Videos, Videos Everywhere

I wonder whether having more and better screens around us has driven the great shift towards video. Or is this a chicken-and-egg problem? Did our growing appetite for video drive the spread of those screens in the first place? Look around and you’ll see what I mean. Everything is video now. If you’re not making TikToks or Reels, you’re missing out, so people bend over backwards to make them, even when they don’t want to. No other type of “content” seems to exist or matter anymore. The logic is circular, like an ouroboros. You write something, then you’re supposed to create an AI persona and turn it into a video. Then someone else uses AI to transcribe the video back into text. A recipe becomes a video you have to keep pausing while you cook. Jokes are told and shared in video format. Changing a single setting on your phone requires a tutorial with an intro and a reminder to subscribe. A news story that would take a minute to read becomes a clip you have to sit through. Even podcasts,…