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by jjeaff 2816 days ago
I was thinking about this the other day. The idea that most people are just watching garbage on YouTube 'might' be true, and that viewing educational or technical content is an outlier, but I'm not so sure.

Sure, there are countless massively popular channels with garbage pop content, but that may be due to the "general" nature of the content. The broad audience keeps it at the top of the most watched lists.

I think if you aggregate all the technical content, the "long tail" might be more numerous than the hump of the curve.

There are channels about programming, woodworking, plumbing, HVAC, construction, 3d printing, PC building, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, knitting, photography, cinematography,graphic design ... it just goes on and on. Sure, most of those channels may only have a hundred thousand or fewer subscribers (with some exceptions in the millions) but I wouldn't doubt that in aggregate they surpass junk like moviemojo and cat videos in time watched.

Youtube is an amazing phenomenon that I think doesn't get enough credit because of all the junk on there, but the fact that I can search for how to remove the abs module on a 2007 BMW 750li and get multiple videos showing how to do it just blows me away and definitely makes it a lot easier to get things done.

2 comments

> Youtube is an amazing phenomenon that I think doesn't get > enough credit because of all the junk on there, but the > fact that I can search for how to remove the abs module on > a 2007 BMW 750li and get multiple videos showing how to do > it just blows me away and definitely makes it a lot easier > to get things done.

One of the garbage things about YT, though, is that the third thing on that video's "watch next" list will be some dude telling you that ABS part of a global conspiracy to get mind-controlling computers into every car.

It doesn't take long to recognize and avoid that type of video. But man, a single click on one of those videos will take you down a rabbit hole so fast.
Consuming irrelevant information is its own form of procrastination.
How do you define irrelevant? I consume useful information very frequently.
Why else would we be here?