Hilarious how many here can’t grasp that our generation is NOT the target audience for YT shorts. They’re designed to appeal to their chosen younger target audience and compete with TikTok. It’s like a 70-something walking into an Old Navy store and complaining you don’t like the clothes there. Maybe this is how you can self diagnose as a curmudgeon?
That and the senior poster who will inevitably now tell us they buy their clothes at Old Navy all the time…
Man, you are
still not getting it!
It's not the
concept of a grouping of < 60 second videos that I'm complaining about. There are two things:
1) They took away some of the user controls. This might not be a big deal for many videos, but there are some that a user may want to use the FW/RW keys for, I gave one example. Why take away options from the user?
2) YouTube converted content creator's <60 second videos to this format automatically, whether the creator intended them for this sort of casual viewing or not. I gave an example where a creator intentionally expects you to pause to read text at your own pace, and the FW/RW keys are an asset to this style. But the video get stripped of these features unilaterally, w/o any awareness of the content.
In fact, I can see where this almost 70 year old geezer would seek out a grouping of 'shorts' - say I have 5 minutes to kill, and just want some light entertainment, I don't want to get sucked into anything I can't finish. Four or five 'shorts' might fit that bill just fine. Going to a place with popular short videos could be quite convenient.
As far as the oft-derived vertical format - well, if YouTube research says most people watch these shorts on phones, I guess I can see some logic to that. What happens to the auto-converted ones from content creators who did not intend for their work to be presented in the vertical format? Just squished down? Cropped? That's not good either. And I understand they are competing with other platforms - but I don't see that as a reason to remove features, in fact, competition-wise, added features/options are good (as long as they don't get in the way, which these don't).
Maybe you should skip the 'curmudgeon' categorization when you just can't follow or agree with another persons reasoned point-of-view?
And I don't think any 'short supporters' have answered my question:
What benefit is there to removing the controls (they are already developed, they will need to be maintained for longer videos where they are used by almost all)? As I mentioned, they are an option - if you don't want to use them, don't. But don't take them away for those who might want to use them occasionally.
-ERD50