Stumbled onto my YouTube homepage

Let me start by admitting that I am stupid. It took me long to realise that what shows up on my YouTube homepage as ‘suggested’, ‘recent’ or ‘popular’ is based on the videos I had already watched. That is on me. But I did, for a time, think that all the ‘A Closer Look’ videos were coming up on everyone’s computer and that that was a worldwide popular late night segment. I mean each video has about 1.3 million views, I was not completely delusional. And then I logged onto YouTube without signing in and I realised that I have no contact with what the rest of the world is watching. The difference was immense and I learnt so many things! Ariana Grande has more than one song, there is a YouTuber that looked for dead bodies in a forest and James Corden’s show is actually doing really well! Who would have thought? The fact that I am an idiot and did not realise that YouTube was tailored to my needs (even though I was fully aware of all the data protection scandals) is on me. The fact that I am practically living in a distinct social web from the person sitting next to me is kind of scary.

It is amazing that we have breadth and depth for our interests and preferences, but, at the same time, we only exchange views about these with similarly minded people. And then we think there is more of us, we think we are indisputable. That was perhaps the benefit of TV. There were some options, less options, that would play at a certain time. So say I was watching a crappy prime time show (cough-cough, Big Bang Theory, cough-cough). There would be other people in my immediate environment watching the same crappy prime time show, because it was on at ten pm. And some of them would agree with me and we would make fun of the show during our lunch break. Some others would disagree with me and argue for Jim Parsons, Aspergers-like performance. And these are the people that I am afraid are almost missing from the equation now. I don’t have to fight with all the ‘Team Coco’ subscribers; we all love Conan and none of us is ever going to subscribe to ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’. But I am shielded from the opposition. I am aware that this sounds like I wish we were all sending essays to each other about the stereotypes and sexism and joke repetition of ‘certain’ prime time shows. With an admittedly good theme song. But I mean casual conversation, where ideas are exchanged and not just reinforced or voted down. I swear I won’t talk about how the internet is robbing us from real human experience, like a grandma; this casual conversation can be on WhatsApp while on the toilet. The best kind.

Apparently this is a real problem that was particularly prominent in the 2016 election in the US, where if you compared a Democrat’s and Republican’s Facebook feed it was as if they were living in different countries. There are serious issues about personal data being available to all sorts of companies, but the reinforcement I choose to discuss is at a basic, pop-culture level, because that is all I know. We are all getting a biased version of reality that is shared, recycled and reinforced among us. It is just curious that the freedom offered by the internet may be making us all the more close-minded. And if that sounds like I made a life-shattering realisation, signed out of YouTube, stopped reading news on Twitter and visited a couple of contradicting sites, I did not. I really, really like my videos and not having to look for them. Yay progress!

I swore I was not going to make the grandma argument about real human experience within this post! But here I go. Newcomber, Festinger and many more social psychologists did a number of studies showing that stronger relationships and greater likeability developed with people that lived closer by and were encountered more often, compared to people with similar interests. I think this is how we function, it is in our DNA, it is related to oxytocin, and yes I am going to cite all the relevant psychology terms I know to project authority. But just as I thought everyone in my office watched ‘Screen Rant: Pitch Meetings’, I also think physical proximity is useful, nourishes critical thinking and even compassion.

And it is not like we can’t get both. If 1.3 million English-speaking people, likely to be aged from 20 to 40, with a similar sense of humour are watching ‘A Closer Look’ I will either find or convert someone. It is just equally good to have a third person sitting next to us while we watch it to point out that joking about Trump’s spelling mistakes on Twitter is a distraction from the more alarming aspects of his governance. It’s nice to have these sort of dull people around and love them just because they are physically next to you, rather than hate them behind a username. And people tend to have stupid usernames.

