Watching YouTube

[Martin Hash]

The YouTube algorithm is more indicative of who you are than any so-called personality test. It knows everything you’ve watched before, how long, and how often. It knows your political, musical & mystical leanings better than you know yourself, and there’s so much content that no matter how esoteric and obscure your interests are, somebody’s doing a channel on it. I watch sham science, sham history & sham politics, but I get a lot of true information too. I like solved “cold cases,” usually due to modern DNA analysis, but I don’t like watching open ones. However, I like ancient mysteries, though not when they involve aliens. I definitely follow the news from people who look past the propaganda. In fact, that’s the only place I get my news anymore. There’s a guy who fishes storm culverts that I watch and I don’t even like fishing, and I follow a guy who paints cars. I can’t even guess how many reaction videos I’ve watched of some young Black guys commenting on a classic rock song they’re hearing for the first time. I always watch a How To video when I start a project like “replacing the right-front headlight in a 2008 Prius.” Lots of times I see a video that I might be interested but not right now, so I store it away in “Watch Later,” but I’m getting concerned that the list has gotten so long.

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There’s some major money to be made as a creator on YouTube; one publisher, Mr. Beast, earns half a billion dollars a year publishing nothing I find interesting. There’s also streamers who set up a camera of themselves playing videogames or simply sitting around drinking tea and reading a book. “Where are all the young people?” You ask; there’re all at home watching people do absolutely nothing on their phones. Unfortunately, YouTube has a bad reputation for bias and censorship. It’s clear that there’s some serious trolling going on too. Any algorithm worthy of the name would know that I’m an old straight White male. Why they insist on pushing commercials on me that feature mostly women and POC has got to be intentional. My politics are clearly non-Woke, yet almost every day I have to select the “Don’t recommend channel” on some Lefty, mealy-mouthed commentator that I’ve never heard of that’s crept into my newsfeed.

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