Social Media vs Reality - How Is Social Media Transforming Our Jobs & Lives?

00:00:00: Hi Manuel. Hi. What's your favorite social media app?

00:00:05: Well, actually, I would say I don't use social media that much, but if I honestly

00:00:11: think about it, then YouTube. Yeah, definitely YouTube. It's always like

00:00:15: that, right? You think I'm not using my phone all the time, but then if you think

00:00:19: about it, you're using it all the time. To even dive a bit deeper already, I also

00:00:25: read the comments, so not comments below our videos in that case, but comments

00:00:30: below videos that I watch from other people, which actually is even more

00:00:34: social media usage, I guess. So it's even worse. Yeah, and I guess reading comments

00:00:40: is like the one thing you typically want to avoid on many sites because it's not

00:00:46: adding to a personal well-feeling. No, and it even distracts you from the actual

00:00:52: video sometimes because you watch the video and then you instantly start

00:00:55: scrolling and then you don't watch the video but read the comments, so it's kind

00:00:59: of weird. So yeah, that's my short answer. YouTube is my most used social media

00:01:06: platform. Yeah, it's probably the same for me, though I am using X, so Twitter, in

00:01:11: the past quite a bit as well, though at least there I can say it has mostly

00:01:16: professional reasons. I am using it to stay updated of what's happening in the

00:01:21: industry, but of course occasionally all those conspiracy theories slip through

00:01:26: and show up in that feed as well, so you read them as well. But yeah. And you got

00:01:31: these suggestions at the right side of X, which are totally... But I

00:01:36: ignored those, I have to say. I didn't in the past, so things went off a bit. Yeah,

00:01:41: but that's a good bridge you built there. Things went off a bit.

00:01:47: Social media really changed, right? I mean, we're old, we're not like those hip

00:01:53: 18-year-olds. We're really old. I'm 36, for example. I'm 34, soon 35, and we've grown

00:02:02: up in a world without social media even. Then we lived in a world where it, well,

00:02:09: got more and more over time and we also started our YouTube channel and

00:02:15: working in our area and doing online tutorials and courses in a world where

00:02:21: social media and YouTube, for example, worked quite differently from how it

00:02:25: works today. Yes, I think it's a big topic and I want to start it now already. The

00:02:32: attention span of people is so short or small these days and when we started

00:02:38: this whole thing, actually not only the professional side but also the consumer

00:02:42: side, both sides, you watched longer videos, we produced longer videos because

00:02:47: people wanted to see the content, wanted to watch the content. And nowadays, as old

00:02:52: guys, we just discovered that we have this concept of shorts and this concept

00:02:57: of reels and TikTok and whatever and these things are so different from how

00:03:03: things were like even five years ago, I guess. Yeah. And this went off so fast, so

00:03:09: social media changed and with this change to shorter videos and just

00:03:15: consuming next one, next one, next one, I don't think this is a good thing to be

00:03:20: honest. This is at least my take on that from a personal point of view. Yeah, I

00:03:25: guess you can probably argue about that. I have a similar opinion because, well, we

00:03:30: grew up at the same time and we have the same experience there. But yeah, sure, it

00:03:37: totally changed for us. And I sometimes miss those days where you could take

00:03:45: more time to explore and explain something more thoroughly. But of course,

00:03:51: there's still probably an audience for that and we still do create long form

00:03:57: content. The view numbers are easy enough to see and understand and you can tell

00:04:04: what performs well and what doesn't. And that's a really huge shift that

00:04:09: happened there. And if I think about it, we started this podcast here, not mainly

00:04:15: because of the idea to create longer videos, but actually because we had the

00:04:21: the intention or the will to to create different kind of content, more relaxed

00:04:26: content and not this fast paced, hard cut content. Yeah, absolutely. Every

00:04:31: second, something different on the screen, maybe. So I think our style

00:04:37: changed. It had to change how we create videos because you have to adapt a bit.