Stumbled onto the Podcast World

Little late to the game, I know, but this has been a life-changing experience. I first remember having the word ‘Podcast’ pop up on my iTunes as a separate category to music and videos (back when I had an iPod). I didn’t know what it might be and no answers I received made me curious at all to find out. I think I then revisited the word when I began listening to audiobooks and a friend asked ‘why audiobooks and not podcasts?’. But even then, I could not really see the point. But then my favourite famous human being started one, Conan O’Brien, and I decided I didn’t have much of a choice but to immerse myself in the Podcast experience.

So this started off as a fan-girl experience, planning to exclusively listen to ‘Conan O’Brien needs a friend’ so as to get my daily Conan dose that I was lacking as the show was off the air FOR EVER. But that was a one-hour Podcast per week. I needed more. I soon found out about comedic podcasts, informational podcasts and opinion podcasts from people whose opinion I would like to know. All of a sudden, Stitcher (because Spotify and iTunes want me to pay them money, which I won’t), was filled with downloaded episodes from about four ongoing Podcasts. And while that may not seem like a lot, bear in mind I like to catch up. I am not one of those people that can just accept that I came in late and will therefore skip the episodes I missed. I need to know, I need to be able to go ‘it used to be much better’ about any Podcast I am following. The current situation is that I walk, commute and shop with someone babbling on my headphones. And that is all good, apart from the few inconveniences that have occurred.

First of all, I have completely given up on music. I remember reading NME, jotting down bands and looking them up. I remember being able to chronologically comment on Cage the Elephant’s musical progression. I remember having a free Spotify membership (again, I am very cheap) and not allowing myself to listen to my own playlists until I had listened to my suggested mix, in order to learn new songs. And now, Arctic Monkeys came out with a new album in May 2018 and honestly, I might have heard it once? Have I? And it is not just new music that I have lost track of, I hadn’t intentionally listened to any music since October. That means none of my favourite songs, none of my guilty-not guilty pleasures and none of those songs that make you contemplate about life and love and happiness and worthiness and so on. Thankfully, Foals had a new single to break this streak, but even that I have listened to once. And I have referenced Foals enough on this blog for this statistic to be shocking. I miss music. I think, I can barely remember what it sounds like.

Secondly and most importantly, I look like an idiot. Constantly. This is especially true for the comedic Podcasts. You know how when you see a person laughing by themselves on the bus you make a mental note to sit away from them? Let’s just say I have a lot of personal space on my commutes lately. I walk down the street and I laugh, and I also try to hide it, which likely makes it worse. Most of the time I have a knowing grin on my face like I’m approving of a joke that no one else in the street has access to. It is ridiculous! Google satellite has now probably flagged me as a schizophrenic who is really, really enjoying those voices in her head.

But it is not just the comedic Podcasts. Unfortunately, my face is quite expressive regardless of content. So I might be buying courgettes and staring at them really hard because I am trying to understand how private insurance companies convinced the American public that public healthcare was a direct attack on their constitutional free will. But as I don’t have ‘I am listening to an anti-Trump Podcast’ written on my forehead, I just look confused by courgettes. And sometimes I am, I mean, they must be closely related to cucumbers right? There are just so many similarities. And pumpkins. For some reason I feel like those are related.

Lastly, I am victim to the same problem we all are, now that TV has taken a backseat to streaming services and the internet. AKA, I don’t really have someone to talk about one of the past times that takes up quite a bit of my day. It is more and more the case that we all deal with our own pop cultures that are popular for a large number of people, but not a large number of people you personally know. There is a sometimes a false sense of something’s popularity and I feel as if that has created some personal barriers in communication. This is something I would like to discuss in a separate blog post, as it is sometimes funny and sometimes scary, but for the sake of this topic it is quite simple. Apparently not everyone listens to ‘No such thing as a fish’ and apparently I am not good at repeating jokes. Therefore I am now unlikeable. And Podcasts are to blame.

Whining aside, I am loving this world of Podcasts. They are amazing and much needed distractions, they feel way more genuine and they are a practical alternative to YouTube videos to pass your time. And as a person whose emotional wellbeing very much depends on distractions I am grateful for the ability to take them with me on the tube. Last thing, ads on podcasts are a lot better. Take note, YouTube.