18h ago

Anyone else hating Shorts?

Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I'm allergic to them.

The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.

My wife sends me couple of shorts each day and sometimes it's even interesting content-wise, but I absolutely hate this horrible format, procrastinate watching them and wish back a world where this form of media did not exist. It all started even before shorts in the way people did videos, and somehow it spiraled into this kind of hell scape.

Anyone else feeling like this?

69 comments

I hate them so much for all the reasons you mention and a few more.
But there are times that I prefer them over a 2-3 minute vidoe padded to 12-15 minutes for monetization.

I'm going to be a lot more comfortable with shorts after bottom surgery

Anyone else hating Shorts?
Some people say they are addictive, but to me shorts are an absolute nightmare, I despise them, I hate them, I'm allergic to them.
The ultra quick cutting, the often chopped style, the accelerated voice talking at you without pause or mercy even at 1.0, the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
What does this have to do with shorts? Mine only make a swooshing sound depending on the material. Maybe get some nicer ones?
- I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!

I use ublock origin and you can add a custom filter. They put the shorts in a specific panel that you can block easily.

First time I saw them I could see immediately it was YouTube trying to be TikTok, so I just blocked them with uBO. Haven't seen one since.

PLT: some plugins of YouTube revanced allows you to remove anything related to shorts from your YouTube android app. So you can spend more time on regular-sized videos c:

yes. There is a youtube extension called unhook (?) which lets you remove them from pretty much anywhere on the site.

i fucking hate short videos. it's the most vacuous thing invented thus far.
i literally block or dim the thumbnails with ublock origin.
then again i also hate long videos with slow talking and tons of useless and filler segments such as:
intro montage
recap
sponsor product ad
channel subscription begging
alternate channel subscription begging
off topic rambling/ranting
outro montage
(thank you ❤️Freetube & ❤️Sponsorblock)

Shorts sre awesome, way better than pants unless it is cold out or I am doing something that would scratch up my legs.
Oh, you mean the youtube shit. It is the worst of that video format and they all suck.
- They're comfy and easy to wear!
- Seriously though, shorts are bad pants. Do you want ticks ? That’s how you get ticks !
  I never wear shorts.
- I can't wear shorts, people ask if I'm riding a chicken.

Shorts are horrible. When I’m not watching them, they grab my attention, then immediately overwhelm me so they lose my attention. Then they grab my attention again, etc.
I have disabled shorts with a browser extension because I absolutely cannot stand them. Fuck shorts.

Youtube Shorts Block for Firefox and Chrome

Shorts are way too short to learn anything, I find most of them useless or stupid trash. I only seen a few good shorts. Ugh so bad. Also isn’t YouTube loosing money on shorts, just to compete with TikTok… ugh

If anyone is looking to block shorts, there’s a cool uBlock origin list for it; https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts

can't stand them cause i hate vertical videos. at first they were restricted to vine, then tiktok... then they broke containment and every video service out there wanted to stuff them in their app whether people asked for them or not.
- Even Spotify has a version of them 🤯😡😤

I absolutely hate these shitty little fucking videos with a passion. Which is why I told them to piss the fuck off with YouTube ReVanced.

I only watch shorts from creators who I know generally make quality long form content (~~Red Nile~~ NileRed, Miniminuteman, etc); then it’s usually something that actually is a short topic they wanted to present, not something they’re just trying to cram as much into it as possible in 60 seconds.
- NileRed/NileBlue is who you're looking for. If you're watching a channel called Red Nile, you may be watching stolen content...
  
  No, you’re right, I’m sleep deprived as shit right now lol

the subtitles in the center that I cannot disable. It's an attack on my senses, pure overstimulation.
This, 1000%. They're trying to use every "engagement" technique in the book, all at once. Shit's exhausting.

I thought you were talking about short pants for a second before I read the body.
And yes, I do hate wearing shorts, because I have ugly knees.
- I also came here to say I don’t wear shorts.
  Only for sports. And reluctantly.
  
  Haha shorts, as in short pants, I actually like in summer :D Did not want to insult a perfectly fine piece of clothing. But it's also totally cool not to like them ;)
  I don't know how these below 2 minute videos are called in general, like the Reels, TikToks, Shorts, it's all the same thing to me (or I don't know the difference)...

