Did anyone else find this a bit disappointing compared to Contrapoints' usual work? The almost three hour runtime is a lot of time to say, as far as I can tell, stuff that's been said before, and...
Did anyone else find this a bit disappointing compared to Contrapoints' usual work? The almost three hour runtime is a lot of time to say, as far as I can tell, stuff that's been said before, and more concisely, by people like Dan Olsen, Lindsay Ellis, Jenny Nichols, etc. In fairness, I only made it past the introduction and the first section after that, so maybe it gets into something more meaty after that?
The last video I watched from her was in sore need of editing down as well. I'm not sure who her videos are being made for these days. It's a shame because her videos from years ago are excellent....
The last video I watched from her was in sore need of editing down as well. I'm not sure who her videos are being made for these days. It's a shame because her videos from years ago are excellent. I still think about them to this day.
I feel like a lot of these bread tube folks are in dire need of an editor that tells them no. We also need to move away from the idea that every point needs to be addressed.
I feel like a lot of these bread tube folks are in dire need of an editor that tells them no.
We also need to move away from the idea that every point needs to be addressed.
Maybe Philosophy Tube just isn't for me anymore, but I can't stand any of her recent videos. They feel extremely preachy and philosophy adjacent at best. It doesn't help that her political...
Maybe Philosophy Tube just isn't for me anymore, but I can't stand any of her recent videos. They feel extremely preachy and philosophy adjacent at best. It doesn't help that her political philosophy seems rather disconnected from real policy solutions. Her theatrics don't add anything for me unlike Contrapoints' videos.
I think the issue is that especially when starting out, you're usually editing your own scripts, and you need a lot of self-retraint to delete entire sections of a work you poured blood and sweat...
I think the issue is that especially when starting out, you're usually editing your own scripts, and you need a lot of self-retraint to delete entire sections of a work you poured blood and sweat into writing. But sometimes it is what needs to be done.
Idk what the process for contrapoints is, she should be able to afford editors, but maybe she also makes her own shit.
I really, really enjoy FD Signifiers videos, but don't generally watch them because they're often 2-hours long. As someone who was trained in and enjoys Philosophy, I get how often it doesn't lend...
I really, really enjoy FD Signifiers videos, but don't generally watch them because they're often 2-hours long. As someone who was trained in and enjoys Philosophy, I get how often it doesn't lend itself to conciseness, but I just can't commit that long to a single video. Luckily, he has a "Shorts" video, where stuff is usually 20-30 minutes, so I watch them fairly frequently.
And I always watch a new Contrapoints video, but I also don't care about Twilight, so I may end-up skipping this one due to its length.
I miss the cat girl videos. They were weirder, but they were usually to the point, and I felt like she really know what she wanted to say that was fundamentally her voice (ironically despite using...
I miss the cat girl videos. They were weirder, but they were usually to the point, and I felt like she really know what she wanted to say that was fundamentally her voice (ironically despite using so many different voices and characters to make her arguments). But I also get the impression that she's worked most of that out already and doesn't feel the need to revisit it at all. EDIT: Which is completely fair - if that's not what she wants to do videos about, then she shouldn't feel any need to!
I think the last thing I watched from her was the Harry Potter 2 video, which was interesting mainly because of her personal connection to the story (having been interviewed on the witch-hunt podcast). But yeah, I agree about not being sure what the goal or target of these videos is any more.
The patreon videos are about as close as it gets these days. I haven't enjoyed the newer videos as much but I think it's because they don't really speak to my interests as much as the older ones...
The patreon videos are about as close as it gets these days.
I haven't enjoyed the newer videos as much but I think it's because they don't really speak to my interests as much as the older ones did. I think the last few have been pretty impressive feats though, but they cover things well outside my area so I have no clue if they're actually that insightful.
Personally, I think it would be better if they were cut up in 3-4 parts and released over a few months, but I get why she wouldn't want to do that. It would probably be impossible not to tinker with them between releases especially given the influence of the audience's feedback.
