I despise this pattern SO MUCH.

No, I don't want to watch 30 seconds of ads, then five minutes of bullshit exposition, to get to the 30 seconds I care about.

At least with written material I can scan through it quickly to find what I want. With video? I'm fucked.

Hah. Now I know what I can plagiarize for writing blog posts...

On monetization it's not even close afaik. Some YouTubers make seven figures, and I don't know that blogging can get there. Although if some bloggers are making seven figures I'd be intrigued. Several YouTubers voluntarily discuss their numbers.

Lots of people just don't like (or aren't that great at) reading, unfortunately.

Keep in mind there are a lot of people who don't use a computer outside of work/school. For many people it might be a lot easier to lean their phone against something and hit record in the YouTube app than to type out a blog post

I’m currently watching a 6-part series documentary on a group of people who spent years of their lives attempting to complete Mario 64 in as few presses of the A button (which is the jump button, probably the most important action in the game) as possible. It’s around 4 hours long (so far), made by a single person and goes extremely in-depth not only on the timeline that tricks were discovered, but also on the game’s mechanics and how the absurd glitches used by the runners work under the hood.

To say productions like these aren’t of substance is just ignorant at best.

I think that's a really dismissive claim. I'm literally browsing HN coming off of this video by toldinstone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDeQkttORoc

Substantial, I think. I've been there and I learned stuff from this video. And he does not have "a production team".

I kinda find that YouTube feeds you what you want to find, once it knows a little about you. If you want insubstantial content, it's absolutely there, but you can tell it not to serve you slop in an instant.

Lot of mechanics, carpenters and other tradesmen showing you how to do a lot of practical stuff.

What are you missing there?

However with all such things, there is finite amount of knowledge. We are now getting to the end of one generations outpour of knowledge and the cycle is repeated with next-gen.