00:04:42: That's a different podcast topic, but you have to adapt. That's what it is. But

00:04:45: you still want to keep your own style and the style you're used to as a younger

00:04:48: person who started a business, but also who grew up, as you said, without social

00:04:52: media and who didn't have this pressure of creating the content so fast, so

00:04:58: quickly. And this behavior of people, which you can see if you watch yourself,

00:05:04: but also if you if you watch other people who are constantly scrolling and

00:05:08: checking your next video, the next content, the next post. This went a bit

00:05:12: crazy. So I think a format like this podcast is totally different than what

00:05:16: we see in today's social media world.

00:05:19: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say it's not just the duration of videos. And

00:05:24: we're mostly talking about videos here because that is like what we do and what

00:05:29: we also personally consume the most. But it's not just the duration of those

00:05:34: videos that changed, I would say, but it's also, of course, the style, but also

00:05:39: things like the thumbnail, the title. It's all click-baity or rage-baity. I

00:05:46: don't know if that's a term that exists outside of Germany, even though it's an

00:05:49: English term, so it probably does. But it all seems to be optimized for getting

00:05:56: people to click, for example, by triggering them, by giving them a

00:05:59: thumbnail and a headline where they enter rage mode and think, well, how can

00:06:04: you say that? And then they click there just to jump right to the comment

00:06:08: section. But all that drives engagement and fuels the algorithm or the video for

00:06:14: the algorithm. And that changed so much. If you create like an old school

00:06:20: tutorial video, which has like, let's say, 25 minutes, and you have a simple

00:06:26: thumbnail and a simple title that clearly tells you what's in the video,

00:06:32: it's not going to do well.

00:06:34: No, it won't. And isn't it crazy that social media, so with social being

00:06:39: something positive, rewards negativity in some way? Because as you said, if you

00:06:46: have these clickbait titles, there's these strong opinions, there's negativity

00:06:50: in the title already, people click or watch a video, watch a reel, and then get

00:06:56: angry and say, no, this is not good, whatever. So you have a social platform

00:07:01: that generates negative energy, which is kind of crazy, to be honest.

00:07:05: Absolutely. And you also have that aspect that as a content creator, as a

00:07:11: video creator, in our case, you suddenly have to, you have to think about things

00:07:18: like, how's the storyline for my video? How's the hook with which I grab the

00:07:24: viewer's attention? How do I make sure they keep on watching the video? All

00:07:31: this is important, because if you ignore all of that, you won't gain anything.

00:07:36: Nobody's going to watch your videos, or at least not significant numbers. And

00:07:39: ultimately, of course, I would say almost nobody does this just as a hobby. Of

00:07:45: course, you want to earn money, you want to get that ad share from Google, or

00:07:52: maybe you want to sell an online course like we do. And ultimately, of course,

00:07:55: even if that's not the case, you want to share something with people and you want

00:08:00: them to watch it, because you don't create it just so that you watch it on

00:08:05: your own. But that means that nowadays, you have to think about things like how

00:08:09: should a video be structured? What should be the style? How do I get their

00:08:13: attention? How do I keep their attention? And that's not the main thing. I want to

00:08:18: teach people how to use React or how to build something with React.

00:08:22: But I agree, but not totally. Because what you just said is you have to think

00:08:27: about the structure, how to get the attention, how to keep people interested.

00:08:32: Maybe that's not a bad thing. Because to be honest, a tutorial can also be

00:08:36: boring. Watching a person code, showing slides, explaining maybe not the most

00:08:42: exciting but still important concepts doesn't catch the attention for like two

00:08:46: hours. So this part of having to think more about the video content, the style

00:08:53: isn't that bad, I guess. But it gets bad if you only produce videos to get the

00:09:01: attention. You know what I mean? Not the actual content I want to transfer is the

00:09:04: important thing. I don't think, oh, I think React changed. So let's create a

00:09:07: video on that. It's what is a topic that gets a lot of clicks because people

00:09:14: might get angry about it, might disagree on my opinion. So that's, in my opinion,

00:09:18: the worst part on that, that you only try to get the attention of the people

00:09:22: and only try to find these highly polarizing, I don't know how to call

00:09:27: this. So you either say, yes, I agree or don't agree. So these topics are the

00:09:31: core focus now and not the actual language you want to teach.