I'm not the target audience, but three hours seems like an insane runtime. If you truly have that much good content, an episodic format seems like a better approach. It also lets you structurally...
I'm not the target audience, but three hours seems like an insane runtime. If you truly have that much good content, an episodic format seems like a better approach. It also lets you structurally organize your points into thematic episodes, with a opening and closing bookend episodes.
Not being much into long Internet videos, what are your thoughts? Would you prefer a3 hour video, or 6 half hour episodes? Or no preference assuming the content is all high quality?
An episodic format would be great if only for the fact that we can make a concise point, wrap it up and then in the next video give a concise summary of the last one. I do occasionally watch these...
An episodic format would be great if only for the fact that we can make a concise point, wrap it up and then in the next video give a concise summary of the last one. I do occasionally watch these long videos (Hbomber), but usually over the course of a week and by the end of the week, have often forgotten a lot of the finer points due to needing to take breaks.
6 half-hour episodes, every time. I'm surprised how many YouTubers go against the algorithm on this point. It's better for the creator, because an episodic format lowers the barrier to entry for...
6 half-hour episodes, every time. I'm surprised how many YouTubers go against the algorithm on this point.
It's better for the creator, because an episodic format lowers the barrier to entry for viewers. How many people do you think see a 3 hour video essay and just skip over it because they aren't sure if it will be worth the time investment? I sure as hell do, all the time. Cutting it up into episodes makes that initial engagement more likely. It also gives you more total views, since people are now watching 6 videos instead of 1.
As a viewer, an episodic format is more digestible. I'm never going to watch a 3 hour YouTube video in one sitting, but 6 half-hour episodes give me natural stopping points and make it easier to come back to where I left off later.
I believe that these longer form videos are going with, not against, the algorithm. For some time now, watch time has been a stronger signal than views, so even a long video that scares most...
I'm surprised how many YouTubers go against the algorithm on this point.
I believe that these longer form videos are going with, not against, the algorithm. For some time now, watch time has been a stronger signal than views, so even a long video that scares most potential viewers away will do very well if a small number of viewers are willing to stick to the end of a marathon video like this one.
Also, other than playlists (which barely function, and are almost never promoted in the sidebar or front page), YouTube’s UI has no way for the creator to link 6 separate videos together to tell the audience that “hey, this video is 3 of 6, you should start at the first one” and even when I watch explicitly episodic content (like a let’s play) YouTube’s “up next” is still abysmal at recommending the next video in the series when I’m on a binge.
I think YouTube mostly rewards watch time now, rather than views. So if you give people six videos to watch that are the same length as the one single video, they are treated equally (all other...
I think YouTube mostly rewards watch time now, rather than views. So if you give people six videos to watch that are the same length as the one single video, they are treated equally (all other things being equal). I'm sure there are a bunch of other factors as well, though.
I'm more likely to skip a video that has "Part x" in the title than a very long video. What if I can't find all the parts? Sometimes one or two are weirdly absent from the search function. How...
I'm more likely to skip a video that has "Part x" in the title than a very long video. What if I can't find all the parts? Sometimes one or two are weirdly absent from the search function. How many parts am I actually signing up for? I have no idea what I'm committing to. Are all the parts out yet? Am I going to have to wait? Can I be sure that if this series isn't finished, that it ever will be? I'm gonna have to listen to their intros, outros and calls to action like, 6 times. I never really look at the run time for a video before I start watching, but I always read the title. I don't know how common that is among users, though.
This is a really interesting point I honestly haven't thought about before as a ridiculously-long-video-enjoyer myself. While I can totally see the appeal of breaking a video into smaller chunks...
This is a really interesting point I honestly haven't thought about before as a ridiculously-long-video-enjoyer myself. While I can totally see the appeal of breaking a video into smaller chunks for a lot of people, I'd say that I personally would probably prefer videos given in their full, longer form like this one. Something about breaking the ideas presented into little separately chunked videos makes me feel like the overarching point would be muddled and lost along the way, having it all together makes it seem more coherent to me. I'm also not sure it'd work for Youtube's format in general. Browsing someone's channel and having every video topic cover multiple videos would be a little messy.
