So...
I've watched, over the past few months, dozens of YouTube videos a day it seems so that may have something to do with my "YouTube burnout" (if it is one) but it seems as though YouTube videos especially teach you nothing, certainly not compared to written content or articles or even books. I have the videos on in the background when I'm doing something. I have tried to put more focus to actually, well, consuming the content or media in a way that's more mindful and where I am edified. Maybe I'm trying too hard, but a lot of what I'm watching seems a bit superfluous or whatever.
All art or content or products have this problem, to a point, I think, but at times, it seems that videos are either there to sell me something (bad, at least in my case, because I like retail therapy) or maybe "hook me" into something (not necessarily bad, perhaps, as it can be pretty innocuous and even fun, depending on what they're motivating you to get into, such as a hobby).
And I have to say:
I'm starting to see this in documentaries to, to a point.
I feel like visual media has this problem a lot.
And yeah, I know it's a "D'oh!" moment for me because, honestly, of course they're a bit sparse on details or info compared to, say, books and written text.
But...
I feel like I'm not getting stuff out of it? Like, I ask: "What are they hiding? What are they not showing?"
Am I just paranoid? It's one thing to contemplate this sometimes, but every time I watch a video now?
Maybe I am just burnt out on YouTube LMAO!!
(I will say that one thing I miss are videos that are 2 to 5 to 10 to maybe 20 or 30 minutes long instead of these LONG videos that seem, erm, "useless," from my point of view.)
If you want to learn something, you will do better if you learn systematically. Youtube will just show you whatever will keep you on and watching ads for the longest, but you need to figure out how to pick the most relevant source for learning about something, ideally conduct a prestudy session so you have a schema that you can fit the new knowledge into, create notes with some imagery and spatial relationships to help you conceptualize that schema and integrate the new information, and finally use spacing and interleaving to prevent yourself from forgetting what you learned. All this while staying on an appropriately difficult level of complexity of worked exercises and cognitive load. Most of the time Youtube is not good for any of this except maybe as an introduction.
Yes, more systematism might help in my case.
Also... It's definitely not a bad idea to learn from books. Books are one of the best ways to learn things. So don't feel bad about not learning anything from YouTube. Its purpose is entertainment. Anything you can learn from YouTube is an accident (although it can be good for studying languages.)
Fair, yeah, I think I'm expecting too much.