Youtube shorts are like Instagram reels, nobody likes them but they are probably good for "engagement" aka keeping people on the site for as long as possible.
- "nobody likes them but keeps watching them" - that confirms my theory that it's digital crack. I intuitively want to stay away because I feel that it cannot be good for my brain
  
  yes. after you get used to it, it sucks you in for hours on end and you don't even notice.
  all with completely useless "content". there is some interesting stuff, but you can get it in regular videos better.

I like shorts because they are comfy and easy to wear
- Especially when it's hot outside, they're very refreshing!
  
  Fair point, clothing shorts are good shorts. The summer beginning is marked by me switching from jeans to shorts!

FB shorts? i hate that people who dont have ADHD make ADHD video pages where they just do random stupid shit and then attribute it to their self-dianogsed ADHD. making ADHD/autism/OCD your entire personality when you dont even have it is one of the cringiest things ive seen adults doing online.
- Kinda like all the memes in this /c/? I have a hard time believing that every meme here was made by an ADHD person.
- I'm ranting about any kind of shorts on any platform :D
  Except for the clothing, those I like.
  Yeah that half baked mental health content by people who have no clue is absolutely horrible. Might be it starts the path to actual diagnosis for some, but it's also a rabbit hole of misinformation and stereotypes...

I like some Shorts. Long-form videos are great, but way too often I see 15+ minute videos about a topic that shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to discuss.

I like to wear them.
Watching the short form content video kinda thing… no thanks. I refuse to touch those with a 10m stick, I also find it quite irritating when my gf watches them in bed. Every 2 seconds I hear some entirely different scenario, pretty stressful for me.
If I want to watch videos, I usually just take some time for that. I’d say my average video length on YouTube is about 30-45min
- Yep, that could be me!
  Below the infinite trash stream of the algorithm there is still some actually good content in sane formats that does not taste like greasy mind fast food.

Fast cutting is a well-known and widely used filmmaking technique:
This method creates a rhythm or pace that can heighten tension, convey action, or suggest urgency within a scene.
It’s often used to keep viewers engaged and emotionally connected to the content on screen.
https://filmlifestyle.com/what-is-fast-cutting-in-film/
Unfortunately, "content creators" know this too and use it to manipulate viewers.
- If it is done in some tense scene in an action movie, it's fine.
  If it's your default mode, it loses any kind of narrative effect and is just hectic + cheaper because you don't need to many takes and just chop good pieces together -> faster and lower effort.
  I have nothing against fast cuts as an actual artistic device.

Depends on the content. For cooking recipes i actually prefer them. I don't have to skip through multiple minutes of fluff. I get the ingredients, the steps, quick and easy (ofc some creators don't give measurements in shorts but we just block those ones)
Same with looking for a new show, quick clips give me an idea if i may be interested, have found a lot of shows that way. Various hobbies also have great little intro howtodoX short videos.
But 99% of shorts are not those, and imo are worthless trash

i have had this conversation with my wife before when she used to show me one specific person who had very quick cuts of about a second each. i hated it so much, i would feel anxious and it would take me a while to calm down. and in that case there was no voiceover to keep track of.
- I totally feel you. My wife was also confused why I suddenly was somehow frustrated and angry. Glad I'm not the only one.
  Death by a thousand one-second cuts

The worst kind of shorts are the ones pretending to present serious content.
Of course you crammed all related parts about any current war into a maximum of 60 seconds or summarized the latest news.
Fuck you to anyone doing this.

This is exactly why I hate TikTok and FB videos too, and once Instagram started hopping on that train I quit and never looked back.
If the information you want to share is worthwhile, it’ll be written out where I can read it at my own pace.
The excessive speed and nightmare for reasonable accessibility (not to mention the self-censoring that screws up the point of subtitles) makes me instinctively upset too. You’re not alone.

No idea, never watched them. Now that I think about it, I've been watching less and less youtube this last months to a point I think I wouldn't miss it much if it went subscription only or I couldn't block ads.