That being said, I totally also acknowledge that, as a student, I have a fair amount of time on my hands compared to most people, and tend to watch things on a higher speed and in the background (ie. during my commute), so I can see this not being the popular opinion generally.
I'll watch interesting long videos occasionally, but usually only if I've watched stuff by the creator before and I'm confident it'll be interesting all the way through. I enjoyed the recent...
I'll watch interesting long videos occasionally, but usually only if I've watched stuff by the creator before and I'm confident it'll be interesting all the way through. I enjoyed the recent Hbomberguy video about plagiarism, but I think that was mainly because it was stuff I didn't know about before, and Hbomberguy's presentation style mostly jives with what I want to watch.
I've not really seen many channels in this genre do full on series, where each "episode" builds on the previous ones. Where that happens, it's usually because each individual episode is being created as the previous ones are being released — like Hermitcraft videos, where you record a bunch of footage over a few days, then edit it together and release the video, while simultaneously working on the next episode. But for more documentary/infotainment style pieces like this, that seems pretty rare. I imagine that's simply because you tend to do all the writing/research work first, then the filming, then the editing, then the release, and then the project is over. So splitting the video up into coherent segments would be more work than just putting it all together.
But I really do agree that it's easier to sit down and watch a bunch of short-form videos that build on each other, rather than a single long video. And I'd love to see more people go in that direction.
I don't mind a three hour runtime, or longer if you have that much to say. My favorite Knowledge Fight episodes are roughly four hours long. When it comes to YouTube videos and podcasts I tend to...
I don't mind a three hour runtime, or longer if you have that much to say. My favorite Knowledge Fight episodes are roughly four hours long. When it comes to YouTube videos and podcasts I tend to prefer long, continuous chunks rather than smaller ones, because if I do want to consume it all at once, the smaller chunks leave me listening to repetitive intros, and calls to action. I'm usually listening to these things while I work, and the less I need to fiddle with the player to set up the next episode, the better. If I do find the video is longer than the time I want to spend on it, I have no trouble pausing it and coming back later.
That said, this video did not keep my attention. I got to the beginning of part 6 before I gave up, but I was already considering shutting it off before part 5. I usually enjoy Contrapoints and I definitely intend to keep watching her content. I don't hope that her content is shorter in the future.
Big agree on preferring longer, continuous content and not wanting to fiddle with the player/listen to repetitive intros. I understand why some people would prefer smaller, chunked content, but...
Big agree on preferring longer, continuous content and not wanting to fiddle with the player/listen to repetitive intros. I understand why some people would prefer smaller, chunked content, but longer video essays (like this one) tend to be divided into parts anyway, which seems relatively similar to me at least.
I think the same way. Some of the most impactful videos are the longer ones; there are ideas and feelings that simply cannot be compressed and have the same effect. This is one of the reasons why...
I think the same way. Some of the most impactful videos are the longer ones; there are ideas and feelings that simply cannot be compressed and have the same effect. This is one of the reasons why the chapters functionality is a really important feature on YouTube; it means there are now points where I can take a break if I need to and it’s easy to get to when I come back and I’ll be exactly at the start of the idea they are trying to express.
Shorter videos are great, but I don’t always want them to be short. But regardless of length, I want them to be accessable.
Hah, hardly. You should have seen the tags before I edited them down to just the main topics being discussed. I had originally written down about twice as many as I ended up submitting. ;)
Hah, hardly. You should have seen the tags before I edited them down to just the main topics being discussed. I had originally written down about twice as many as I ended up submitting. ;)
I actually enjoyed this a bit more than most of her content lately. I felt like she made it pretty accessible to someone who didn't know much of the relevant context, though perhaps at the cost of...
