8 ms·

It does not surprise me that these guys are writers. This reads very much like a project intended to produce a content product as much as a cabin. It's romantic

It does not surprise me that these guys are writers. This reads very much like a project intended to produce a content product as much as a cabin. It's romantic and they have plenty of meticulously framed videos and photos. Maybe they did some youtube videos with dramatic moments -- maybe even the moment they open the piece with -- anger, violence, frustration boiling over. But now they are taking woodworking courses. I'm sure we'll see plenty of content about their experience. YouTube has upped its recommendations for this kind of stuff in the last few months. Everything is van life, off-grid, travel, tiny home building, etc. It's really curious and I'm not sure what to think about it. Everything is about being a creator and getting an audience for your YouTube, Substack, Patreon, etc. I'm pretty conflicted over this.

mdavidn 6y ago
YouTube's recommendations may be more a reflection of your watch history than a shift in content or a change in the algorithm. I have not seen any van life, off-grid, or tiny home videos on YouTube.
- look_lookatme 6y ago
  This is probably true.
  - newyankee 6y ago
    yes, but now it is finding much better content especially those from up and coming channels relevant to you
  - Chirael 6y ago
    See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'" https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.html https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.ht... (and many others, I'm sure)
  - redisman 6y ago
    Just open an incognito and count the van-life videos. Zero. It's all popular lowest-common denominator videos until you start clicking and teaching Youtube about your preferences. My work and home gmail accounts get completely different videos because of how I use them. At work it's all background music and albums and at home it's more fun stuff.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nfriedly 6y ago
  I've noticed that watching literally part of one video will cause youtube to recommend a lot more of that category of content. For one recent example, there was an article about Elon Musk and his girlfriend who releases music as Grimes. I clicked play on one of the embedded music videos and watched about half of it. Ever since then youtube has recommended tons of Grimes videos to me. I've also noticed that videos my wife or kids watch get recommended to me sometimes.
- marktangotango 6y ago
  I carefully curate my youtube viewing by using lots of incognito windows to view things I don't want showing up in my recommendations. All it takes is one errant click to throw the whole thing off. Oh why did I not incognito that terrible comedian?
  - zfnmxt 6y ago
    You can remove videos from your watch history: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Pla... I presume this also removes them as a factor in your recommendations.
    - GorsyGentle 6y ago
      > I presume this also removes them as a factor in your recommendations. You presume too much! /humor That is helpful to know. I too have run into the errant click problem in YouTube. Drives me nuts.
voodooranger 6y ago
username checks out :-) seriously though, i’m glad they were able to tie their profession in by sharing their story, i really enjoyed it. if i were to embark on this kind of thing i’d probably end up writing some software to help with the effort.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Well my youtube recommendations have certainly gone that way too, but I think it is a reflection of my growing hatred for IT as an industry and my desire to leave it behind forever.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  If I may add something: I became dissatisfied with "IT as an industry" in the sense that, despite where I was working (a tiny shop, with tiny projects, flyover state, nothing is ever going to go viral or hit big), some people were apparently prepping for FAANG careers and generally trying to turn things into some Agile megashop with dozens of layers of technology, on and on, for some rinky-dink projects. I liked doing the rinky-dink projects but all of the overhead of play-acting like we needed to scale like Cloudflare was wearying. I took up with some TechShop stuff -- before it folded -- and enjoyed my work on laser engravers, and the CNC machines, and the lathes, and whatnot. My educational background and IT experience were certainly a help, and I thought, "Dang, it sure is nice to construct a physical object at the end of the day instead of an arrangement of magnetic fields that will simply be blown away when some high muckety-muck notices whatever fad has changed." I jumped ship for something adjacent where I use my IT skill constantly. Programming wasn't in the job description, but my ability to program brings a certain level of power. All of my decades of IT experience is very helpful here and I still feel like I am doing something with an actual concrete output and utility. So, I sympathize with the urge to pull the ripcord on some kind of jetpack and blast far away into the sky, but there are plenty of places that are not what HackerNews thinks of when they think IT that need all of your skills. Perhaps I like being a medium-sized fish in a smaller pond, it could be that, but it does feel fairly nice.
  - joyfullll 6y ago
    Can you tell me a little more about this? I'm enjoying my current job as a coder, but I'm also feeling a hankering for something like what you describe. Feeling like I'm producing something a little more tangible would be nice.
    - 6y ago
huntilio 6y ago
There's nothing left to worship, so you're seeing a confluence of 2 forms of modern worship: a return to nature / primitive living (where we can imagine away the distractions of modern living), and worship of the self / fame, where we create these myths of ourselves and tell that story / get a bunch of people to be interested. I suspect neither one is very fulfilling, but I understand the impulse (especially the first one).
- marktangotango 6y ago
  One need only cite Emerson and Thoreau to see this has in fact been going on for quite some time.
  - dotsam 6y ago
    “Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, by the seashore, in the mountains; and you too are wont to desire such things very much. But this is a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire within yourself.” Marcus Aurelius, ~1800 years ago
ConsiderCrying 6y ago
Seems so as well but I have to admit, it's an awful lot of effort just to gain a source of content. Realistically, it's more likely that these are just creative people who followed the trend (which they freely note in the piece) and decided to go off-grid in a way.
Kluny 6y ago
I don't know that they're doing this to create content - it seems more like they're creating content out of what they're doing in an effort to fund what they want to do anyway, and maybe get some social status as well, since they're draining their bank accounts anyway.
chris11 6y ago
I've also noticed a lot more ads those types of programs. I'm wondering if the bad economy has made adds on youtube more affordable and get rich quick programs more attractive.

