I am disciplined about keeping a list of topics for blog posts in case there’s nothing current that grabs me. It’s a long list with notes, links, and ideas for each prospective topic. One of those topics is “YouTube Videos.” I’ve written before about this but think it’s worth pointing out that the list includes such eclectic videos as, “History of the Hittites,” “How to Land an Airplane in 12 Easy Steps,” “Linen Explained,” “I Saw Hitler in Hell,” “Surviving Maximum Federal Prisons,” “What’s Going Wrong in Particle Physics?”, and “Diary of a Hoplite.”
Did I say eclectic? I meant random, although who wouldn’t want to know how to land a plane in 12 easy steps? You may not want to attempt it on your own, but you never know when you will be called upon to do something heroic. Or thrust into it. Or dragged, kicking and screaming. When you get there, you’ll find that the steps are neither easy nor fixed in number. But think of the exposure you’ll get.
I bring this up now, because plenty of things have grabbed my attention on YouTube lately. I don’t write about them, because most have to do with politics, and I figure most readers don’t want to be alienated more than they already are. There are some, of course, who look forward to that kind of thing, but they are outliers. I can tell you, however, that I am always and everywhere interested in Ancient Rome and national socialism. “Always and everywhere” is a phrase from church magisterial documents that I find handy. I recently watched a video on the “Night of the Long Knives,” which occurred 90 years ago almost to the day, when Hitler murdered the leadership of the Sturmabteilung (SA or “Brownshirts”) to consolidate power.
When I am not watching historical videos, doctrinal debates, or news from places in foment like Venezuela and Gaza, I watch videos about the current presidential election. As you can imagine, they’re hard to ignore and pop up in my feed even after I’ve gone through a string of DIY videos on changing the transmission fluid in my car. I won’t say anything about them other than that they are often repetitive, uncritical, and misinformed. Not all of them, mind you, but enough to leave me shaking my head. And I shake it Left and Right.
Here’s the thing. I say this as much for my benefit as yours, since you’re savvy (subscribers to this site are impressive). These videos are addictive. They draw you in and leave you wanting more. They remind me of serial fiction when writers would leave their readers with a “cliffhanger.” Dickens wrote like that. But modern serial fiction uses algorithms not only to keep you coming back but to entice you with things on your screen. They suggest “related videos” as well. It’s a sneaky business masquerading in the guise of convenience and customer service. And the ads, of course, are targeted. I wonder, though, why they think I would be interested in the latest, state-of-the-art hearing aid.
So, like Mark Twain and smoking, I am about to do what I have promised to do a dozen times already. I am going to fast from social media. I know what you’re thinking, but this time will be different. To help me along, I am going back to the five or six books I was reading before going YouTube crazy. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I had a conversation with Pius V. I last left him in 1559 confronting the Huguenots. It was a real cliffhanger. I should find out how things turned out.
I’ll tell you this. Through social media fasting, I already have a clearer head and less anxiety. Anxiety is not something I usually suffer from, but it seems to be spreading through the population for obvious reasons with the expected and maybe even anticipated results. Retiring from the fast pace of the world has made me more peaceful, more settled, and less susceptible to viruses, medical and psychological. I sleep better and get up earlier. You might try it. Think of it as a fast from the noise and narcissism that assault us. And I really don’t need a hearing aid, not yet, anyway.
Image credits: feature by Mark Pan4ratte on Unsplash; doorman by Boris Stefanik on Unsplash. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
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In principle, Rob, I agree with your decision to “fast” from social media. But what exactly qualifies as social media?
I view You Tube for musical performances, and can spend hours going from artist to artist. Doesn’t leave me particularly jangled, except I am reminded that I can’t play like most of them do.
How about the Brancatelli Blog? Or my own blog site? Are we talking about abstaining from social media, while we discuss it on….social media?
It’s hard to make these distinctions, but directionally I am with you all the way. It will be (somewhat) easier after November 5, I suppose.
It can be as addictive as television…I’ll try to break it up by taking up smoking.
I think where YouTube is most likely pathologize is when their sinister algorithms successfully hook you into an arousal addiction. One answer is to take a medium you’re consumed passively and to make it an active medium. I’ve been making many YouTubes recently as I’ve been recording YouTube versions of all 700 cards in the Zap Oracle. For example, this card is relevant to your theme: Living with Anxiety https://zaporacle.com/card/living-with-anxiety/ You can read the text, but if you don’t have time you can listen to the YouTube version. When I record the YouTube version, I often spontaneously expand on the written content. Making YouTubes can spare you what might be a laborious project. For example, this morning I found myself having an imaginary Socratic dialogue with Vladamir Putin. Realizing that it was actually quite entertaining (at least to me) decided to record it as YouTube. I messed up the video, but I’ll prob rerecord it tomorrow. Since I take a perfectionistic approach to writing, and you probably do too, writing an entire blog on some topic that’s come up is fairly labor intensive and I need to save my writing time for other things. It can save time to sketch out an outline and then YouTube it instead of writing about. And in our attention economy people have more time to listen on the go then to sit and read. You can still fast from YouTube consumption (but my YouTube channel, Zap Oracle, should be an exception of course) and save the medium for active use.
I have ventured out into this a little bit myself with “Blog Pods,” where I read and often add to/interpret a given blog post. Yes, I have been encouraged to move the blog onto YouTube for regular podcasts. That’s something I will definitely look at once some projects finish up. I think I would enjoy it, although there is so much noise on YT that I don’t want it to be another voice in the cacophony. We’ll see. Thanks for the advice.
Every two years, during the worst of the election cycle, I deactivate my accounts. It’s harder the past two years because of grad school where some of the professors use SM for some of their communications. I find out next week if my fiction workshop (Last MFA class!) is going to require Facebook, LinkedIn, or X for certain curated elements of the class. If not, I’ll be off Social Media until the Holidays. One year I stayed off for ten months . . . until Celestial Echo Press published TIME Blinked. Ick.
That’s better than I’ve ever managed, although I did take cold showers for a year…I still haven’t figured out LinkedIn.