I actually enjoyed this a bit more than most of her content lately. I felt like she made it pretty accessible to someone who didn't know much of the relevant context, though perhaps at the cost of making it boring and long-winded to someone who did.
I know this video goes further than her others, but I disagree with the notion that it’s too long. Contrapoints videos all go into the deep end to get a full understanding of the concept, and...
I know this video goes further than her others, but I disagree with the notion that it’s too long. Contrapoints videos all go into the deep end to get a full understanding of the concept, and since this is about something in the real world, which makes it complicated and multi-dimensional.
(Granted, I am watching it piecemeal and have yet to finish it).
FYI: I'm like half way through, but I don't see myself finishing the thing, at least not today. Contrapoints is a good writer to make a large part of this video entertaining to watch, but I do...
FYI: I'm like half way through, but I don't see myself finishing the thing, at least not today.
Contrapoints is a good writer to make a large part of this video entertaining to watch, but I do have to wonder why she decided to make a lot of very obvious points. I skipped the latter half of the Fiction section and most of the Intro, but the Fantasy part has not really given me anything new except to reiterate that people have these "socially unacceptable" fantasies like rape fantasies and monster sex and whatnot as a way to fulfill a need without break society's norms. If you """don't""" want it, you're not a sinful woman after all. That was the only thing really new thing in that section, and it is like 40 minutes long.
But I can't help but echo the other top comment here. Who is this for? CP's audience is gonna be made up mostly of artsy leftists, no? Is this news to them? Beyond CP's own artistic rendition, what do these 3h of video actually bring to the table that couldn't have been done in a more concise manner? I agree with the basic points that yes Twilight was overhated certainly nothing I've seen so far is wrong, but why the 3 hour run time to restate something that, while not obvious, takes an odd amount of time to get down to the actual meat of the topic while not really being Twilight at all.
She uses the books as a framing device to talk about erotica, romance novels and the role of women in writing, reading and critiquing them and tries to understand why specific things get written. I think the title of the video tries to lure in folks by promising a shittalking/defense of popular topic when instead it is a much wider excursion into literature. It needed a different title, and by removing the framing device, you could've probably saved some time.
I don't like to be negative about the presentation without discussing the content, but honestly this was just too long, and so dry compared to Natalie's earlier work. This isn't the right format...
I don't like to be negative about the presentation without discussing the content, but honestly this was just too long, and so dry compared to Natalie's earlier work. This isn't the right format for this kind of piece, which is essentially just somebody reading a PhD-length thesis to camera. No sketches or uses of the visual medium to illustrate her points, which made it (at least for me) hard to follow and come away with a coherent idea of what she was trying to say. I almost certainly would need to watch this again, at least one more time, or have it presented as an academic paper to be able to engage with it properly. IMO the written word is the far superior delivery system for a subject of this depth and detail; it's far more easily parsed when you can skim, take notes, highlight, backtrack, read ahead, etc.
That out of the way, this did raise some ideas and memories from when I was first engaging with my identity as a trans woman. Thinking about which things that I felt were feminine and masculine, and the ways that I might be able to entertain certain yearnings and cravings without transition. I think I intuitively knew a lot of what Natalie talks about on the subject of the various DHSM dyads (predator/prey, masculine/feminine, top/bottom, sadist/masochist, etc), without ever having had it explained that way. It certainly spoke to my struggle of trying to find a way to express "I am a woman" without resorting to bogus stereotypes and roles dictated by our culture. The conclusion that Natalie comes to about gender being not a spectrum or a binary, but various presentations and expressions under a single "human" duality was really interesting, and something I need to think about for a lot longer.
Did anyone else find this a bit disappointing compared to Contrapoints' usual work? The almost three hour runtime is a lot of time to say, as far as I can tell, stuff that's been said before, and more concisely, by people like Dan Olsen, Lindsay Ellis, Jenny Nichols, etc. In fairness, I only made it past the introduction and the first section after that, so maybe it gets into something more meaty after that?
