An Open Letter To Everyone Who Sends Me Videos

I Hate Videos. 

I mean it, I hate them. When it comes to news, I can read an article a lot faster than I can sit through a video. I hate it when I see a headline online, I click it, and it takes me to a video. Seriously, news outlets: Just write a paragraph or two so I can read what happened, don’t make me turn my sound on and sit through a 10-minute video.

I don't like them, so I don’t watch them. If an article is video-only, I google the headline, and find some other site with the information I need. But that doesn’t stop the “means well” friends from sending me "funny" videos.

My friends have good taste in humor, they really do. If wanted to watch any videos, it would be the ones they send me. But I still growl every time my phone vibrates, because I don’t know whether it’s going to be a funny picture (yay) or an accursed video (ugh).

Reasons I hate videos:

I have to make time to watch them. I like to spend my free time with my wife, or working on my various projects. I have to allocate my time like it was gasoline, and the last thing I want is to have to make a surprise drive to Zimbabwe.

I don’t have a good data plan on my phone, so if I get a video, I have to wait until I get home to watch it. Once I get home, I usually watch TV with my wife, so I have to wait until she leaves the room if I want to watch a video with sound. I know I make her sound like a sleeping ogre, but it’s more like I want to spend that time with her instead of watching separate videos on my laptop. So as much as I hate videos, I hate videos that require the sound on even more.

But what I hate most is Facebook's Reels. Facebook is really inconsistent about how Reels work. Sometimes they won't give me an interface, so I can't see how long the video is, nor do I have the ability to pause it. I thought it was just a matter using my phone vs my laptop, but these options actually seem to vary from Reel to Reel. Some work like videos, others are like really long animated GIFs.

So not only do I have to allot time to watch a Reel, I can't even see how long the video is going to be when it starts. And if I blink and miss something, I can't rewind, I just have to restart the video or wait for it to repeat itself.

You can probably extrapolate the following based on the above, but if you really want me to hate you, send me a Reel that requires the sound on to be funny. Doing so tells me that you don't respect my time or my feelings. At the very least, look up the video on YouTube and send me that link instead.

So the bottom line is, don’t send me videos. If you do send one, make sure it's so pants-crappingly funny that I'll regret not seeing it. The video loses funny points if it requires sound, or if it's a Reel. If you honestly think the video is still funny after losing all those funny points, go ahead and pass it along, I guess. But don't expect me to watch it for several hours, or maybe even not until the weekend.

Look, I appreciate you trying to brighten my day, I really do. But the amount of trouble I have to go through to watch your videos really makes them less funny.