we really gotta think what we do with our time. Spending in on youtube tends to have lower value nowadays.
most stuff on youtube is crap. It’s there to make you addicted, to make you watch ads, to make you miserable. Long story short: “influencers” are a drug on society comparable in effects to Crystal Meth. It gives you a short high, but leaves you exhausted.
most “content creators” really just practice, how to manipulate many people into listening to them. There’s a lot of makeup, but not much really to say. Best thing is to not listen to them.
“content creators” are waaaaay to often just people trying to make money. They’re not trying to tell you something of importance. They’re jus trying to squeeze money out of you.
Problems on Youtube’s side:
it’s a centralized system with platform lock-in. “Related videos” never takes you to other platforms. Search query is intransparent. They ask for waaaay too much money for what it costs them to maintain and develop their systems. I see nothing at all honorable at trying to squeeze money from users.
Youtube has grown into yet another one corpo-speak garbage companies. They used to be respectable, making interesting recommendations, with a clear mission to make knowledge accessible to everyone. Nowadays, they just try to make money.
I agree with all of your points, but I am learning a lot on a very diverse set of topics from YouTube. There are some amazing people making educational videos there. The most time consuming stuff I watch is “let’s play” videos. I kind of let them play in the backgrounds sometimes to relax, like white noise.
I’ve been getting around the addictive nature of it by doing the following:
First deleted YouTube app and bookmarked Invidious links, that way if I want to find some specific video I can just search for it and not be bothered by ads or algorithm suggestions that are made to keep me in the loop of doom.
Second I’ve loaded epub copy of books I am currently reading on kindle or on paper to my phone, and made the Books and Kindle apps prominent next to Invidious, so when I am tempted to look for videos I can instead replace with reading books I have on my list.
My video watching habit has reduced drastically, mostly down to searching for diy fixes.
yep, and there’s more problems:
we really gotta think what we do with our time. Spending in on youtube tends to have lower value nowadays.
most stuff on youtube is crap. It’s there to make you addicted, to make you watch ads, to make you miserable. Long story short: “influencers” are a drug on society comparable in effects to Crystal Meth. It gives you a short high, but leaves you exhausted.
most “content creators” really just practice, how to manipulate many people into listening to them. There’s a lot of makeup, but not much really to say. Best thing is to not listen to them.
“content creators” are waaaaay to often just people trying to make money. They’re not trying to tell you something of importance. They’re jus trying to squeeze money out of you.
Problems on Youtube’s side:
Youtube has grown into yet another one corpo-speak garbage companies. They used to be respectable, making interesting recommendations, with a clear mission to make knowledge accessible to everyone. Nowadays, they just try to make money.
I agree with all of your points, but I am learning a lot on a very diverse set of topics from YouTube. There are some amazing people making educational videos there. The most time consuming stuff I watch is “let’s play” videos. I kind of let them play in the backgrounds sometimes to relax, like white noise.
It’s good if it works for you, but for me, it doesn’t.
I don’t use youtube for it’s riveting entertainment, I use it to learn things.
Well said on all bullets!
I’ve been getting around the addictive nature of it by doing the following:
First deleted YouTube app and bookmarked Invidious links, that way if I want to find some specific video I can just search for it and not be bothered by ads or algorithm suggestions that are made to keep me in the loop of doom.
Second I’ve loaded epub copy of books I am currently reading on kindle or on paper to my phone, and made the Books and Kindle apps prominent next to Invidious, so when I am tempted to look for videos I can instead replace with reading books I have on my list.
My video watching habit has reduced drastically, mostly down to searching for diy fixes.