00:09:35: Yeah, you have a fair point. It's not necessarily just bad that you have to

00:09:41: think about how you structure something. What I do think is maybe bad, though, is

00:09:51: that, yes, it makes sense that you try to explain a concept such that it's done

00:09:55: in an engaging way. But as a side effect, that can mean that you have to leave out

00:10:02: certain things, which might actually help people if they knew it. But you can't

00:10:07: really explain it because it takes too long. It's too boring. You have to focus

00:10:11: on other things instead, like building exciting projects, a lot of stuff that

00:10:17: looks good, that doesn't really add to the learn. Maybe it adds to the learning

00:10:23: experience, but it doesn't add to the concept that you're trying to teach. So I

00:10:28: think it has good and bad sides. Most importantly, though, and I think that's

00:10:33: the tricky part for me or for us, maybe we're coming from a world where it

00:10:38: wasn't always like that. And that does not mean that it's worse now. Definitely

00:10:44: not at all. It just means that adapting, of course, can be tricky and that you

00:10:49: sometimes think, how did we end up there? Yeah, and I think we ended up there

00:10:56: because entertainment is king now, I guess, in social media. Still, people want

00:11:04: to watch content that gives them a feeling of, hey, I'm learning something,

00:11:09: but it must be easy to digest, actually. It must be a nice package. It must look

00:11:18: good, nice projects, nicely created videos. And what you just said about having to

00:11:23: cut out some important parts, some important concepts because people don't

00:11:27: care, I guess that ties into that entertainment factor because the hard

00:11:32: part of learning something is never entertaining. I'm sorry, but nobody can

00:11:36: tell me that if he or she ever learned something, it was all nice. There are

00:11:40: parts of the learning journey which are hard and boring and repetitive. And you

00:11:44: have to cut out these parts nowadays, if you want to have a successful video,

00:11:48: because once the entertainment part stops, people will just stop watching the

00:11:52: video. So coming back to the social media topic in general, in my opinion, and I

00:11:57: won't cut myself out of that logic, by the way, I'm not above that. I also

00:12:02: consume content like that. You only want to be entertained. And as I said, you

00:12:06: feel better if you watch entertainment content that provides some actual stuff

00:12:13: you learn, some advice, whatever. But that's totally different to creating a

00:12:20: five-hour YouTube video on how to learn Flutter. That's a different concept.

00:12:25: Yeah. Interestingly enough, though, those super long tutorial videos tend to

00:12:30: perform quite okayish or well. So there probably still is an audience for that.

00:12:37: Or maybe it's just because it's a long video. So people start watching it, but

00:12:41: they don't finish it. At least that's how it looks like in our metrics. But that is

00:12:46: something you can do. But all these in-between videos, at least for us, don't

00:12:51: seem to be that good of an idea. I think what's good, though, is that, for example,

00:12:57: in our paid courses, obviously, you also try to teach in an engaging way. And that

00:13:03: also changed over time how you do that. But there you can include more details.

00:13:08: And that is what we do. We have more details in there because, of course,

00:13:14: people are committed to a course, at least a bit more than they are to some

00:13:18: video on YouTube. And that's a good thing.

00:13:20: I agree here. And I think it's a good thing because the audience is different,

00:13:25: because the people who buy a course, who actually pay something for something they

00:13:29: want to have, they want to commit to learning that language.

00:13:33: They are serious.

00:13:34: They are serious, indeed. And YouTube or social media don't want to focus on

00:13:38: YouTube, actually. It includes TikTok shorts. As I said, all these video-based

00:13:44: content, let's call it like that, is not about actually learning something, I

00:13:48: guess. But what we have to do, though, we have a business, we sell courses. Of

00:13:53: course, we want to show people on YouTube and Instagram, whatever, wherever.

00:13:58: We know things and we can teach things and we want to teach things, but we have

00:14:02: to market these things in a more entertaining way to show the people who

00:14:07: really want to learn something. A, these guys have 50 courses, detailed courses,

00:14:13: which are not about entertainment only, but about really teaching concepts in

00:14:18: depth. And that's actually why we have to deal with social media professionally,

00:14:22: at least.

00:14:23: Yeah, definitely. And I mean, it's also a nice challenge, of course, trying to

00:14:29: like get across the message in those new ways and in those new formats and so on.

