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Comment by TexanFeller | Hacker News Reader

I'm the type to become addicted and I had a big problem with spending vastly too much time on YT. A few months ago I cleared my search and watch history and subscriptions to start fresh. Now I only allow myself to watch videos about math, science, or playing instruments I'm interested in learning to play. If I ever see a politically leaning recommendation I tell YT to never show it to me again. If I slip up and watch something off my diet I immediately clean it from my search and watch history. It's improved my life a lot removing the toxic content and replacing it with slowly understanding pieces of modern physics from listening to Leonard Susskind.

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I likely have some degree of YouTube addiction as well. While I hope your tactic is working well for you, I believe this way of thinking can be a deceiving. Almost all the YouTube content I consume is related to science, engineering, math or chess (I’ve watched many of Susskinds’s lectures too). I used to rationalize my excessive use by telling myself that the content I watched was useful. In reality, my time would be FAR better reading a book, doing a project, socializing, doing chores, or really anything other than just being a YouTube zombie.

>can be a deceiving

I think that's a great way of describing it. Watching "educational" content feels better or more productive than watching a Let's Play, but it's all basically empty entertainment -- the medium and the algorithm sort've necessitate it. Which is definitely not to say there's not awesome resources on youtube for actually learning things, but, for the most part, I'm not watching things that actually take mental effort. I'm more often just letting trash wash over me while also convincing myself that it's OK because "I'm learning" (even though whatever trivial factoid being discussed is immediately ejected from my brain when the next video starts)

I've realized that the internet has a numbing effect on me. It all washes over me until I feel absolutely nothing and I'm just mindlessly consuming. My ISP was recently down for a day, and it actually made life (at least temporarily) more interesting. Rather than just sitting in front of a screen and having content pumped into my veins, my SO and I had to leave the house to seek out things to do.

Then the internet came back and now we're both back on the drip.

I'm not(err no longer) fooling myself that I'm learning like I would be by methodically working through a textbook, but it's fun, an improvement to what I was doing before, the most I can consistently muster when I'm zapped after work, not harmful like the toxically engaging political/social content, and inspires me with interesting topics to read further about later. I've accumulated a pile of books on subjects I've listened to talks about and hope to transition to those someday soon when I can manage to get out of the funk I've been in and have more mental energy. I'm already working on the lighter books, but haven't had made it to textbooks yet.

I wish there was a way to transpose someone else's "YouTube diet" so to speak. this probably exists through tag matching ect. but it would be nice.

Hah, sounds similar to a fecal transplant to restore the gut biome.

Political videos on YouTube has the widest spectrum when it comes to quality.

You can get highly informative, mind-changing videos with 10k-30k views. And on the other end, hot-take, "debate me bro!" Twitch personalities with 1M-3M views.

That's the nature of it, don't see this on any other category really.

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