Okay, I'm going to go on a bit of a rant now, and it's nothing against this particular creator. But at some point I have to put my foot down and say: No. Fuck this video.
I don't know who started this damn trend, but I'm so tired of these unnecessarily long videos. Your video should never be 4, 5 or even 6 hours long. What the fuck! Amazing documentaries have been made for decades and they never reached that amount of time. There is no reason why a video should be 6 hours long. I have other shit to do. At some point, just publish a book...
And I know, that sweet retention time. But you can't convince me you had so much to say and that everything in this video is so important that nothing couldn't be taken out. I don't believe you. I don't need to click on this video to know it could be two and a half hours long at best. And if really, you have that much to say? Cut that shit into a series, then!
Look, I already find it hard to watch a 30 minute video essay. Because most of the time, it doesn't need to be that long and the person making it just won't get to the damn point.
Like, let's say I'm watching a video about a game. If I'm watching this, chances are I already know the game. Or at least, just give some brief context. You don't have to "but actually... whats's a video game?" me and then to go into thé whole fucking history of video games and tell me about how life was for the developer when they was a sperm in someone's balls...
I'll say this though, I used to make videos. I would write, record and edit the whole thing on my own. So a six hours long project? Yeah, I respect the hell out of that. But at some point, you need to think of the viewer. It's unreasonable to ask someone to take this much time to do anything in their day. Cut it into multiple parts, I know chapters are a thing but YouTube remembering where I stopped watching is far too inconsistent for that.
Well, but what if I want to see the video because their view on a certain topic interests me. I think it js totally fair to criticise someone for making too long videos.
ETA: just saw that your post's title is "must watch video...". But than you tell someone to just not watch it??
Hbomberguy makes long videos yes, but he doesn't make six hours long videos. He still makes his points concise and presents them in interesting and entertaining ways. Only in his last video does he cross the threshold into 3 hours long videos, and in that one he even says, in the video, that there was an entire section that he wrote and edited and then cut out because it muddied the point of his video.
Maybe it's a question of where to draw the line, but I think hbomberguy is very much not the norm for long-form content creators. And I do not appreciate having long videos for the sake of having a video be long.
To me, video essays that break past how long a movie is feel the same. Sure, I might not have time for a 6 hour where I have time for a 4 hour, but they feel the same in how they're structured and presented.
Yes, definitely this! Especially because while watching the video I often asked myself what the point was that they didn't make before. They repeated themselves a lot in this video. Due to the length and my decreasing attention span I actually took less out of this video if it had been like 2 hours long. And I would watch a 2 hour video again if I want to make sure I got it. But making a nearly 6 hour video felt sooo unnecessary, repetitive and tiresome.