The last video I watched from her was in sore need of editing down as well. I'm not sure who her videos are being made for these days. It's a shame because her videos from years ago are excellent. I still think about them to this day.
I feel like a lot of these bread tube folks are in dire need of an editor that tells them no.
We also need to move away from the idea that every point needs to be addressed.
I do think that PhilosophyTube is generally pretty well edited. But most of the others do have an editing problem.
Maybe Philosophy Tube just isn't for me anymore, but I can't stand any of her recent videos. They feel extremely preachy and philosophy adjacent at best. It doesn't help that her political philosophy seems rather disconnected from real policy solutions. Her theatrics don't add anything for me unlike Contrapoints' videos.
I think the issue is that especially when starting out, you're usually editing your own scripts, and you need a lot of self-retraint to delete entire sections of a work you poured blood and sweat into writing. But sometimes it is what needs to be done.
Idk what the process for contrapoints is, she should be able to afford editors, but maybe she also makes her own shit.
I really, really enjoy FD Signifiers videos, but don't generally watch them because they're often 2-hours long. As someone who was trained in and enjoys Philosophy, I get how often it doesn't lend itself to conciseness, but I just can't commit that long to a single video. Luckily, he has a "Shorts" video, where stuff is usually 20-30 minutes, so I watch them fairly frequently.
And I always watch a new Contrapoints video, but I also don't care about Twilight, so I may end-up skipping this one due to its length.
Twilight is mostly intended as a vehicle to discuss sexual dynamics in a way that's YouTube friendly, based on Natalie's Patreon discussion.
I miss the cat girl videos. They were weirder, but they were usually to the point, and I felt like she really know what she wanted to say that was fundamentally her voice (ironically despite using so many different voices and characters to make her arguments). But I also get the impression that she's worked most of that out already and doesn't feel the need to revisit it at all. EDIT: Which is completely fair - if that's not what she wants to do videos about, then she shouldn't feel any need to!
I think the last thing I watched from her was the Harry Potter 2 video, which was interesting mainly because of her personal connection to the story (having been interviewed on the witch-hunt podcast). But yeah, I agree about not being sure what the goal or target of these videos is any more.
The patreon videos are about as close as it gets these days.
I haven't enjoyed the newer videos as much but I think it's because they don't really speak to my interests as much as the older ones did. I think the last few have been pretty impressive feats though, but they cover things well outside my area so I have no clue if they're actually that insightful.
Personally, I think it would be better if they were cut up in 3-4 parts and released over a few months, but I get why she wouldn't want to do that. It would probably be impossible not to tinker with them between releases especially given the influence of the audience's feedback.
I'm not the target audience, but three hours seems like an insane runtime. If you truly have that much good content, an episodic format seems like a better approach. It also lets you structurally organize your points into thematic episodes, with a opening and closing bookend episodes.
Not being much into long Internet videos, what are your thoughts? Would you prefer a3 hour video, or 6 half hour episodes? Or no preference assuming the content is all high quality?
An episodic format would be great if only for the fact that we can make a concise point, wrap it up and then in the next video give a concise summary of the last one. I do occasionally watch these long videos (Hbomber), but usually over the course of a week and by the end of the week, have often forgotten a lot of the finer points due to needing to take breaks.
6 half-hour episodes, every time. I'm surprised how many YouTubers go against the algorithm on this point.
It's better for the creator, because an episodic format lowers the barrier to entry for viewers. How many people do you think see a 3 hour video essay and just skip over it because they aren't sure if it will be worth the time investment? I sure as hell do, all the time. Cutting it up into episodes makes that initial engagement more likely. It also gives you more total views, since people are now watching 6 videos instead of 1.
As a viewer, an episodic format is more digestible. I'm never going to watch a 3 hour YouTube video in one sitting, but 6 half-hour episodes give me natural stopping points and make it easier to come back to where I left off later.
