I am a firm believer in that you can tell a majority of a person's personality by looking at their recommended section in YouTube. My roommate's is just a string of not at all connected music videos. My college best friend's was a strange mix of Disney mashups and travel videos. My most recent ex had horse training videos and endless clips of why horse girls weren't that bad... Maybe I should have applied that somewhere in my decision-making, but you live and you learn.
My recommendation list has always been strange. I have a mix of motivational speakers from my time in college when I was struggling with my upper level anatomy classes. I have three different ambient music mixes based on whether I am cleaning my house, writing, or playing Dungeons and Dragons. I have a fun corner of YouTube devoted to mixing fancy cocktails from when I was a bartender before COVID-19 hit. And recently, I added the incredibly informative and adorable genre of puppy training.
Looking at my suggested tab was almost assuredly strange for anyone else to look at. On the surface, it looked like a strange, twisted web of someone who needed to be insanely motivated to train a cute puppy.I majored in Psychology in college. I took all the personality tests that a person can take ranging in credulity from Buzzfeed quizzes to the Enneagram. I would without a doubt place more stock in YouTube than any other measure. At least, that was my stance before the shelter in place order put my butt firmly in my desk chair for hours more than I was used to.
I have fought to the depths of hell and back to maintain my sleep schedule. My roommate has not and I already see the effects it is taking. The 3 AM bread making. The 'movie nights' that start at 5 AM. Bemoaning the fact that restaurants aren't open for dinner at sunrise. In my quest to keep some semblance of a working relationship with my bed without it slipping into dependency, I have had to find things other than work to fill up my time. And down the rabbit hole I descended.
I started with all the videos that had me in stitches from grade school. This lasted all of thirty seconds, but the cringe will remain with me forever as I had to stare at what I used to find funny right in its horribly animated face. As I moved onto high school, the humor barely improved. I would not show it to my future spouse, but maybe I could share it to my graduating class and get a couple of reminiscent comments remarking how immature we were back then. I looked over to the recommended videos in that section of YouTube and how I wish I had put two and two together. The evidence was there. The beginnings of my folly were present. The structure of my recommendations was still there, but the strength of its foundations were crumbling like that of an ancient Egyptian tomb forgotten by time. If I had stopped there maybe the curse of that grave would never have been released. But lo, in my hubris, I allowed the current of the internet to take me.
I glided past the reviews of various off-brand salsa. I dove headfirst into the differences between alligators and crocodiles which goes far beyond where their teeth are located. I soaked up how to fly a drone even though I had never even considered buying one. Music playlists were now devoted to themes like 'fantasy-core' and 'lofi (witch only)'. I was in deep. I had sunk so deep beneath the waves in the ocean of YouTube that light no longer existed where I drifted. I no longer knew which way was up. If anything, I simply kept swimming deeper.I would like to clarify at this point that this was not in the span of a single night.
Remember, I still wished to keep my sleep schedule somewhat intact. There have been many YouTube binges in history that have led people down the strange alleyways of the Internet. These have most commonly taken place in single sitting, likely with chips and a strong beverage on hand. This is not embarrassing. This is human nature.However, in my case, it was not this simple matter of following a rabbit hole in a single night. No. The strange and otherworldly suggestions list that was my YouTube at the end of this process was the result of nearly a week of otherwise not unhealthy behavior. I was still going on long walks with my dog. I didn't stay up past ten pm. My diet wasn't perfect, but whose is at this point?
No.
This was day after day and time after time of consciously choosing to stray further and further from my comfort zone. As I watched a video on how podcasts are made I realized that I had no intention of ever making a podcast. I stopped. Is this what the quarantine has brought me to? Everyone has their own breaking point. My roommate's was a hop, skip, and a jump into the world of baking. Cookies now abound in my house and I couldn't be happier even though everything is now covered in a fine dusting of flour. Was this my breaking point? I didn't even have anything I could show for it.
But, I did.
Oh, I did.The consequences struck down on me like lightning and shook my soul like thunder. As I clicked that red button that directed me to my home screen for YouTube, it was looking into a mirror after a week spent hiking in the wilderness. Were those bags under my eyes? Did I actually have a pine cone in my hair that entire time? How long had that ketchup stain been on the corner of my cheek?
After the wilderness that was the forgotten realms of YouTube, I had to come face to face with my own reflection after the journey. Did I really move all the way through the salsa rating videos and end up graduating to the rating of nacho cheese? Had my watching of music mixes move me from fantasy-core and witch vibes to something called cottage-core? Above all, did I really want to see the notification that there was a new video by a channel that I loved when I hadn't even hit puberty yet?
There was no fixing this. I knew it the moment I saw the ramifications. My week long stint in solitary was not easily undone. Those videos were going to be part of the equations tasked with recommending new videos for at least a week. It would be more work to try to counteract it than to just wait it out.Just wait it out.
Don't worry, I'm not gonna turn this into some lesson to take into the quarantine with you. The Importance of Waiting It Out. While I did dedicate a whole post to my YouTube history, I don't think it is that vital of a lesson source. We all do what we can to get through this. Some people bake. Others read. I know a couple of bar friends who are drinking. And I completely trash my YouTube recommendations. There are no lessons to learn. There's just coping and applying ourselves day after day into whatever activity we are devoted to.
If there was anything to take out of this, its actually that YouTube should definitely have an option to turn on an option where it wouldn't take any of your searches into account. You could go down rabbit holes with abandon, not worrying whether those videos you're watching about drone flying are gonna come back to haunt you. Even that might be too much to take out of this. The fact of the quarantine is simply:
There are no winners in this.
Except maybe the baker. The cookies are really good and a cake just got taken out of the oven.
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