Cascading downwards

People keep sending me videos (mostly YouTube) and links to podcasts, videoblogs, all that stuff. And I almost never post them. Why not?

Because they are so inexorably linear. I love the internet because the data flows at my speed. I can skimread, jump around, consume the bits I like and move on (next!) when I've got boring bits in my face. For that, I need text. Audio and video, compelling as they are, require me to slow down, focus on one thing on one of my three computer screens, and wait for the information to flow at whatever glacial pace the creator chose. That's fine for porn clips, but for pretty much anything else, I've already got 180 channels of narrowcast video programming on a big screen eight feet away that I never watch.

Some people say that my distaste for audio and video blogging makes me a crusty old fart who just doesn’t "get" the cool new thing. Me, I say I'm a hypermodern info consumer, moving too fast for linear data modes of the old twentieth century. I've been known to argue that audio and video blogging are reactionary trends, vain attempts to rescue the doomed and tired viewer/listener audience model. Whatever, maybe I am just an old fart. Doesn't matter. Vlogs and podcasts are dead to me, I just don't have the patience to sit through 'em.

Here's the most relevent part:

I love the internet because the data flows at my speed. I can skimread, jump around, consume the bits I like and move on (next!) when I've got boring bits in my face. For that, I need text.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows I speed-read. That is why video drives me insane - it's just such an inefficient way of transmitting information. I'd much rather read. I just don't understand the current mania for podcasts and videoblogs.

And I'm really amused that a sex blog explained it best.

YouTube - Supernatural "Night Shifter" episode ending

Oh, yeah, they're wanted men all right. I cannot wait to see the implications of that one play out.