10 minute clips that are much more interesting. Twitch streamers are pretty much the same, and I reckon 90% of Asmongold's audience is people watching clips not his stream. Video essays don't lend themselves well to being cut up, and are often enough waffle that I've been generally burned on this kind of video.

And where these kind of videos exist, I see them done much better as 2-10 minute focused videos on the essay subject. To me, they only serve as entertainment by "fangirling" over that media, which is probably why there's so many Fallout New Vegas video essays.

Oh, also, if you can somehow get people to fall asleep on your long ass droning 8 hour video essay, you've won 8 hours worth of ad revenue. It's lucrative enough that some people focus on it, which is why you have 10 hour rain audio videos and stuff like that.
 
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Dead Star

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This trend started with the popularity of Red Letter Media's Plinkett reviews.

Back then, videos had to be split into multiple parts at 10-15 minutes length. That explains why RLM's complete teardown of The Phantom Menace had 7 parts. Their future reviews became longer with each new installment up until they got tired of doing it.

When someone is good at something, it's only a matter of time that copycats come around. That was what happened to the Angry Video Game Nerd. His early videos were so well done, it spawned copycats who ripped off his format and went searching for poorly designed games of the 8 bit and 16 bit eras.

You can draw a line from RLM's popularity with reviews all the way to the current state of what can accurately be called The Grifter Industrial Complex, with all these creators who just make an endless stream of content tearing shit down and feasting on the negativity. I believe Mike and Jay of RLM are aware of this. They've hinted before how much they dislike these videos to the point they have avoided talking about Star Wars. I also believe this is why Mike has let the Plinkett character fade into memory and won't do more reviews with him.

Probably the earliest video essayists were the New Atheist guys. Many of them evolved into political commentators by either going left or right. By the time Youtube allowed 30 minute videos, the New Atheists were pumping out documentary style videos to make their arguments. The Breadtube people were the first ones I seen who really went the length of video essays.

I don't watch this stuff. I enjoyed RLM back when it was fresh and will still watch their Half In The Bag videos. Political commentary these days tends to bore me, cause it's the same old shit rehashed over and over just from a different ideological standpoints. Politics becoming a form of entertainment has had bad consequences, as people now build identities around whatever political views and beliefs they have.

The video essayists who annoy me the most are the grifters who are searching for 'woke' content that they can easily pick apart and make some money off the clicks. I noticed a long time back with these gaming channels. Many of them seem to have little interest in the games they are upset about. They'll talk for half an hour or longer about story and character elements while speaking very little about gameplay mechanics and fun factor.
 

ManulHater

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I do not like these kinds of videos. I personally believe that my time, and others', is very valuable. Even as a windbag myself who, for example, went of on a 10 minute tangent on biblical literacy and the American Civil War to preface my point about why modern discourse has become so polluted, I feel that brevity is a lost art. If you can't succinctly make your point, then it more than likely isn't anything profound or worth serious examination.

That and like 9.5 out of every 10 of these long video essays are about absolute bottom of the barrel slop. I'm already getting irrationally angry at this very moment thinking about how my tax dollars are subsidizing services used by, if not the lifestyle of, someone who devotes 2+ hours of their life making essays about background characters from Clone High or whatever Soylentertainment millennials and the kids who larp as them enjoy.
 

Hobo8240

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The rest of them now have been BTFO after the Change The Channel fiasco, and ended up crying online about not being taken seriously as "content creators" which is another cringe neologism for "spergs out and uploads it on video."
Does this include Brad Jones cuz I'd be surprised if it did cuz he always struck me as a pretty chill dude
 

LostintheCycle

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It's even beneficial as it engages people for longer and allows them to learn to focus more on informative topics.
People who watch these videos do not focus on them the whole time. They usually put them on in the background while doing something else that takes primacy.
This is an argument that is grasping for straws.
 
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kimn

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I think we mustn't be too hasty to generalise things. Regardless of the length of the video, you can make slop - something just made for the extrinsic rewards you get from making it, or "good" content - something made for the intrinsic reward of having made something great.
Remember that youtube video essays are a new form of content in the scheme of things.

