2024-12-31
tags: none
Words: 1147 (4 minutes to read)
It's been a very long time since I've written a wv. I sort of gave up after having hit (or, fail to hit: I only mustered 500ish words) the 100th entry, and have instead blogged a little more.
I have been somewhat changing my habits, but a habit that sticks around is Youtube. I can't watch it on my phone as I have it blocked, but I can still watch it on the computer, which I am doing at the moment (well, it's currently paused as I write this) as I am working. I began by listening to music: the Austin, TX performance of Losing my Religion (a song I am listening a lot to lately, to try to get the hang of it as I am practising it on the mandolin), The Smiths' What difference does it make?, etc. Then, through recommendations I suppose, I ended up watching Cole Hastings. He has several self-help type videos I have been watching today, for instance the one I am watching at the moment discusses communication as the most important skill. He mentions how writing video essays helps him to improve his communication, and that he occasionally does brain dumps, which are essentially what wordvomits are. I realised I've not written one for a while so decided to write this.
Ultimately, I'm not sure on the position of Youtube, external influences, etc. in my goals. See, they do actually help. I don't do shorts etc. so most of what I watch does to an extent help me out, or make me reconsider certain positions. I'm not sure if it does it in a way that actually leads to change though, or if it is just watching the same ideas on repeat as content to consume (consoom).
Consuming content is useful; I have to also consider though, why I consider Youtube to be the vicious kind of consumption, yet consider reading to be a virtue, and am proud and happy of myself for consuming media in that form. Essentially, it is audiovisual media that I dislike, and that I consider consumption, where written works, or words that I write myself, I do not consider bad at all. Is there some kind of bias there, or is it a feeling that arises from a genuine state? I think, there is genuine harm in audiovisual content to an extent, though it naturally does have its virtues. Potentially it is the ease of access and use that is the problem. Potentially it is just my relationship to them, where, because I consume them in an addictive way, I consider it a vice.
He mentioned an interesting fact about trees in one of his videos, how they have more branches to one side, because of the amount of time sun is in that direction; I have never noticed this. It was a video about a mourning bird (I don't think we have these in the UK) and how many people don't hear them anymore, despite them still being ubiquitous. I stopped and could hear the birds very faintly in the trees outside, which I wasn't able to hear amidst the noise (even of that Youtube video)...
I also noticed a very small snail (the kind often seen in ponds) in my Dendrobium orchid pot. Similar idea.
So does it help? I'm really not sure. It's tempting to say people made do without Youtube in the before times, but that doesn't really help judge whether it is a net positive or not. Potentially it is negative by sheer way of its addictive tendency: I should try to rid myself of anything that promotes that kind of relationship. That is the same reason I dislike the phone: it is not to say phones are altogether without virtues, but rather that, because they are from a system that is after abusing the individual, they end up doing that. They have screens that are very bright LEDs with high refresh rates, lots of snazzy animations etc. that all grip the eye to a small but significant extent. The apps present are often quite adverse to the user, or at the very least, there is less of a culture of provision and co-operation (like there is say, with Linux FOSS programs) and more of a culture of extraction, and trying to capture attention. Anything I am provided is provided at a price, or with an intent that I will fall prey...
Youtube I know is the same. It potentially feels a little different, as I am given to it as a vice, but it is the same. It is fundamentally trying to get something from me: my time, my attention.
It has the same kind of scummy feeling (to me), if to a lesser extent, as when you go on those sites that have domains like www7.watchmovies123.xyz and are littered with hot singles in $PLACE adverts, and open up a pop-up window on every third click. Youtube isn't so extreme, but the mentality is there.
So do I value the videos enough to continue to engage in it? And the question I suppose becomes, what do I fill the void with?
Those videos do help make work a little more bearable, for instance. They help fill the background when I am doing something (that doesn't require particular focus).
They also distract me. For instance, I just started to watch another video, instead of finishing this wv. Doesn't that exemplify the issue?
I don't feel bad at all about trying to reduce/minimise my phone usage, nor of biting my nails, nor of pornography, nor of anything else. Somehow, I do feel bad about the idea of reducing my Youtube intake.
I fear
For the first, that is probably true. When working, the background noise of a video would become silence. Painful as it is, this is working as a drug, to just have a numbing effect. I fear it stopping because of my addiction, and reliance on it for my own mental wellbeing; I have outsourced the ability to feel content (that's not the right word: ataractic may be better?) to something numbing, pacifying, stupefying, something external. A video playing in the background. Perhaps it will be a little painful to do without it for a while, but surely that is for the best?
The second is harder to counter. Potentially, there is nothing wrong with me that I cannot, given sufficient time, intuit, and so I can do without the videos. I can use the time I free from these videos to self-reflect.
I may have talked myself into it, but I am not fully convinced. I'm convinced in mind but not in body, if that makes sense.
Progress is gradual, and I need to constantly remind myself of that. I need to be gentler on myself.
Have a good one.