It seems like a win-win
I believe that these longer form videos are going with, not against, the algorithm. For some time now, watch time has been a stronger signal than views, so even a long video that scares most potential viewers away will do very well if a small number of viewers are willing to stick to the end of a marathon video like this one.
Also, other than playlists (which barely function, and are almost never promoted in the sidebar or front page), YouTube’s UI has no way for the creator to link 6 separate videos together to tell the audience that “hey, this video is 3 of 6, you should start at the first one” and even when I watch explicitly episodic content (like a let’s play) YouTube’s “up next” is still abysmal at recommending the next video in the series when I’m on a binge.
I think YouTube mostly rewards watch time now, rather than views. So if you give people six videos to watch that are the same length as the one single video, they are treated equally (all other things being equal). I'm sure there are a bunch of other factors as well, though.
I'm more likely to skip a video that has "Part x" in the title than a very long video. What if I can't find all the parts? Sometimes one or two are weirdly absent from the search function. How many parts am I actually signing up for? I have no idea what I'm committing to. Are all the parts out yet? Am I going to have to wait? Can I be sure that if this series isn't finished, that it ever will be? I'm gonna have to listen to their intros, outros and calls to action like, 6 times. I never really look at the run time for a video before I start watching, but I always read the title. I don't know how common that is among users, though.
This is a really interesting point I honestly haven't thought about before as a ridiculously-long-video-enjoyer myself. While I can totally see the appeal of breaking a video into smaller chunks for a lot of people, I'd say that I personally would probably prefer videos given in their full, longer form like this one. Something about breaking the ideas presented into little separately chunked videos makes me feel like the overarching point would be muddled and lost along the way, having it all together makes it seem more coherent to me. I'm also not sure it'd work for Youtube's format in general. Browsing someone's channel and having every video topic cover multiple videos would be a little messy.
That being said, I totally also acknowledge that, as a student, I have a fair amount of time on my hands compared to most people, and tend to watch things on a higher speed and in the background (ie. during my commute), so I can see this not being the popular opinion generally.
I'll watch interesting long videos occasionally, but usually only if I've watched stuff by the creator before and I'm confident it'll be interesting all the way through. I enjoyed the recent Hbomberguy video about plagiarism, but I think that was mainly because it was stuff I didn't know about before, and Hbomberguy's presentation style mostly jives with what I want to watch.
I've not really seen many channels in this genre do full on series, where each "episode" builds on the previous ones. Where that happens, it's usually because each individual episode is being created as the previous ones are being released — like Hermitcraft videos, where you record a bunch of footage over a few days, then edit it together and release the video, while simultaneously working on the next episode. But for more documentary/infotainment style pieces like this, that seems pretty rare. I imagine that's simply because you tend to do all the writing/research work first, then the filming, then the editing, then the release, and then the project is over. So splitting the video up into coherent segments would be more work than just putting it all together.
But I really do agree that it's easier to sit down and watch a bunch of short-form videos that build on each other, rather than a single long video. And I'd love to see more people go in that direction.
I don't mind a three hour runtime, or longer if you have that much to say. My favorite Knowledge Fight episodes are roughly four hours long. When it comes to YouTube videos and podcasts I tend to prefer long, continuous chunks rather than smaller ones, because if I do want to consume it all at once, the smaller chunks leave me listening to repetitive intros, and calls to action. I'm usually listening to these things while I work, and the less I need to fiddle with the player to set up the next episode, the better. If I do find the video is longer than the time I want to spend on it, I have no trouble pausing it and coming back later.
That said, this video did not keep my attention. I got to the beginning of part 6 before I gave up, but I was already considering shutting it off before part 5. I usually enjoy Contrapoints and I definitely intend to keep watching her content. I don't hope that her content is shorter in the future.
Big agree on preferring longer, continuous content and not wanting to fiddle with the player/listen to repetitive intros. I understand why some people would prefer smaller, chunked content, but longer video essays (like this one) tend to be divided into parts anyway, which seems relatively similar to me at least.