00:14:37: That is challenging and it is interesting. And of course, ultimately, we

00:14:42: are doing this because we want to share knowledge. And of course, therefore, as

00:14:46: you said, you try to find ways of getting your knowledge out there to the

00:14:52: people. And for that to work, you have to go where they are and not where you

00:14:57: want them to be, because no one's there. That won't work.

00:15:01: And that brings us back to the problem at the beginning, maybe, or how we use

00:15:05: social media in our private lives. Even if you wouldn't use social media at all

00:15:10: privately, and you wouldn't care. If you have a business nowadays, and I think

00:15:16: that's not only limited to online businesses, I think business in general,

00:15:20: or trying to understand at least how social media works is something you have

00:15:25: to do. And that's also something we learned in the last years, by the way,

00:15:29: because our social media was mainly Twitter and YouTube. But we didn't do

00:15:34: this the way you should do it nowadays. We still don't do it the perfect way, by

00:15:39: the way. We just try to learn it. Because as I said, even if we don't, or even if

00:15:44: we aren't the biggest social media fans in our private lives, it harms our

00:15:48: business if we don't understand it or try to use it. And that's a tricky thing

00:15:54: nowadays, right? So basically, everybody who runs a company has to use it. And

00:15:59: also people privately use it because they like it, but also because they use

00:16:03: social media, they can find actual valuable content.

00:16:08: And it's of course not just YouTube. I mean, we mostly talked about that. As you

00:16:13: said, it includes also TikTok and so on, because we are video creators. But of

00:16:18: course, we see that shift everywhere. When we were in our, when we were around

00:16:24: 1920, Facebook was a big thing. Everybody was on Facebook, at least in my friend

00:16:30: circle, we were using Facebook for everything. Nowadays, nobody here uses it.

00:16:37: There are still, I know that there are still, I guess, over a billion people or

00:16:41: maybe more than 2 billion people using Facebook, but I don't know who they are,

00:16:45: because no one I know uses it. And I mean, of course, Facebook itself, not

00:16:51: Instagram, which also belongs to Facebook, the good old Facebook. So that, of

00:16:57: course, changed. On the other hand, something like Twitter or X seems to be

00:17:02: doing really well now again, after this short bumpy period when Elon Musk bought

00:17:09: it. And then, for example, we have something like LinkedIn, which was not a

00:17:15: social network at all. When we started a couple of years ago, it was mainly like a

00:17:23: professional platform back then. But now it's also like a platform where you have

00:17:27: followers and where you can post and where you can also try to reach new

00:17:32: audiences. And there's so much change here, which, of course, also means that

00:17:37: you have to adapt to reach people.

00:17:39: Which is true. But from my point of view, at least, privately, I'm not somebody who

00:17:47: shares his life online. Not at all. Nothing. So this LinkedIn thing, for

00:17:52: example, people seem to be online with their entire lives, their private lives,

00:17:56: their business lives, they share everything, and they even connect on

00:17:59: LinkedIn. So this is a development that we didn't see, to be honest. And we just

00:18:03: recognized it, I guess, some months ago, a year ago, whatever.

00:18:07: I guess you realize, you recognize it earlier, but it takes time to kind of

00:18:12: adjust to it and accept it, if you want to call it like this. Though, of course,

00:18:19: it's also worth mentioning that, of course, most people just show on social

00:18:24: media what they want to show. They're living a life which is not really their

00:18:28: life. Which makes sense, because no one has that perfect life that you can see

00:18:34: all the time on social media.

00:18:36: But this is so funny, because, again, actually, I never understood, maybe I'm

00:18:41: too old for that. Why would I, as you said, show my perfect life on Instagram,

00:18:48: for example, to impress whom? I don't get it, to be honest.

00:18:52: Because it's also a business, I guess, because you're doing that to get

00:18:56: followers to be able to then market products and so on. I guess that's the

00:19:01: reason.