mdavidn 6y ago

YouTube's recommendations may be more a reflection of your watch history than a shift in content or a change in the algorithm. I have not seen any van life, off-grid, or tiny home videos on YouTube.

look_lookatme 6y ago
This is probably true.
- newyankee 6y ago
  yes, but now it is finding much better content especially those from up and coming channels relevant to you
- Chirael 6y ago
  See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'" https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.html https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.ht... (and many others, I'm sure)
- redisman 6y ago
  Just open an incognito and count the van-life videos. Zero. It's all popular lowest-common denominator videos until you start clicking and teaching Youtube about your preferences. My work and home gmail accounts get completely different videos because of how I use them. At work it's all background music and albums and at home it's more fun stuff.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nfriedly 6y ago
I've noticed that watching literally part of one video will cause youtube to recommend a lot more of that category of content. For one recent example, there was an article about Elon Musk and his girlfriend who releases music as Grimes. I clicked play on one of the embedded music videos and watched about half of it. Ever since then youtube has recommended tons of Grimes videos to me. I've also noticed that videos my wife or kids watch get recommended to me sometimes.
marktangotango 6y ago
I carefully curate my youtube viewing by using lots of incognito windows to view things I don't want showing up in my recommendations. All it takes is one errant click to throw the whole thing off. Oh why did I not incognito that terrible comedian?
- zfnmxt 6y ago
  You can remove videos from your watch history: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?co=GENIE.Pla... I presume this also removes them as a factor in your recommendations.
  - GorsyGentle 6y ago
    > I presume this also removes them as a factor in your recommendations. You presume too much! /humor That is helpful to know. I too have run into the errant click problem in YouTube. Drives me nuts.

voodooranger 6y ago

username checks out :-) seriously though, i’m glad they were able to tie their profession in by sharing their story, i really enjoyed it. if i were to embark on this kind of thing i’d probably end up writing some software to help with the effort.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Well my youtube recommendations have certainly gone that way too, but I think it is a reflection of my growing hatred for IT as an industry and my desire to leave it behind forever.

at_a_remove 6y ago
If I may add something: I became dissatisfied with "IT as an industry" in the sense that, despite where I was working (a tiny shop, with tiny projects, flyover state, nothing is ever going to go viral or hit big), some people were apparently prepping for FAANG careers and generally trying to turn things into some Agile megashop with dozens of layers of technology, on and on, for some rinky-dink projects. I liked doing the rinky-dink projects but all of the overhead of play-acting like we needed to scale like Cloudflare was wearying. I took up with some TechShop stuff -- before it folded -- and enjoyed my work on laser engravers, and the CNC machines, and the lathes, and whatnot. My educational background and IT experience were certainly a help, and I thought, "Dang, it sure is nice to construct a physical object at the end of the day instead of an arrangement of magnetic fields that will simply be blown away when some high muckety-muck notices whatever fad has changed." I jumped ship for something adjacent where I use my IT skill constantly. Programming wasn't in the job description, but my ability to program brings a certain level of power. All of my decades of IT experience is very helpful here and I still feel like I am doing something with an actual concrete output and utility. So, I sympathize with the urge to pull the ripcord on some kind of jetpack and blast far away into the sky, but there are plenty of places that are not what HackerNews thinks of when they think IT that need all of your skills. Perhaps I like being a medium-sized fish in a smaller pond, it could be that, but it does feel fairly nice.
- joyfullll 6y ago
  Can you tell me a little more about this? I'm enjoying my current job as a coder, but I'm also feeling a hankering for something like what you describe. Feeling like I'm producing something a little more tangible would be nice.
  - 6y ago

huntilio 6y ago

There's nothing left to worship, so you're seeing a confluence of 2 forms of modern worship: a return to nature / primitive living (where we can imagine away the distractions of modern living), and worship of the self / fame, where we create these myths of ourselves and tell that story / get a bunch of people to be interested. I suspect neither one is very fulfilling, but I understand the impulse (especially the first one).

marktangotango 6y ago
One need only cite Emerson and Thoreau to see this has in fact been going on for quite some time.
- dotsam 6y ago
  “Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, by the seashore, in the mountains; and you too are wont to desire such things very much. But this is a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire within yourself.” Marcus Aurelius, ~1800 years ago

ConsiderCrying 6y ago

Seems so as well but I have to admit, it's an awful lot of effort just to gain a source of content. Realistically, it's more likely that these are just creative people who followed the trend (which they freely note in the piece) and decided to go off-grid in a way.

Kluny 6y ago

I don't know that they're doing this to create content - it seems more like they're creating content out of what they're doing in an effort to fund what they want to do anyway, and maybe get some social status as well, since they're draining their bank accounts anyway.

chris11 6y ago

I've also noticed a lot more ads those types of programs. I'm wondering if the bad economy has made adds on youtube more affordable and get rich quick programs more attractive.