this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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Neat - but the clickbait title is garbage, and so I have to downvote. What's wrong with just titling it "Statistical reasons why you could die next week". Ah, there's an intriguing title that makes me want to watch it without any gotcha games.
Because on every other platform, a title like that won't compete with clickbait and ragebait. Its only really here (and to a lesser extent Reddit) where clickbait negatively impacts a video's spread. Until people want to post here specifically, that won't change.
Well luckily, we aren't other platforms.
May I take a moment to say thank you? Many people have downvoted, leaving me wondering why tbh, so I appreciate your forthrightness here.
Also as you say, it is definitely clickbait - e.g. it might, not "will", save someone's life. But primarily if they were dumb enough to drink and then immediately drive while still drunk, or to go swimming in or even walking by the ocean (or other large body of water) while drunk. It also mentions cars in general being dangerous, even when you are not the one primarily at fault for an accident, though "not driving" isn't something that most people could switch to simply "not doing" as soon as the very next week. So yes, it is hyperbolic. Beyond that, its premise is sound that we so often get deluged with the clickbait media that it warps and twists our minds as to what is actually dangerous... but yes it has resorted to using some of the same tricks done by the other side in order to get its messages out to the widest possible audiences.
Also there's that annoying text that gets added by the Lemmy automation, below the video about going to that brilliant.org website whatever it is, I presume an ad for them.
On the other hand, Kurzgesagt is a shining beacon of hope in this world (I know, weird to say, especially about them who are so often accused of making people glum:-) where on the one hand, the President of the USA is telling people to take things like hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, while on the other Kurzgesagt fights against disinformation and misinformation campaigns with such simple and easy-to-understand videos as this one that is only 11 minutes long and uses video game- or movie-like terminology ("nature dojo vs. vaccine dojo") to explain to someone, both precisely and yet still simply, why the crap coming from the other side is incorrect. It may literally have saved some people's actual, literal lives - e.g. a kid who in defiance of their parents sneaks out to receive a vaccine.
So yeah, I tend to give them a pass to say whatever they need to, if it helps reach a better audience.
But thank you for reminding me that WE are not that audience here - I probably should have edited their title to something more precisely true, except that the content would remain as it is. Which I think has a place, like perhaps being shown in a classroom even - and no, not so much to us but to friends & family members (who don't use Arch btw:-P) who may need to be reached by such messages.
Though my thoughts & preferences do not dictate how it will be received, and again thank you for this discussion - I am glad for it.
Very well said. Honestly I think if you chose a different title and reposted this it would take off here, it's a neat video. We just try to be better than regular social media with it's horrid algorithms and clickbait.
I tried that last week with a different video, where I did manage to think about that aspect, but it still was not well-received. Probably b/c "what is a bacteriophage" is too juvenile for this crowd.
The thing is, when I see such videos, I get excited - not even for myself who knows the material, but that it is now that much easier for others to follow. Like having climbed the ladder, rather than pull it up after us they are doing the hard and very necessary and quite frankly often under-appreciated effort of collating this information, packaging it in a form that is easily consumed, and delivering it to those who need it. I don't think I learned about bacteriophages until college! And I did not know that such diverse matters as e.g. allergies and chocolate cravings could be traced back to their presence (& absence) until much later (when scientists themselves discovered that much later).
Kids who cannot afford to go to private schools, people in lower-income nations that nonetheless may have internet access, at least sporadically, women who are not allowed to learn in certain portions of the world (like almost Florida these days?), etc. - these videos are, if not quite college-level courses (such as the variety of Crash Course series), then at least preparatory material that can help! Also, someone who knows even extremely higher-level technical skills such as databases, Unix systems coding, and the likes of Rust, Go, etc., may likewise want to learn about "bacteriophages" (or "vaccines", or "the actual, not most news-worthy, ways that most people die in the Western world"). So I am extremely happy that these videos exist (yes! I am not exaggerating there - it literally fills me with an amount of full-on joy!:-), for the sake of the love of learning and knowledge. It's basically Wikipedia, put into video form, for the sake of the younger generations who won't read and for whom these bright colors and neat voiceover effects will nonetheless still manage to spoon-feed them this knowledge (also, perhaps once someone knows a little bit... maybe they will read, after that?).
But perhaps most of all, the counter-culture side to me has a nice "take that!" moment when someone absolutely refuses to learn anything at all - even though there's a brightly-colored, nicely-narrated, extremely condensed yet easy to receive video that will tell you pretty much all the basics of most subjects. Now I can look down on people who refuse to know things, b/c I know that they could know, if only they would. :-)
But I'm weird - and loving it - yet still if these videos aren't wanted, then I should stop sharing them. Or at least find some other community that might want them more.