'Purposeful' Chess Talk

For this month's post on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), I had a couple of recent, related videos on my short list. How were they related? They were both about the current wave of the game's popularity. Let's take the longer video first.

Why More People Don't Play Chess (24:31) • '[Published on] Feb 5, 2023'

The video's description said,

Thank you for dropping by for a more casual, laid back, chess talk type of video where I discuss why more people don't play chess, my personal opinions and reasons. I also give sound advice to all of you folks, that will hopefully be helpful to not only get you back on track of playing chess but also keep you on track!

In a nutshell, more people don't play chess because they don't like losing. Judging by the quality of the comments, the videomaker (channel 'Al Su Chess') has a keen group of followers. He says, 'I find it humbling that people find my channel purposeful'.

The second video was Review: Why I stopped playing Chess.com (youtube.com; channel 'CatGoneCrazy'). Here the description said,

This is a video review of Chess.com the website and app for playing and learning chess.

I noted two points worth repeating. Neither explains why he stopped playing:-

3:45 - 'I'm a professional games journalist.'
5:55 - 'Chess.com Review Score: 5/5'

The two videos haven't yet received 1000 views, but to paraphrase last month's sociology post, Not a Squeaking Wheel (January 2023), popularity isn't always an indicator of quality. Nor is it an indicator of purpose.