me_irl

I ran into a small series of videos on repairing camcorders that actually delivered the video content appropriately. Basically no talking (I think at one point they poke the broken thing and make an "eh?" Noise to indicate you should pay attention to that). Shows the thing, shows the problem, showed removing the part, showed fixing it, and then putting it back.

In my experience visual modes of communication work better for conveying visual information. Describing how you should position yourself for doing a task is harder than just showing a picture from a few angles. Likewise, describing how something moves is easier with an video because you can see it moving.

Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't looking to make the thing they're making efficient, but to keep you there longer for engagement. Text is easy to skip around in, so verbose text describing what could be a 30 second video isn't as effective. Inflating something that would be a four minute read on history or something into a video gives something harder to skim and still get information out of, and it's way longer.