Content Saturation

Alan Lastufka wrote a tumblr post about being bored with YouTube videos because people are uploading for quantity rather than quality.

His post reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words:

In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

I feel the same way Alan does about some of the vloggers I watch, but I hadn't bothered to voice my thoughts anywhere.  For me it's a passing feeling of apathy every time I go to YouTube.  Too many videos from the same people in too short of a time for me to care. Then I saw Alan's post on tumblr and realized other people are feeling the same way for the same reasons.

I'm much more inclined to watch a video posted by someone who hasn't updated in a while or someone who updates at irregular intervals.  I don't expect regular videos unless it's something that has to have regular updates like VEDA or the Ford Fiesta project from a few years ago.  I expect vloggers to post videos when they have an idea for a video.  Like Alan said, I don't see the point in making a video for the sake of uploading a new video on a regular basis.

If vloggers post videos only when they have something to say, show, or announce, then I know that when I see their videos in my subscription box, they will be something exciting to watch.  Something new.

When I go to YouTube and see a handful of videos from one person, all posted this week, I'm going to assume it isn't worth the time to watch them all.  They're probably more of the same instead of a little something different.

Besides YouTube, I've noticed that I've been getting bored with content on other sites as well.  I hardly log in to Twitter anymore because it's a lot of noise and very little substance.  I've unsubscribed from blogs I used to love because nowadays they update 5 times a day with filler posts.  There might be something worth reading once a week.

I let tumblr off the hook because that's supposed to be a stream of a lot of content.  Even so, I limit the number of people I follow so that I can actually keep up with their blogs instead of having to dig through a lot of excess content.

Saturation, saturation.  Every time this happens, when I get bored with the sites I'm on, I go looking for another site to browse.  Last week, I finally joined Reddit, but that's barely keeping my attention.  I poke around for a few minutes and then I find something else to do.