In my opinion I think that YouTube shorts is their way of pandering to a younger audience who are more interested in short two minute TikToks. It seems that the younger generations attention span has gotten shorter as shorter videos are more popular where as I personally prefer to sit and watch an hour long stream, sometimes even longer.
On my channel i like to make videos that can be anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour, with my longest being an hour long and my shortest being a one off two minute video due to something that had happened and I needed to get it off my chest.
On one hand my long video has 45 views after 3 weeks, and my shortest video has 99 in 48 hours, two of the most-viewed videos on my channel. So i guess the question 'are they pointless' depends on the type of channel that you have and who your target audience is.