A lame excuse for watching YouTube

On a typical day, the very first thing I do as soon as I turn on my computer is to open the Journal app on Hey Calendar and catch up with "Jad (my fictional life companion)" to reflect on the day before and put together a plan for today. This ritual helps me set a good tone for the day.

The Clickbait Trap

However, today, as I opened my laptop, I saw the YouTube screen still open from the last nights watching as I fell asleep. Instead of closing that window and open the Journal app, I succumbed to the clickbait and ended up watching more videos that produce zero value at the moment.

The "Gaining Knowledge" Excuse

I think one of the self-satisfying dumbest and lamest excuses that everyone including me offers for watching YouTube is "that we gain more knowledge". That to me sounds ridiculous right now. The content on the internet is edited and is edited with the primary purpose of making the content more clickbait friendly and not make it a richer source of knowledge. If "gaining more knowledge is the real intent", there is an absolutely better way to do it - "read book".

Books are written by credentialed authors and take far more energy and time. Any one wanting to write a book, does so, only when they are absolutely confident about their knowledge and research on the subject. Also the fact that publishing books has a much higher barrier of entry like finding a publisher who believes in the content of the book, there is already a review system before the content get put out and same is not true for content on YouTube and other content platforms since anyone, regardless of their credentials can publish content. Such unreviewed content gets on to the platform, it may not "really" add to your knowledge, but sure might be very satisfying to watch, there by rewarding the publisher to produce more such content kicking off a vicious cycle.

Signal vs. Noise

I do believe that there is a ton of content on YouTube that definitely helps you gain knowledge. However, the signal to noise ratio makes it a lot less effective source of knowledge. If the purpose of watching YouTube to kill time, then there is nothing to be said about. The self-reflection in this context is about watching YouTube in the name of "gaining knowledge" and cheating one self, this this context its me.

Clarity Through Writing

Writing this up has definitely helped me understand the kind of trap I fell into. I hope that this new realization would help me be more conscious about not getting sucked into watching more YouTube and instead read more books.

Cheers.