I think the same way. Some of the most impactful videos are the longer ones; there are ideas and feelings that simply cannot be compressed and have the same effect. This is one of the reasons why the chapters functionality is a really important feature on YouTube; it means there are now points where I can take a break if I need to and it’s easy to get to when I come back and I’ll be exactly at the start of the idea they are trying to express.
Shorter videos are great, but I don’t always want them to be short. But regardless of length, I want them to be accessable.
If reading helps you digest it, I think @cfabbro put the entire three-hour video's script in the labels ;)
Hah, hardly. You should have seen the tags before I edited them down to just the main topics being discussed. I had originally written down about twice as many as I ended up submitting. ;)
I actually enjoyed this a bit more than most of her content lately. I felt like she made it pretty accessible to someone who didn't know much of the relevant context, though perhaps at the cost of making it boring and long-winded to someone who did.
I know this video goes further than her others, but I disagree with the notion that it’s too long. Contrapoints videos all go into the deep end to get a full understanding of the concept, and since this is about something in the real world, which makes it complicated and multi-dimensional.
(Granted, I am watching it piecemeal and have yet to finish it).
I think it's her best in a long while personally.
What did you find particularly good about it?
FYI: I'm like half way through, but I don't see myself finishing the thing, at least not today.
Contrapoints is a good writer to make a large part of this video entertaining to watch, but I do have to wonder why she decided to make a lot of very obvious points. I skipped the latter half of the Fiction section and most of the Intro, but the Fantasy part has not really given me anything new except to reiterate that people have these "socially unacceptable" fantasies like rape fantasies and monster sex and whatnot as a way to fulfill a need without break society's norms. If you """don't""" want it, you're not a sinful woman after all. That was the only thing really new thing in that section, and it is like 40 minutes long.
But I can't help but echo the other top comment here. Who is this for? CP's audience is gonna be made up mostly of artsy leftists, no? Is this news to them? Beyond CP's own artistic rendition, what do these 3h of video actually bring to the table that couldn't have been done in a more concise manner? I agree with the basic points that yes Twilight was overhated certainly nothing I've seen so far is wrong, but why the 3 hour run time to restate something that, while not obvious, takes an odd amount of time to get down to the actual meat of the topic while not really being Twilight at all.
She uses the books as a framing device to talk about erotica, romance novels and the role of women in writing, reading and critiquing them and tries to understand why specific things get written. I think the title of the video tries to lure in folks by promising a shittalking/defense of popular topic when instead it is a much wider excursion into literature. It needed a different title, and by removing the framing device, you could've probably saved some time.
I don't like to be negative about the presentation without discussing the content, but honestly this was just too long, and so dry compared to Natalie's earlier work. This isn't the right format for this kind of piece, which is essentially just somebody reading a PhD-length thesis to camera. No sketches or uses of the visual medium to illustrate her points, which made it (at least for me) hard to follow and come away with a coherent idea of what she was trying to say. I almost certainly would need to watch this again, at least one more time, or have it presented as an academic paper to be able to engage with it properly. IMO the written word is the far superior delivery system for a subject of this depth and detail; it's far more easily parsed when you can skim, take notes, highlight, backtrack, read ahead, etc.
That out of the way, this did raise some ideas and memories from when I was first engaging with my identity as a trans woman. Thinking about which things that I felt were feminine and masculine, and the ways that I might be able to entertain certain yearnings and cravings without transition. I think I intuitively knew a lot of what Natalie talks about on the subject of the various DHSM dyads (predator/prey, masculine/feminine, top/bottom, sadist/masochist, etc), without ever having had it explained that way. It certainly spoke to my struggle of trying to find a way to express "I am a woman" without resorting to bogus stereotypes and roles dictated by our culture. The conclusion that Natalie comes to about gender being not a spectrum or a binary, but various presentations and expressions under a single "human" duality was really interesting, and something I need to think about for a lot longer.