The beauty and importance of passive learning in an age of anti-intellectualism.
It’s after eight, you’re not ready for the commitment of a movie, yet doomscrolling Instagram reels feels soul-crushing; what is the alternative? The video essay.
These essays are relatively time-consuming, yet can also act as an audio form while multitasking. Passive intellectualisation, if you will. You can engage in the cultural implications of biblical purity and “tradwifetok” whilst scrubbing the stubborn stain of your pots and pans– it’s interesting enough to listen while doing other things, but not heavy enough to require active engagement.
Video essays have quickly become one of YouTube’s biggest genres of content, debatably an oversaturated sector. A good video essay doesn’t just surmise, it provides a new critical perspective to an ongoing phenomenon (whether it be TikTok drama or the latest horror to be bestowed upon humanity through tech bros) and leaves you feeling intellectually invigorated. This unconventional form of engaging with the tethers of cultural academia is specific to this digital age and provides for an interesting study on what has been hierarchised as valuable by post-internet populations.
The opponents arise: long-form video essay versus the short-form reel. Both can be informative, but why is it that one feels substantially more ‘intellectual’ to consume? Well, right on the nose, it’s obvious that a piece of long-form content would contain a more nuanced take and details which would make you engage with a topic deeper. In an era of algorithmic curation, long-form content purports its value in an attention economy– to listen to something for forty minutes instead of scrolling to the next twenty-second reel, employs time and attention as the two most important currencies in contemporary techno culture; easily expendable and cheap in algorithmic flow.
This is also driven by our need for ‘intrinsic stimulation’, a psychological theory which implies that the process of doing something is in itself the reward. The effort of processing and understanding such content is thus in a way, a feat of intellectual accomplishment. According to Xie et al,
short-form content essentially fosters immediate gratification, which is opposed to academic achievement, which requires long-term effort and dedication. In contrast, video essays require sustained focus and engagement, like academic learning and its long-term achievements, thus increasing the perception of their intellectual value.
Intellectual candour is under the consistent threat of the looming rise of anti-intellectualism. Our political environment disregards critical thinking. Furthermore, user interfaces and forums dilute nuance and fester echo chambers. Long-form content is, in its production and consumption, a space for detailed and wider perspectives. They provide the possibility to prove to ourselves the existence of our battered yet still living attention spans and analytical skills. Even if the content of the video could be condensed, a part of its intellectual capacity lies in its length. When reading academic papers or books, we might highlight important lines and takeaways, but simply reading those highlighted parts cannot substitute for the actual process of reviewing them. In other words, short form content tends to work for optimisation, to convey the core most important things in the shortest amount of time, however in doing so, it strips information from its context. Risking misinformation.Technology has transformed the experience of learning substantially, whether it be blurb websites like SparkNotes or even the newer use of AI; all of them essentially work to ‘increase efficiency’ by reducing the time you engage with topics and materials. In the haze of constant motion in cyberspace, we seem to be forgetting that one of the most important parts of learning is spending time on it. Engaging with even the seemingly unnecessary, obscure or boring parts of something sharpens our overall comprehensive ability, even if it doesn’t relate directly to our topic. This is why introductions, further reading and authors’ notes exist. This is not to say I have never skimmed a paper, but that learning is not meant to be only the ‘important’ parts. This is why, I conclude, short form content with its completely optimised content, will never feel quite the same as a good video essay– a bit rambly, a bit long and very human.
Photo Credits: Unsplashed, Kelly Sikkema
