Why I Don’t Like Podcasts

[gothwalk]

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve had this conversation a few times recently with various people, and I figured I’d get it written down. I don’t like podcasts. This is not because I have some concealed Luddite tendencies, nor because I’m looking for something popular to dislike and be controversial over.

Putting it simply, podcasts are slow, irritating, and inconvenient - a step backward from the efficiency of text. No, I don’t like radio either.

Slow: I can read way faster than anyone can talk. I can read the transcript of a podcast in less than a quarter of the time it takes to listen to it, and that assumes the speakers aren’t stopping to hem, haw and um their way through a conversation. My time is valuable to me - give me the transcript.

Irritating: With at least one podcast I listened to a while back - and this was a twenty-something Irish male - if you removed the word “like” from the stream, it would have been about half as long. Other accents can be difficult to understand, or just plain unpleasant, and people who are perfectly well able to express themselves in text end up incomprehensible in speech. Sound quality isn’t always what it might be, and having to listen very carefully to make out what someone is saying is, well, an irritation.

Inconvenient: First, I have to get the podcasts onto some piece of equipment where I can hear them. Since listening to voice takes a huge amount of my attention, I can’t do that in work, and I usually have better things to do at home, so it has to be something portable. I have a small MP3 player, but the rigmarole of downloading the file and transferring it to the player and so on is tiresome. Then, unless I actually am concentrating all the time, I miss bits. I can’t just look back up the page; I have to rewind a bit, and hope I got the right spot. Neither can I easily flick forward through the bits I’m not interested in. “45 minutes in” is no use unless I can see a timer, and my MP3 player doesn’t have one. For that matter, finding 45 minutes in on Winamp involves messing with a slider.

So, in essence: give me writing, dammit. Sound is for conversation and music.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I agree completely - podcasts are a low bandwidth medium, and time is a precious commodity...

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

Maciej Cegłowski demands four minutes and twenty seconds of your life.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Magnificent.

[mytholder.livejournal.com]

Amen.

I'll happily make an exception for podcasts which are also performances (stuff like the Penny Arcade ones), but if you're just chatting about rpgs or whatever, I'd prefer the raw text.

[wyvernfriend.livejournal.com]

I can't listen to audio books while not doing something else and often the voices sound wrong.

I have tried a few times and just given it up as a bad job.

[(Anonymous)]

I love them. I am listening to one on boardgames as I type. They are a great thing for listening to while doing less demanding tasks at work. But then our house had Radio 4 / Radio Ulster on a lot in the background as I grew up. Having said that if there is a TV on in the room I cannot do anything but watch it. We did not have a TV fro a long time when I was I kid so every time I say this strange device I had to watch it.

The two main tasks I found I cannot listen to podcast/audiobook an do at the same time are program and grocery shopping. I find I loose my place in both tasks.

[qidane.livejournal.com]

That was me - must have got logged out.

[arken-thell.livejournal.com]

To be honest I agree to an extent.

However there's also the educational value as well. It's a free medium to learn certain things like languages for instance. You get free lessons and they're pronounced by a native speaker so you get to hear how it should sound too. Kinda handy when you're on a budget.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Totally with you. I can never make myself sit down and listen to these things.

[brucius.livejournal.com]

I find that they are a tad annoying, but my itunes downloads them automatically, and my iPod updates itself with them as soon as it's plugged in, then I just plug the iPod into my cassette player in the car and listen to customized radio in the mornings on the way to work. I was using them to brush up on my french and similar stuff till recently.

I find it difficult to read when i'm driving as do many commuters and standard radio can be a bit boring in the early hours.

So I reckon podcasts have a place, it may be possible that you don't find yourself in the same place very often.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Considering that I can get distracted enough, while walking and listening to someone, to walk into things, I don't think it'd be safe for me to drive and listen with any degree of attentiveness to podcasts.

Considering that any conversation with a driver I've ever had (except with those who've been on the roads for thirty years or so, like Dad) has been peppered with having to repeat things, I'd say there'd be a fair bit of the content missed, too.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

But didn't you say you can read and walk? Or is the speed control and ability to rewind what makes that possible?

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah. When I need to glance up from the page - which, it being public pavements I'm walking on, is pretty frequent - I can find my place again easily. With voice, one moment's distraction while I cross the road, dodge a pram, or whatever, means I've probably lost track of the sentence, and have to rewind a bit.

Reading while walking is also, admittedly, quite slow.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree- I'd never listed to a podcast when I could read instead.

However, I keep thinking that I should figure out how to use the tech, because I do think it sounds like an ideal thing to listen to when I'm working in the studio. My hands and eyes are busy, but often my brain isn't- metalwork has lots of hands-on tedious aspects- and if i could find interesting podcasts, that might work well. Or audio books. So far I haven't gotten around to it, though.