Content-Type: text/shitpost

A few years back I was excited to learn that there was a video that would teach me how to remove the seeds from a pomegranate in ten seconds.

I was less excited when I learned that the video was four and a half minutes long. It shouldn't take more than sixty seconds to explain how to do something that only takes ten seconds to demonstrate. Maybe something like this:

“Here's how to seed a pomegranate in ten seconds: Cut the pomegranate like this.”

THUNK THUNK

“Hold half of the pomegranate over a bowl. Take a wooden spoon.”

WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP

“Now the other half.”

WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP

“There you go! Thanks for watching.”

Instead, this guy spent two minutes up front building suspense and telling us how awesome this was going to be once he finally got around to showing it to us. Then he spent another minute on the back end waffling around instead of just turning off the camera.

Many years ago I gave a conference talk in which I complained that conference speakers waste everyone's time introducing the subject before they work around to the point. I wish I'd used that pomegranate video as an example.