I’m reluctant to defend TikTok for multiple reasons, but…
initially the enforced brevity it imposed on content creators taught people that brevity is the soul of wit and less is more. This meant you didn’t get all these tedious and vacuous intros so ubiquitous on YouTube that invariably last a least a couple of minutes and say absolutely nothing. They almost always end with "so let’s get straight into it" but then very often don’t. People learnt to be funny or interesting from the get go, rather than starting with an ego trip. It also taught people how to edit different shots together in a way other platforms never did. Sadly the increasingly popular live streaming has undone much of this good.
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Prufrock Lucifer, son of the morning!, Fri 27 Jan 2023, 21:17,
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieq99w-VQ40
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Turtle Power & Knuckles, Fri 27 Jan 2023, 23:08,
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I believe the YouTube length thing is optimising for
more payment, rather than anything else. I think time is a factor in what you get paid there.
If people optimised for a returning audience, they'd be shorter.
Probably not a good long-term plan. You can only not deliver so many times before people don't bother clicking.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Sat 28 Jan 2023, 11:42,
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That’s interesting and makes a lot of sense.
But there is a general trend. BBC docs very obviously follow strict guidelines. Introductions must be at least two minutes long. Most are three. Presenter must talk about going on a journey where WE will discover amazing things hitherto completely unknown to mankind. This must be stated and restated at least three times. Presenter must emote and personalise the experience. This is how we get Sue Perkins on a boat in the Mekong delta seemingly visibly shocked as she reveals that communism wasn’t always a bed of roses and how this makes her feel, as she always thought they were the good guys. Don’t worry though, she concludes that the politics was well intentioned and moral, but the application of the principles was wrong.
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Prufrock Lucifer, son of the morning!, Sat 28 Jan 2023, 16:18,
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