Baldur Bjarnason on why short videos are bad for learning

Logged at IST: 2026-09-18 20:45 IST

What it is: Baldur Bjarnason's essay on why TikTok-style short videos are weak learning media, using montage versus long-take visual exposition as the central analogy.

Gist: Bjarnason argues that short video platforms do not merely shorten content; their interaction design pushes creators toward impressionistic montage. Like a Bourne-style fight scene, the viewer gets the feeling of having seen a coherent sequence or heard a complete argument, but often only receives selected highlights stitched together into an impression.

His contrast is Eisenstein-style montage versus Tarkovsky / Jackie Chan / John Wick-style unfolding over time. Montage is efficient and persuasive because the viewer's mind fills in gaps. But that also makes it bad for learning: the viewer may be convinced without having actually watched the reasoning, sequence, or evidence unfold in enough detail to later reconstruct it in their own words.

The stronger educational format, in his view, is slower and more expository: talking-head explanation, long-form video, documentary, essay, or any format that gives the audience enough linear time and detail to integrate the argument and explain it onward. Highly edited short video can create a first-order persuasive effect, but often removes the second-order effect: giving the learner the tools to teach or argue the idea themselves.

Newsletter angle: This is a clean frame for evaluating educational media: not "did the viewer feel persuaded?" but "can the viewer reconstruct and transmit the reasoning without sharing the original clip?" That is a better test for learning than virality or compression.