As we in the 2020s complain of this new length of video, many of those in the 1920s didn't see the value in the feature-length film over the more traditional short. I think this is a good analogy because both movies and video essays are entertainment products at heart, and both can be made as slop and also as good content. Again - they're entertainment products. If people are being entertained by them then they're fulfilling their purpose, no? And as with all things, I can appreciate the good ones, and I dislike the lazily made, padded out ones.
 

RisingThumb

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People who watch these videos do not focus on them the whole time. They usually put them on in the background while doing something else that takes primacy.
This is an argument that is grasping for straws.
This opens a whole can of worms about whether you need to be actively focusing, in order to benefit from it. I don't believe the argument is grasping for straws, as one example of a benefit, is learning a language by immersion. Both quantity and quality of content can help with learning a language by immersion, even if you're not super focused on it. It's pretty plain to me though, that the gist of what you say is right, that if you aren't focused you benefit less, but to say it's grasping for straws? Really?
 
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Neither or

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Other than a few of Quinton Reviews Nickelodeon sitcom retrospectives the only long form video essay I've taken the time to watch is that In Praise of Shadows video about "bad conservative horror films" that wasn't actually about bad conservative horror films. Like I'd say maybe a total of ten minutes of the three plus hour long video was about what the video title was and the other 90% was about horror conventions and responding to YouTube comments and Twitter discourse that annoyed him. Oh and some other guy named Wendigoon.

After honestly giving the video a shot I realized the entire thing was an incoherent mess that had no focus and I felt like I learned absolutely nothing other than the fact Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino hold political views. After legit getting frustrated at how boring the video was, I swore off video essays forever. Some might be great background noise if you're actually interested in the content though, and I sincerely hope the video I watched was an outlier.
 
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alCannium27

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Other than a few of Quinton Reviews Nickelodeon sitcom retrospectives the only long form video essay I've taken the time to watch is that In Praise of Shadows video about "bad conservative horror films" that wasn't actually about bad conservative horror films. Like I'd say maybe a total of ten minutes of the three plus hour long video was about what the video title was and the other 90% was about horror conventions and responding to YouTube comments and Twitter discourse that annoyed him. Oh and some other guy named Wendigoon.

After honestly giving the video a shot I realized the entire thing was an incoherent mess that had no focus and I felt like I learned absolutely nothing other than the fact Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino hold political views. After legit getting frustrated at how boring the video was, I swore off video essays forever. Some might be great background noise if you're actually interested in the content though, and I sincerely hope the video I watched was an outlier.
Quinton did good on those Garfield videos he made. I know his political views and he definitely had inserted them into his videos, but overall I thought it was a sprinkle of salt onto a wedding cake, usually not enough to disrupt the entertainment side of things.
But then he began doing those Nick videos and I just felt like he was definitely trying to say something, but simply do not know how to put it. Apart from all that SH stuffs I thought he was really genuinely diving deep into his childhood nostalgia. And I'd respect him for that.
Not sure what he's up to now though.
IPOS is, wow, actually a POS. Like, the whole video was like a hit piece made on someone simply because they are from the Appalachia, apparently (alright it's more than that, but he is really a petty fuck). Even before this I had came across a few of his videos back during COVID, and even then his always felt disjointed.
You know what took me out of the leftist circle-jerk? BigJoel, whom I really only knew from Quiton's whatever-con video he made during the lockdowns. He made a video on the scambaiters, and there was one point he went "oh but we forgot the scammers behind the phones are people too" right after he showed footage of Jim Browning preventing a granny from getting scammed in the thousands. Like NO-FUCKIN'-SHIT they are people, and they are shit people unworthy of sympathy, even if they were in a "Pig-Butchering" scheme, since those people were lured there with promises of abnormally high payment than the open market -- they should have known.
I knew the whole breadtube things was coming down twen Lindsey the Nostalgia Traitoress got boo'd off Twitter for wrong-think and HBomberGuy said in a video essay of his probably last year? that "I just woke up one day, and now I'm in Breadtube, apparently (paraphrased)".
Everything these people wrote and said in their videos were based off their immature feelings, never reasonings resulting from introspections and logical intercourses time after time -- after all, they have to churn out these videos.
Ok, rant over, off to listen to ocean storm ASMR to sleep now
 
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