The only Shorts I ever enjoy are from a sketch comedy channel I like, Almost Friday TV. They're not just shortened/cropped clips like most other channels do.
It's literally the only exception to my anti-Shorts rule
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlKQ-Qf9xoY

Worse: my wife watches shorts on the TV, wasting 75% screen real estate
- They should create vertical TVs. It's insane, but at the same time, it would be actually less wasteful.
  Being forced to watch hours of vertical videos on a horizontal screen is probably one of the rings of hell.
  When one of your relatives films a family event for half an hour in portrait mode and later shows everyone on the TV.

I like shorts.
They're comfy and easy to watch.
That doesn't mean they're all good. Just like everything else, there's a few things that are good and a whole lot of things that suck, hard.

I refuse to browse/watch shorts directly; probably because I know I'll get sucked in to it for several hours, but I also know there's very little useful/valuable info there. I will however occasionally watch other typically gaming YouTubers, reacting to collections of shorts.

I wasn't sure if this post was about the media format or the piece of clothing, but my answer is the same for both: They're annoying and of limited use, and I absolutely hate them.
- Made me crack up a little :D
  I did not want to start a fashion war here :O

No portrait-orientation video is worth watching.
Edit about the article of clothing: men's legs and feet look weird and so I don't like going out in public without long pants and shoes.

I like them. Sometimes I want to watch videos, but not get super involved in a longer production. Plus, youtube shorts, at least, often have links to the main video they were clipped from, which I'll throw into my "watch later" playlist.
Not everybody likes shorts, and that's fine, but I make them work for me.

The only thing I like about them is that there's no ads.
- With an ad blocker there are also no ads on normal YouTube ;) and there is even an extension called sponsor block that can help skipping over in-video ads
  
  I know, I do like supporting creators though.

Yes, absolutely.

I quite like shorts, but I only watch specific videos. I watch woodworking and Minecraft build videos to see if the technique is something that I'd want to try myself, and then either watch the longer version, or find other ways to try it out.

I used to feel that way, they didn't have the depth I wanted.
My wife has sent me so many tiktoks that I got used to it.
Now I still don't watch them, but because I'd get stuck in them. Whatever my wife sends, and specific ones from content people I know make quality, and that's about it. Once you get past them being presented in a new way, they're more addicting to ADHD brains.
I will say that if you were gonna pick your minute long vertical video platform, tiktok is the best one, YouTube the worst, but Facebook and Instagram are a lot closer to YouTube shorts than tiktoks. I'm reasonably confident it's because YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram see it as a way to extend your stay on a platform with other content, while tiktok focuses on it exclusively. Their algorithms are doing different things.
- I can't get over how it feels like it wants to take over my senses.
  I also hate voice messages. I ingest content on my terms and at my pace, thank you very much. And both rambling voice messages and short, absurdly dense but still shallow videos both disrespect me in different ways. One is usually too slow for my attention, the other too fast.
  There are no videos or podcasts that are addicting to me, I like reading and writing more than listening. My ADHD brain can't listen unless you talk to me in the right way to get and hold my focus, i.e. interesting information presented at the right pace.
  Reading lets me be me - I can skim it, I can re-read it, I can find it later.
  
  I feel you. I used to be the same. I got used to audiobooks in the same way, but only because I had to, when I had my kid, and I couldn't spare the hands to read. I could, however, get some sport headphones, bone-conducting, so I could hear the baby if she cried but could hear my book without disturbing her, and once I was used to that, that became my preferred way to read.
  Maybe that made me more adaptable.
  Either way, if you don't need to adapt, there's no harm in not adapting. Live your life, you'll adapt when/if you need to.

I've watched enough of them that I can tell which ones are good within the first 2 seconds. The YT algorithm is crap and gives me a lot of garbage to swipe past anytime I open Shorts.
The way I see it is to choose a normal length video, say 30 minutes of content, and watch that, or to scroll through Shorts for 30 minutes and maybe find a few good ones. It's a terrible tradeoff.

I seriously thought you were talking about pants until like halfway through and was going to be like shut your mouth.
But yeah the majority of short form content sucks ass

I like them.

69 comments