Pisces Moon Studio

Ever since YouTube became a genuine phenomenon, more and more of the blogs I read are embedding videos into their posts. Now I happen to be a curmudgeonly Luddite: I have my browser set for no animations, no ads, and no Flash unless I deliberately click on it. This means that when I view a post with an embedded YouTube I see

Note: This is not a link or embed; it’s a screen capture. Don’t try to click it.

Now in this particular case I know who Steve is (a brilliant, insightful, well-liked political blogger who died this week at a tragically young age) so I can guess what the content might be.

In many cases, though, the posts consists of a title like “For your viewing pleasure,” which is uninformative and does not inspire me to click through and watch. It takes up screen room, it takes up bandwidth, and it strikes me as being supremely lazy. When I have nothing to say, I don’t post. It seems like such a waste of effort to embed a YouTube video without comment just to have something to list on the post calendar for that day.

Okay, now I’ve had my say for the day. It was perhaps a trifle lazy, but I got it out of my system.