Youtube Habit

[Outdated]

I think I'm getting over my youtube addiction, strangely enough it's Youtube themselves that have brought about this change.

For many years I lived in a very remote region with limited internet access so I simply wasn't exposed to much media, and even the first couple of years I was back in civilisation I never took much notice of it. It's only in the last couple of years that I've really been looking at youtube videos and it became a bit of an obsession.

Early on I learned to not be logged in when viewing youtube videos simply because the urge to respond to people's comments was too strong and getting involved in arguments with people I will never meet is just another layer of stress I really don't need in my life. Because I'm not logging in and because my browser dumps all cookies every time I close it every time I go to Youtube I'm a brand new unknown user with no history.

This was great for a while but they've been tweaking the settings on their site lately and they took away the ability to sort search results by date. This has made finding things I'm looking for much more difficult and now quite often when I go looking for videos I want to watch I just get bombarded with so much ridiculous click bait crap that I give up without watching anything.

I could always log in of course and then I would have a little bit more control over what I do and don't want to see, but as far as I'm concerned that would be counterproductive, I'm noticing beneficial changes in myself from staying away from youtube. I'm losing my cravings for junk food.

I turned right off junk food when I was living in the bush, my sense of smell and taste altered and I began to really hate the smell of places like McChuck's and Kentucky Fried Kitten. I got used to that again living back in the city but I still never really went to any of the chain places much, preferring the little privately owned corner shops instead - better food and cheaper. Strangely though for the last couple of years I quite often wake up in the mornings wanting junk food and having to talk myself out of it.

Just 2 weeks of far less Youtube and those weird cravings aren't happening any more. I never would have been able to link those two ideas before but it really does seem like the constant bombardment of advertising was having an effect on me. Adverts are something else you don't get when you're living in a remote place.

 

[TBRS1]

The adverts on YouTube are sooooooo bad.

Do people really fall for those enough to make them useful?

If so, humanity will follow the dodo into nothingness.

 

[Dagan]

I watch video podcasts mostly. Music equipment reviews. Sometimes, videos on how to "fix it yourself" stuff.

 

[fattymeatysardine]

Coincidentally I was about to write a small essay relating to this. Anyways, good job on distancing yourself from Youtube. Digital media is so manipulative right now. It's so bad that I've seen someone label the act of reading a book as "healing"

Here's some plugins that make Youtube more manageable
Hide Youtube-Shorts – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)
Unhook: Remove YouTube Recommended Videos Comments – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)
YouTube Anti Translate - Official Port – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)

 

[Misery]

I've had a similar addiction to Youtube for awhile now.

But similarly to you, it's not some method, but instead Youtube itself that is breaking the addiction over time.

It's the content. I find that there's a few very specific types of content that appear frequently and also drive me crazy:

1. Videos that are really just Tiktok shorts that someone ported to Youtube. Tiktok is generally brainless, so...

2. "OMG this thing just happened, we're all doomed, DOOOOOOOOOOOOMED pleaseclickthissponsor DOOOM"

3. Review of a thing that has already been reviewed by 50000 other channels. Not because the person talking about the thing is actually interested. But because it's a trending thing. Often they have this sort of checked-out look while doing it.

4. Reaction content

5. Angry reaction content

6. Bigotry of any sort

7. Grifters. This one is a whole big topic in and of itself.

8. Slow talky videos with text overlaid on top of Minecraft footage for some reason. Usually generic self help stuff.

9. Top 10 whatever

10. Talky videos with text on Minecraft but this time it's just someone reading Reddit posts

11. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


At this point it's so rare that I find anything new that doesnt suck that I tend to latch onto something and watch it over and over for a time.

When I first got onto Youtube, it was primarily for video game content. The "let's play" type specifically. It was usually smaller channels playing things they genuinely enjoyed and wanted to share with everyone, often while just being funny and entertaining, but not overboard. And other similar types of content.

But now? Most of the sort of stuff I had an interest in watching is gone. I mean, the old stuff from years ago is technically still there, sure, but nobody wants to make any of that sort of thing now. And I know it isnt just gaming. If it's the sort of thing that would have been popular in the early days of the site, chances are the algorithm shoved it off a cliff awhile ago in favor of more braindead things.

