>>48089i think the illusion of learning/informativeness is only incidental to the popularity of those kinds of video essays. it offers a kind of legitimation but isn't really the point. i think mainly they're just a really basic, streamlined form of entertainment that asks nothing of the viewer. even the dumbest fiction requires some amount of emotional investment and interpretation to be enjoyed, but a mid video essay is just something you put on casually that explains everything to you. it basically distills the experience of art or criticism into pure cause and effect, and i guess that's relaxing in some way. contrary to what they're usually presented as, it's a very turn-your-brain-off kind of experience. it's like watching a pendulum.
now, if there was actually anything substantial being said in those videos, maybe this kind of very digested presentation wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing (although i think real learning always involves some amount of friction), but it's not hard to see that the stuff that gets popular is not generally the stuff that's most informative, and that there are better alternative sources if one wants to actually learn about art. it's also not hard to see that those twelve-hour deep-dives into popular games or shows cannot actually contain twelve hours worth of real knowledge.
i'm partly convinced that this is also related to the rise of "background" tv shows or those weird tiktok-like short-form shows where 80% of any given episode is recapping what came before. typically, paying attention to the thing you're watching isn't supposed to be some kind of burden, it's something you do because you're actually interested in the content, but clearly some people find it enough of a negative that there are ongoing attempts to phase it out as a requirement.