Wtf did he do to get downvoted?

Why is this being downvoted?

I hate watching videos. I have no interest in influencers. It might be good to know what their impact is given I won't know myself, since I always opt out.

Depends on the Software. For instance, does Autodesk have more tutorial videos than FreeCAD because it's used more, or is it used more because there are more tutorials?

At the end of the day, software has to be good, and promotion only impacts adoption, not satisfaction in it's use.

A lot of tutorials are video when they used to be text. This makes it harder to reference specific parts. It also makes it harder to copy code out of the tutorial, though you can argue that's an advantage.

I don't see the intersection set of people who use neovim and people who watch influencers would be somewhat big. It's probably closer to an empty set. Neovim users are a subset of Vim users, which is already kinda niche to be influenced by some Youtuber.

Most Linux nerds I know aren't watching a lot of Twitch streams or Youtube videos. Maybe I'm old school. I talk to other people (in the rare case I'm in a group of nerds) and they'd say "You really should try Neovim". Or I read about it in some feed, blog post, forum... Or I try all editors. Or I'm looking for a replacement and get to know there's a better fork. Yeah and maybe a Podcast. I think that'd count as influencers. Other than that, I'd say video influencers don't work that well with the kind of people I know.

CRYPT-- oh, you mean how the nice tutorial peeps have affected us.

Vimjoyer has increased the adoption rate for flakes on NixOS. And also NixOS use in general.

Mental Outlaw has probably contributed to new Gentoo users, quoth the meme, but Gentoo is still a dying breed compared to its heyday in the early naughts.

Fireship has made people -- particularly CS students I believe -- more comfortable with trying out new programming languages. (The "I'll check out the Fireship video first" approach. But then again, ChatGPT has arguably had the same effect across undergraduates... that's a digression)

Asahi Lina's longform Rust dev work, while less of a network effect, has had its own substantial effects within the Asahi Linux "Linux on the M-series" sphere. I believe she also helped port a kind of anime mocap engine onto Linux, which could over the longterm boost the anime-nerd Linux-nerd center Venn diagram. But that's speculation.

edit:

In a broader perspective, with the combination of SteamOS and large YouTubers trying out Linux, Linux desktop adoption will probably increase more than it has now. I doubt it will pass 10% though with Linux's reputation (tech nerds, compile all day, games don't run, command line -- even though these are improving, it's hard to kick)

• Linus Tech Tips - "Linux HATES Me - Daily Driver Challenge Pt.1"
• SomeOrdinaryGamers - "I Installed The Hardest System Known To Man..."
  • not gonna lie I ignored this clickbait but he has "gamers" in his name so he's probably a gamer

If we're talking about people who simply make video content about software development, then the biggest impact I see is a bigger reach for any tool that needs to be seen in action or simply sounds too strange on paper. In recent years HTMX was probably affected the most.

I see that a lot of people boil it down to tutorials, but there is so much more content about software development.

Personally I like consuming all the mediums of information as they all have different strengths. Peertube videos are easy to digest as you can watch passively and see software demos.