Marques Brownlee sometimes mentions on his podcast that TV viewership of YouTube videos is on the rise. I have to say I fall squarely within this camp. The bigger screen makes everything, especially cinematic videos, so much more enjoyable. Using the remote also feels far more seamless than using a phone. A kid recently told me that’s the reason they watch Shorts on TV. I refuse to go down that path, but I understand their logic.
The downside to watching on TV is that I’m spending more time on the home page. This habit has also spilled over onto my laptop.
I’ve long had my YouTube bookmark set to lead me straight to my subscriptions page, where I would sift what I want to watch and add it to my Watch Later playlist. That playlist became my home for all my media needs. This worked flawlessly by allowing me to watch from my favourite creators while not falling into an uncontrollable crave for new videos.
At the moment, I still operate from my Watch Later playlist but the source of the videos has changed. Some still come from my subscription page, but an increasing amount is coming from our YouTube overlords. The TV app spits you straight onto the home page where the almighty algorithm tries its best to grab you with its hooks. And, well… I’ve definitely been grabbed. That sounded wrong 😂 but you get me. I end up scrolling the home page as I add videos to my main playlist along the way.
Perhaps ironically, I came across this video earlier today and it does seem to address a part of this issue (it doesn’t solve landing on the YT home page – I might just have to learn to avoid/tolerate it). Lilla Björn Stationery recommends having a media journal. She writes down all the videos she wants to watch in a list and crosses them off one by one. She even went above and beyond to colour-code it depending on the type of video it is. It feels a little extreme to keep tabs of your media this way but that is not far from what I used to do a couple years back.
In high school, I used to have yearly notebooks where I’d jot down fun (questionable) stories, poems and other random things but there was always one constant in each notebook, a media section. Being in a boarding school with no access to mobile phones or internet, I would always write down what I wanted to research, watch and listen to at the back of my book. Once the school holiday began, I’d start with what was on my list before trying other things and the cycle would repeat itself in the next school term. That’s not too far from what the video suggests.
I’d be lying if I said I’d do that again but it does beg me to question my intentionality in media consumption. My system has worked for years, but it crumbles when I can’t avoid the home page. Perhaps I can embrace it by choosing to only add a video to my Watch Later playlist if it appears on the first screen that pops up instead of scrolling endlessly.
That way I can balance recommendations from the algorithm (which sometimes are golden), from friends and newsletters, and videos from my favourite creators. As a personal recommendation, check out Tom Scott’s weekly newsletter. He shares about three good videos every Monday, some links to interesting articles and a few of his own stuff.
Moral of the story: watch your YouTube habits. It’s the one social platform that pretends it isn’t one.
Anyway, go touch some grass and try some hobby.
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