What really gets me though about modern Youtube content is that there's just... no substance. Very little effort put in, just rapid-fire content to drown the audience. And no, I dont mean AI. People keep blaming that, but this has been going on longer than that, and the worst channels dont use AI at all.

It's so rare now that I find a creator that makes anything with any sort of passion or enthusiasm. Instead, just glassy-eyed people blandly doing whatever is trending, nothing more.

Just... bah. I'm tired of it all.

The frustrating thing is that without Youtube, there's just nothing else to watch. Heck, I used to watch anime, but now... good grief if I see just one more "guy gets stepped on by a dinosaur and reincarnates as a cheesecake in an alternate fantasy world" sort of series, I'm gonna stab a clown. Or the other type of series, the "powerscaling" type, just... uuuuuuuuuuugh. Gonna stab TWO clowns. With ONE pike.

The adverts on YouTube are sooooooo bad.

Do people really fall for those enough to make them useful?

If so, humanity will follow the dodo into nothingness.

I dont understand how people can use Youtube, or the internet as a whole, without a proper adblocker. And for Youtube, Sponsorblock as well.

Like seriously, on my setup here I havent seen a Youtube ad in a few years now.

But if I try to watch anything at all on a device that isnt mine, it's impossible. A 15 minute video with 12 ads? Yeah, no. Not doing that.

Same with the rest of the internet.

 

[cooljethro]

The adverts on YouTube are sooooooo bad.

Do people really fall for those enough to make them useful?

If so, humanity will follow the dodo into nothingness.

Advertisements can have a powerful effect in a subliminal way and on the unconscious mind.

You can be intelligent consciously, but your unconscious mind might be sucking all sorts of things up that you might not realize, including ads, should you be exposed to them.

 

[monkeyclogs]

personally ive never been able to navigate you tube well enough to find anything that interests me. I do often watching things through direct links but I can never find that content myself. i've only ever used it to upload videos i want to share using a link or i need to embed in a website.

Everyone seems obsessed with video communication these days. When I ran a business my marketing director was always trying to get me to do social media videos as apparently that's the go to way to build and engage a client base. It makes sense that you tube would be all about marketing.

 

[TBRS1]

Advertisements can have a powerful effect in a subliminal way and on the unconscious mind.

You can be intelligent consciously, but your unconscious mind might be sucking all sorts of things up that you might not realize, including ads, should you be exposed to them.

LOL - maybe.

But I'm 70 years old, and even the products look stupid.

 

[stevens]

...because the urge to respond to people's comments was too strong and getting involved in arguments with people I will never meet is just another layer of stress I really don't need in my life.

I am having a similar thought process with regard to social media in general. I do make comments on two journalism sites, but generally I think we are talking with ourselves when we post comments of this nature. With a few exceptions.

We talk with ourselves, because if we do not obtain enough positive upvotes our comments will be derogated and seen by very few people. On some platforms, a modestly-upvoted comment might be viewed in the low 2-digit number of times. Yet the "process" of engagement makes it feel like we are getting our equal share of reader attention. The "exceptions" I refer to are people who can craft enough self-promotion or situationally aware comments and posts to attract thousands of upvotes or views. Really, this is no different than being the guy in the corner in high school that no one listens to, while the loudest voice gets all the attention.

There are some subjects on Reddit (the site that also happens to have done an initial public offering last year) that I read for information about a couple of my hobbies. This is indispensible, but I do it logged off (which still is possible although it may not be for long). What I see on there is a site designed to increase engagement but not satisfaction. I think people like us tend to waste far too much of our time creating content for billionaire main shareholders in the social media sites (and youtube clearly qualifies as a social media site) while failing to achieve as much of our diminishing potential.

Also the other day I was made aware of a site, "nerdculture.com" which on the surface sounds like the perfect place for neurodivergent people who have "special interests." Unfortunately, reading the terms of service revealed that the owners of the site monitor everything, everything from the users content to their browsing behavior and their right to privacy. The evil empire of Wall Street social media sites will exploit anyone and everyone.

Obviously, this is not the Internet I knew from the early pre-1990 days.

 

[NB79]

Advertisements can have a powerful effect in a subliminal way and on the unconscious mind.

You can be intelligent consciously, but your unconscious mind might be sucking all sorts of things up that you might not realize, including ads, should you be exposed to them.

When i see an annoying oblkigatory ad, i make a reminder in my mind to no buy of that brand at least for a while. But is rare because i use adblocks.