00:19:02: But the price is quite high, I guess, if this is your business, to be honest,

00:19:06: because, like I said, for me, it would be absolutely nuts if I go for dinner

00:19:10: with you, for example. And then we would take photos all the time, create

00:19:13: stories. This would destroy my entire dinner experience. So then I would have

00:19:18: my private life would be my business then. And for me, at least, this would

00:19:21: be very hard. I know, as I said, people do this and people are successful. And

00:19:26: I don't hate on these people. But to be honest, I'm just happy that I don't have

00:19:31: to do this because we have a different profession. Thank God. We also share a

00:19:35: lot of things. We show our faces, our voices, that's all fine. But at least

00:19:39: for me, having a private life in these crazy social media times is very, very

00:19:43: important. It means a lot to me. I must say that.

00:19:46: Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's true.

00:19:48: And to come back to this point that you had, of course, everybody only shows the

00:19:55: good things in the internet. But if you're honest, we are doing the same. We

00:19:59: also edit our videos. Of course, we do this because we want to have a nice

00:20:03: experience for the students. But we also make mistakes sometimes. Nobody can

00:20:10: believe that maybe. But we also cut these out. You know what I mean? So you

00:20:13: always have the impression if you code something, you know everything and you

00:20:17: know a lot. I can say that. But you also are wrong sometimes. I am wrong

00:20:20: sometimes. And nobody sees that because you want to have the feeling that the

00:20:26: person I'm watching here knows everything. And nobody knows everything.

00:20:30: Yeah, that's true. Though, maybe that's also a side effect. Because of course, as

00:20:34: you said, the reason why we're editing out all those errors that of course

00:20:39: occur, every programmer has errors in their code. We're doing this, of course,

00:20:46: to provide a smooth learning experience. And of course, I will say that there

00:20:50: still are enough errors in the code, which I then discuss in the course when

00:20:54: they arise. So not everything is edited out. But of course, all those stupid

00:20:58: mistakes from which you also don't really would learn a lot. Like simple

00:21:03: typos or stuff like that. Those are removed because they wouldn't really add

00:21:09: a lot. If bigger mistakes occur in a recording session, I typically leave them

00:21:16: in there. I still edit the part where I find or look for the mistake. And then I

00:21:22: just explain how I did it. But I don't show that 10-minute process of me doing

00:21:26: it. Because that would be boring again. But those typically stay in there. But

00:21:32: yeah, of course, there is this editing layer, which is above everything that you

00:21:37: see on social media.

00:21:38: That's the point, actually, that I wanted to make. It has to be like that in

00:21:41: many areas. But the result is that you only see perfect lives, perfect

00:21:48: projects, perfect people, perfect businesses, whatever. And this can be

00:21:53: overwhelming, I guess, for a person, even myself, if you watch certain things on

00:21:59: YouTube, look for certain things on Instagram, you know how the algorithm

00:22:02: works, you only get more and more and more of these things that you watch. So

00:22:06: you all you start to think, okay, everybody has that. That's the lifestyle.

00:22:10: This is it. And then it's dangerous to forget about your own life and what you

00:22:16: actually want to have and what's important for you. So this is where

00:22:19: social media can become very dangerous, I think, and where this whole hate thing,

00:22:23: the atmosphere in social media is not always a very friendly one.

00:22:27: And that's how bubbles are created, or how you end up in a bubble, right? You

00:22:32: see only the same content over and over again. And suddenly you think everybody

00:22:37: thinks like that. That's the reality. That's the only opinion you can have on

00:22:41: that. And that's how you end up in such a radical bubble, where you live in your

00:22:49: world, where it looks like that is the real world and the only side of an

00:22:57: argument that could be seen or something like that. And, of course, that's also

00:23:02: another negative aspect of social media, I guess, that people end up in those

00:23:07: bubbles. It's the same in programming. I mean, on Twitter, I sometimes see crazy

00:23:15: discussions about things where I think, does that really matter if we're

00:23:21: discussing whether to use tabs or spaces for indentation? And people can argue

00:23:29: about this with such an energy where they think, for God's sake, use what you

00:23:35: like, ignore what somebody else is doing. Yeah, it's not important. And that's

00:23:42: also a really strange aspect, though, that is something where I absolutely

00:23:47: stay out of, because I see no value in that. But that also changed.

00:23:53: And if I think about what you just said about these online discussions about

00:23:57: actually unimportant topics, if these people would meet in real life, this

00:24:02: would be a five-second discussion. And it would be over.

00:24:06: You wouldn't even discuss it.

