On those days where boredom evolves into an almost catatonia-inducing state of ennui, the worst thing that you can do is go onto YouTube and try and make something spark.
The algorithm wishes for retention. Either making you watch long videos or making you click on many shorter ones for that sweet dopamine rush. To that end, it rewards either hourly-uploaded nonsense or very large discourses of any topic so long as they have nice profitable ads sprinkled all over them. YouTube wants me on the latter camp, and that’s really annoying.
Not because the content isn’t informational. It is. Not because it’s presented poorly. I wouldn’t know, if I clicked everything that the algorithm wanted to present to me I think I’d become one of those Axiom passengers from WALL-E. No, it’s because, unsurprisingly. The algorithm guesses at the things I like, and I already know quite a bit about the things I like. Usually, it’s why I like them.
Did you know that on Hill Valley in November 12, 1955 there were at least three simultaneous DeLoreans? Or that the famous Honda ‘Cog’ advert has, in fact, a single cut in it. Or that Steve Jobs and Apple actually paid Microsoft and Bill Gates to develop software for the Mac? Yes, yes I do. Like quite a bit of people in this planet I’ve spent an insignificant amount of time amassing a simply prodigious amount of knowledge, which is mostly useless but comes in handy for trivia nights or to insert a little detail that makes a conversation all the more interesting.
However, as most of those people will agree, this comes with some downsides. The one that led to the creation of this article being that, should you find yourself next to someone else of the decidedly un-select group of useless trivia observers, their trivia knowledge hits like the sound of a car crash. The coliseum was flooded to stage naval battles!? No kidding!? At that point it’s no longer trivia and it becomes just noise. Like someone asking you if you breathe oxygen or if you feel hot standing on the sidewalk. In Miami. In the summer.
However, as I stared at the endless rows of “Did you know” lists, punctuated occasionally by honeypots of minute-long videos that would be sure to make the homepage flood with their brothers if I clicked them. Something else clicked, the moment when ennui almost becomes nirvarna and boredom allows enlightenment. Except it’s inevitably obvious and really useless enlightenment.
“All of this is old news…to me”
Yes, I had forgotten what xkcd had put so succinctly so many years ago. These videos are not for me, they are for the lucky 10,000+ Who will look at it and be fascinated that you can actually do see the Loch Ness monster from the Trial Mountain track in Gran Turismo 4, or the basic functionality of a dial-up modem. All of a sudden the pages of useless videos became a treasure trove of knowledge hitherto reserved for books, educational CD’s, and the programming manager of whatever edutainment channels are left. Boredom went away in a magnificent wave.
I guess the video of Alton Brown teaching me how to make Rice Krispies treats also helped.
