YouTube is Junk Food
Remnant of Spanish colonial orchard, Santa Fe NM.
I get bored often. And the latest way I considered to distract myself was to try converting popular blog posts into YouTube videos so I could monetize them.
This idea wasn't totally crazy. I produce videos for a living; rather, it's part of my job, but not all of it, so I know I could do it right. Something held me back from producing that first video, and after some sleep, I think I know what it is:
YouTube is junk food. Blog posts are wheat bread with a piece of cheese.
YouTube plays with your attention the same way junk food plays with your reward system: It gives you the flavor and sugar or salt as quickly as possible. That is, it does the work for you, with pacing and visuals, music, tone, etc. Essentially, it tells you how to respond. It's easier to consume, but harder to retain. You feel more engaged in the moment, but you remember less when that moment has passed. And, most critically, a YouTube video is engineered to flow into the next video, to pitch the next idea, to keep stimulating that novelty response. Its goal is to keep you there.
Reading a blog post (and maybe looking at an accompanying image) is fundamentally different. It requires your active participation. You control the pace. You pause and think. You bring your imagination to fill the gaps, and have new thoughts. You're doing the processing, not the medium. And when you're done reading a post, you are not immediately pitched a new one. You are not brought another slice of pie you didn't ask for. You are not rushed into doing, or thinking, anything.
Writing inherently demands intelligence from the reader. Video doesn't.
Could it? Sure. There's a difference between a 90-minute Frontline documentary and a 9-minute video of young women pole vaulting. And, of course, some writing is crap... but the quality ratio still skews toward reading over watching.
This blog post with a photograph will never reach the number of people a YouTube video can, but it can leave a deeper mark on those of you it does reach.
And so... idea #12,468 to occupy my mind when my job is both depressing and boring, DELETED.