#ThisVideoIsWorthYourTime
A bit of a mouthful, a bit wordy, and it might catch on, it might not.
The important thing is that in my goal of creating a more humanistic internet, in my goal in fighting back against algorithms driving up engagement, I needed a way to chronicle videos that aren't slop. I wanted to create a way to easily find these videos. There's every chance that this hashtag could be cannibalized by bots or bad actors and I have no way to prevent that, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.
I've shared a couple videos under the hashtag by now and I have noticed some things and I have some thoughts to share. Here are a couple.
There aren't that many videos on the internet that are worth your time. Relative to the amount of slop uploaded online, anyway.
Sometimes the slop isn't super egregious. There was a video I came across which I largely agreed with, which made salient points, which wasn't edited to maximize engagement.
But it was 36 minutes long and stretched out about a tweet's amount of content over a full video. The video was about why Hollywood keeps hiring actors like Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Chris Pratt who play near identical characters in every role they book. The death of the character actor, as it were. It came to basically the same conclusions you'd naturally reach if asked the same question, that Hollywood is risk-averse which is why this, and endless sequels, keep happening.
That paragraph saved you 36 minutes. I don't mean to be glib, but sometimes a video is fine, but overlong and lacking substance, and I cannot recommend that in good conscious. That video is not worth your time.
There also aren't that many new videos worth your time.
Some of the best videos on the internet were made in the last 15 years. It's hard to top things like Line Goes Up by Folding Ideas, or Roblox.oof by Hbomberguy. Those videos are worth your time but they're a little older and have already been seen by a bunch of people. I could flood the hashtag with good old videos but I try not to. Both as a courtesy to my few remaining followers and because it would take forever if I did that. I'm trying my best to pick videos from the last five years or so that genuinely are worth your time, that I would recommend to other people.
Some videos are worth my time but aren't worth yours
There are some things that I think can appeal to general video watchers, then there are dry academic lectures. Don't get me wrong, there are good lectures, but while it might be worth the time of a certain subsect of viewers, it's not the kind of thing I can just blast out to the internet as being worthy of any random passer by's time. A four hour Django wen framework course? It's worth my time, but maybe not yours. Of course, not everything I share will appeal to everyone, that is not the goal, but you should just be able to click the link, have it open in a new tab and then be able to watch an enjoyable video on the internet.
There are other observations. There are videos that could be worth your time if it involves creators you care about but will be worth less than nothing if you don't know anything about the participants. There are videos that are of the moment, about the current thing, which might be worth your time now but won't be later. There are also, obviously, videos that just aren't worth your time. The slop, the dramatube, the AI garbage... But that's neither here nor there.
But I'm going to keep posting videos and I hope that someone, somewhere, gets a kick. If this reaches you and you come across a video you think others would enjoy, please join in on the fun. Let's create a better internet. A more human internet. It's what we deserve.
From Luna, with love ❤️
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