 

[Judge]

I still use YouTube for a lot of technical computer stuff, but there is an alarming amount of pure garbage out there. Pure falsehoods being perpetrated by all kinds of nefarious parties, for financial, political or national gain. Or even for just pure orneriness.

I can't get over so many outrageous taglines over things that frankly never happened. Always double checking the wire services and mainstream media to find there's nothing posted. When journalistic integrity becomes a real concern.

And even the more benign subjects like sports...where you click on a story looking for an explanation of their tagline only to discover they never actually say whatever it is. That the whole point is nothing but serial clickbait. Where every new post carries no explanation or resolve. Just a message worded in such a way to get you to check out the next presentation.

 

[Luca]

I still use YouTube for a lot of technical computer stuff, but there is an alarming amount of pure garbage out there. Pure falsehoods being perpetrated by all kinds of nefarious parties, for financial, political or national gain. Or even for just pure orneriness.

I can't get over so many outrageous taglines over things that frankly never happened. Always double checking the wire services and mainstream media to find there's nothing posted. When journalistic integrity becomes a real concern.

And even the more benign subjects like sports...where you click on a story looking for an explanation of their tagline only to discover they never actually say whatever it is. That the whole point is nothing but serial clickbait. Where every new post carries no explanation or resolve. Just a message worded in such a way to get you to check out the next presentation.

Yep... I've been seeing a lot of very worrying stuff, far outside the realm of the topics I usually gravitate towards, being pushed at me by the YouTube algorithm as of late... and I try to steer clear of anything of that kind of nature on YouTube, for my own sanity... creepy.

The sports thing... that actually happened to us earlier! A video was recommended to us titled something like "[hockey player's name] funny trash talk" and there was no trash talk in the video, lol... it was the commentator giving a play by play... what was the point of that?? I wonder if the tagline of the video was AI-generated or something, because it was completely false advertising.

YouTube has kind of crapped the bed lately in terms of the algorithm, and the amount of AI-generated garbage. So we've been watching a lot less YouTube lately as well. At this point we'd almost rather pay for another streaming service so we have more control over what we're seeing.

 

[Crabcore]

I still watch lectures, travel videos, documentaries and things I don't deem to be trash, but only under the condition that I work out while doing so, otherwise I'll just get lost watching videos.

For anyone in need, Unhook and adblockers are still great extensions to use, but it's sort of nice to know we've all been there. Sometimes reading a book is a nice escape, for sure. Heck, even movies can have more substance and actually positively affect our attention spans. It really depends on the content, imo.

 

[NB79]

There is tons of nice useful videos, it gets drowned by all the crap, but if you try to look you will find interesting stuff.

 

[Outdated]

And no, I dont mean AI. People keep blaming that, but this has been going on longer than that, and the worst channels dont use AI at all.

I'm starting to believe it's the other way around and Youtube has broken AI. AI is trained by looking at and reading all sorts of content but it has no human or even logic filter to tell it what's true and what's not.

So AI reads all the click bait titles and believes them to be reported news facts.

 

[Luca]

I'm starting to believe it's the other way around and Youtube has broken AI. AI is trained by looking at and reading all sorts of content but it has no human or even logic filter to tell it what's true and what's not.

So AI reads all the click bait titles and believes them to be reported news facts.

That's basically what I've been thinking too.

I think it's a combination of AI interpreting made up stuff as facts and then misrepresenting things, and also AI coming up with some of the clickbait titles.
The sports video I referenced earlier was far from the first completely misleading and disjointed title I've seen...

 

[Tuffsy]

I'd love to say something brilliant, but after reading everyone's posts there are much more switched on people. As an musician I suppose that I am a content creator, but not like other content creators with a million followers. I pay a Distributor to publish my own songs. So while I also hate getting Ads, they pay me a measly sum. I also love watching other music videos and I have been really disgusted that I have been sucked in by AI produced songs that sound like the original artist.
So I am feeling a lot like you, @Outdated , that YouTube is becoming totally useless for my needs.

 

[Misery]

I'm starting to believe it's the other way around and Youtube has broken AI.

