I wrote back in November (see link below) that I was going to stop watching YouTube, cold turkey. For the most part I was successful. The exceptions are enlightening, as they show just how far YouTube, and Google behind it, has extended its technological tentacles into our digital lives.

The first exception has to do with stories that include any video content, such as movie trailers or any news reporting. You’re reading the story and embedded right in the middle is an embedded YouTube video that you need to click in order to view it. In the beginning I did click through, but over the month of November I trained myself not to. Now if I’m reading a piece of news and a YouTube-hosted video is part of that news, I skip the video portion.

The big exception has to do with training videos. Right now I’m re-training myself to use Blender 4.0.1. If you go back to the beginning of my blog you’ll see I wrote a number of posts about learning how to use a much earlier version, and how I managed to gain a foothold in understanding Blender basics and turning out simple but effective 3-D illustrations. Like a lot of things in that period I let my attention wander away rather than sticking to it. Now I’m trying almost ten years later to pick Blender back up again, but a lot has changed, especially the controls. I tried to use the old training videos from that earlier period but Blender 4’s controls have changed too much for me to use those old videos with the current Blender. So now I’m going through the learning process again, but this time with training videos on YouTube written for Blender 4.

The lesson here is that I can’t completely drop YouTube, but I can sure come close to it. I’ve cut down my viewing of YouTube to the point where I no longer let it affect me, and addict me, via its algorithmic charms. I’m using YouTube as it was originally conceived, as a way for the general user to present information to others via short and informative, and above all truthful, videos.

Links

notube november