00:24:07: No, you would just laugh and say, okay, fine. Everybody has his own style.

00:24:11: Nobody cares. So that's why things are overheating on social media quite

00:24:16: quickly, unfortunately.

00:24:18: Yeah. And, I mean, it might sound funny, and you can find it funny, as I do

00:24:24: sometimes. But, of course, the real downside of this is that it can be super

00:24:29: intimidating for less experienced developers, if we stay in that developer

00:24:33: world for now. Because you see like a discussion about some possible common

00:24:40: best practice, or maybe not even a best practice, just some common practice. But

00:24:45: even if it's a best practice, and this discussion is so heated up, and the

00:24:49: opinion that's being voiced here is voiced in such a strong way that you

00:24:55: might feel super intimidated, because it feels like there's a lot you can do

00:24:59: wrong. And, yeah, of course, we have certain patterns and best practices that

00:25:04: should be followed, though, as always, there are likely also situations where

00:25:10: you have exceptions where it might not be the best practice. And if something

00:25:14: works for you, I would say that's also fine. But even if we ignore that, even

00:25:19: if we accept the fact that maybe in rare cases, we have a single way of doing

00:25:24: something that is considered to be the best way, even in that situation, you're

00:25:29: not helping anyone if you just scream at people and give them a bad feeling. That

00:25:34: does not help anyone. And that's another downside of modern social media, I would

00:25:40: say.

00:25:40: And adding up to this, that people who get that feedback on social media, that

00:25:46: negative feedback, and they got that feedback by people they don't even know.

00:25:51: Yeah, this is even crazier, because who on earth 20 years ago would have gotten

00:25:54: feedback from a random guy on the street saying, Oh, this is not good, what

00:25:57: you're doing? What do you want from me? Yeah. So I think this is also something

00:26:01: that makes it harder for people, because on the internet, everybody screams at

00:26:05: each other. And the person who gets yelled at doesn't know the other person

00:26:10: and can tell him in person, hey, what you say is not good, because this and this

00:26:14: and that. So it all ends up again, this negativity thing. And to maybe sum up the

00:26:19: social media thoughts on that. I think that social media is not a bad thing. I

00:26:23: think so. It has many, many good points, good aspects. And the world isn't a

00:26:27: place of complete happiness. And we all have to be friends all the time. Because

00:26:31: this means different opinions are shared. And based on that, you can come to

00:26:35: different conclusions, and you can learn things. But this extreme negativity, this

00:26:40: extreme fast consumption of content, these are things I'm not a big fan of.

00:26:44: Yeah. And to also sum up the parts we had earlier in this video and talk, where we

00:26:51: talked about like YouTube and how it changed, things got quicker, the attention

00:26:56: spans got shorter, we have all those titles, which are clickbaity or ragebaity.

00:27:03: We have to think about how to keep people entertained and engaged. And

00:27:10: especially the entertained part can be difficult if it's a video that's maybe

00:27:14: not meant to be entertaining. So all these things changed. And as you said,

00:27:20: no, it's not bad per se. And it's definitely good that we have social

00:27:24: media, because in the past, you wouldn't have been able to create tutorials and

00:27:29: share them with the world. There was a lot of gatekeeping there, because that

00:27:33: could basically only be done in universities. And there, obviously, it

00:27:38: was not shared with the world, but with a selected group of people. So it's good

00:27:42: that we have that. It's good that we have those discussions, as you

00:27:44: mentioned. But there definitely also are downsides. And I guess the trickiest

00:27:50: part for us simply is that it changed. And of course, we tend to like things we

00:27:59: learn to know when we grew up. And now they're different. But obviously,

00:28:05: everyone will have a different opinion here.

00:28:08: Yeah. And I guess

00:28:10: that wraps it up.

00:28:11: That wraps it up. Yeah.

00:28:13: So of course, as always, let us know what your thoughts on this are. Maybe you

00:28:18: totally disagree. Maybe you have more examples or ideas. Let us know in the

00:28:22: comments on YouTube. And we hopefully see you back or hear you again in our

00:28:29: future videos.

00:28:30: Yeah. So see you in the next podcast, YouTube video course, wherever.

00:28:34: Yeah. Bye.

00:28:35: Bye bye.