Which might be true, but Youtube's AI doesnt create videos. All it can do is suggest them. It can also summarize them if you want, but most AIs now can do that. Youtube's AI also does not come up with the titles for the videos. Youtube is willing to jam ads into people's videos, but they dont interfere in the creation of them. The uploader is the only one that can decide the video's title. It can offer up a suggested thumbnail, however this is not an AI created image. It's just a chosen frame from the video itself. Most people dont use the suggested thumbnails, as it's always better to create your own, as the suggested frames are very random. All them red arrows and "shocked" faces and other clickbait tricks are someone's choice. Which, I must say, is really rather depressing.

That being said, the AI that IS there isnt what's filling your page by default (you have to intentionally interact with the AI before it will actually do anything). What is filling your page and handling recommendations is the ever-enigmatic Algorithm, which nobody outside of Youtube itself actually knows the nature of. It's always been there, and pleasing the horrid thing is basically every content creator's full time job. Always has been. However it works, one thing is certain: it only cares about engagement. That's the one part of it that is clear. Everything else about it is unknown. Well, I know I hate the stupid thing, so there's that.

I know people like to blame AI for everything these days, but this stuff has been going on for MANY years now, since long before AI was even a thing. And it hasnt exactly changed much. Come to think of it, a lot of this nonsense started back when Google bought out Youtube. That was the point when it all started going downhill. The accursed site has been garbage for longer than I usually like to admit. The golden age of the site that I'm so fond of remembering was before that point.

Youtube as a company doesnt care one bit about truth VS lies. They care about profit VS lack of profit. As I keep telling people when it comes to stuff like this: these companies and their services dont exist to inform you. They dont even exist to entertain you. They exist to profit off of you... nothing more. Youtube may be fun to interact with, but it is no exception to the rule. Particularly since it's Google.


The one big suggestion I can give regarding the whole thing, if you want to avoid AI-generated content, use the "dont show me this channel again" function if you find a channel that is doing that. I feel like people are often not aware this function even exists. Which of course, is probably by design, bah. It's hard to find functions anywhere if they're buried in little context lists.

And then after doing some filtering through that method, stick to your subscriptions page instead of the "home" page when you arent very specifically looking for something new. And dont hesitate to cull the list if some of them start veering off track. Be aggressive both about filtering and culling.

Also, look up the "Unhook" browser plugin. Seriously.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done with an addiction present. I'm well aware of all of this stuff and I still cant stop myself entirely. That's on me though.

I've tried using various tools to block out Youtube and force myself to stop using it by keeping it mostly inaccessible. The problem is that I know how to break any such thing and I aint good on self control.

but it has no human or even logic filter to tell it what's true and what's not.

Considering various... things going on, at this point, and after way too much time observing people on the internet, I'm convinced most humans dont have such a filter either. Or some of them did, but tore it out and jumped up and down on it and replaced it with half of a potato.

 

[Outdated]

Which might be true, but Youtube's AI doesnt create videos.

When I made that statement I was talking about all AI, not just youtube's. Here's a classic example for you:

The entirety of that AI statement is completely false.

They're not real adverts, they're comedy skits. There is no such company as Schaeffers and there are no such products. As such they were never advertised and also never banned.

So why does AI continuously pop this result up? Because crappy youtube creators like to put click bait titles on their clips and telling people something is banned makes them want to click on it to see what they're missing out on.

Youtubers did exactly the same thing with the Toyota Bugger series of adverts, claiming they were "banned". They were never banned, that advertising campaign lasted about 10 years in Australia and New Zealand and they were very popular with kids and adults alike. At least with those though AI has recently had it's information corrected.

 

[Judge]

Another bothersome thing is to see how uneven YouTube is about subject matter that is quickly removed, and without comment. Something I (may have) witnessed only some 48 hours ago, regarding a comprehensive presentation on a known incident. It was about the sinking of the USS Mannert L. Abele, a World War Two destroyer sunk by a single jet-powered kamikaze pilot in 1945.

The presentation while long and detailed, dealt with the findings of a third party underwater research/salvage operation that claimed some really strange and disturbing observations. That one of the many holds in the ship had been welded shut from the outside. And that some 17 bodies were found in it who allegedly were never accounted for. Not to mention the ship itself contained a bizarre amount of scientific equipment and written research of high technology not only of the Japanese, but also the Germans. That it appeared the ship was more likely scuttled than sunk from enemy aircraft.

Unless this presentation is still online, who prompted this presentation's removal and why was it done ?