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I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. A lot of what I may watch on Youtube might be categorized as "background noise" - lots of talking

I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. A lot of what I may watch on Youtube might be categorized as "background noise" - lots of talking head content that I can play on the background. Much of it is low quality and self-serious - but it's arguably much better quality than any equivalent "background noise" show on TV. Ironically, I feel like longform Youtube content is actually better for my attention span and more rewarding - because creators aren't trying to appeal to broad audiences, they don't have to jump from topic to topic and keep things under a time limit. I recently watched the Animagraffs video on the Hoover Dam and I was blown away. I have probably watched dozens of TV documentaries on the Hoover Dam over the year, but none of them actually just stop and methodically explained everything from top-to-down so thoroughly. Even beloved shows like Mythbusters, there are now dozens of channels on Youtube that do all the same things we enjoyed Mythbusters for but better and with less filler and shmaltz.

miduil 1y ago
I've watched this video the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsL8ME3ruk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsL8ME3ruk and it somehow helped me breaking my YouTube addiction for the last several weeks. Quite random but it really helped. I still muscle memory enter youtube.com and I'm blown away how incredible addictive everything is setup there to be, the "algorithm" has trained the content creators to maximize their reach with incredible captivating thumbnails (and of course great content).
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  Best thing is to turn off recommendations and history, which can be done with YouTube. You can also use uBlock Origin to block even more controls (on YouTube on other websites too), which make websites more unintuitive to use.
Lammy 1y ago
> I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. A lot of what I may watch on Youtube might be categorized as "background noise" I'm like this too, but I prefer stuff like railfan videos that are short on words and long on landscape shots and monotony-quenching machine sounds. They never leave me with that feeling where my attention snaps back to the video in a way that makes me feel like I missed something and need to skip back a few seconds. This channel is an especially-good example of what makes great background YT viewing to me: https://www.youtube.com/@7ideaproductions/videos https://www.youtube.com/@7ideaproductions/videos
TMWNN 1y ago
I bought an Nvidia Shield TV in 2019 expecting to do retro emulation stuff with it. I use it 95% of the time for YouTube (via the wonderful SmartTube client).
jwr 1y ago
> I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. I was a YouTube addict until I think late last year. Something changed in the recommendation algorithm and my recommendations became so bad that these days I can hardly find anything interesting to watch on the front page. I dig things out from my subscriptions. I still pay for YouTube and consider it money well spent, it is a great source of information.
- munificent 1y ago
  Try going through your watch history and deleting stuff that isn't relevant to your current interests. My experience is that the recommendations are keyed very heavily (entirely?) off your watch history so, unlike most apps, you actually have quite precise control over what it recommends. I'm really diligent about whenever I watch something that I don't want YouTube throwing more of at me, to just immediately delete it from my history. For example, if someone on Reddit mentions some funny dumb video, I'll watch it, but then delete it because I really don't want YouTube suggesting schlock to me.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    This is absolutely the biggest factor. I can forget to delete a single short clip a friend sends me from the watch history and still instantly know it the next time I browse the site because all of the sudden 1/3 of my recommendations are Lego videos or something equally as random.
  - jwr 1y ago
    I prune my watch history regularly, but something really changed late last year. The algorithm became like "oh, you've watched a single video about X, how about I show you these 89 other videos about X for the next week or so".
    - bigger_cheese 1y ago
      Yes I have observed this as well. It happens if I watch one off sports highlights on Youtube. Most recently I watched a highlight video of Australia vs West Indies test cricket series my home page was endless cricket videos. A few weeks before that I watched highlights from World Cup Asian qualifiers, for a week or so endless soccer videos.
Retr0id 1y ago
> Even beloved shows like Mythbusters Not to mention, Adam Savage himself is also on youtube!
socalgal2 1y ago
I would be a Youtube addict if their recommendation system didn't suck so bad. So many issues. There's gold in there but you, or at least me, rarely find it. Instead (1) Youtube recommends tons of channels of random creators who clearly just watched other channels and are now making copy-cat content. (2) Youtube recommends insane channels - literally crazy people (3) If I happen to watch anything I haven't watched before, suddently 30% ot 60% of my recommendations are for that channel. It has no way of knowing that it was a one off. I'm perfectly capable of going to that channel to see their other content if I thought it was good. If I don't go, then please take that as a signal that I didn't find it that interesting. (4) even though I religiously select "not interested" it has no noticable effect (5) They shovel shorts at me with their fucking inane "Ok, we'll show you less shorts" BS At this point basically I have a few subscriptions of which only 1 updates daily, 2 update once or twice a month, the rest only periodically. Those I almost always watch when they have something new but most days there's 10-20 mins of content. Then, I look at the recommendations. See all the problems above and a few more I've mentioned before 20-50% music recommendations when I'm looking for video content and 20-40% recommending videos I already watched even though I'm looking for new content. So, I close the tab and do something else. I know they won't do it but if they let Gemini watch all the videos and let me give Gemini detailed instructions I'm 1000% sure it would do extremely better for me. I don't know if it would be better for Youtube. I'd like to give more specific instuctions like "Recommend French Language videos but only if they are business level French or higher, no beginner videos" or "Recommend news but never recommend anything about X or Y or Z as I'm just not interested in those topics". "Never recommend music or music videos. If I want music I'll go to music.youtube.com". etc etc
- fluidcruft 1y ago
  Shorts is why I stopped using YouTube. I wish I could just turn that brainrot off.
  - aegis4244 1y ago
    You can. There are extensions and scripts for exactly that. I never use the app, only browse via the web, even on mobile, just with a user agent switcher.
msgodel 1y ago
I wrote an extension to deal with these sorts of addictions. One thing I noticed works incredibly well is only penalizing time spent with pages focused, so things like background music/documentaries are fine. You end up developing really intentional habits with the web and actually taking time seriously.

miduil 1y ago

I've watched this video the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsL8ME3ruk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsL8ME3ruk and it somehow helped me breaking my YouTube addiction for the last several weeks. Quite random but it really helped. I still muscle memory enter youtube.com and I'm blown away how incredible addictive everything is setup there to be, the "algorithm" has trained the content creators to maximize their reach with incredible captivating thumbnails (and of course great content).

vouaobrasil 1y ago
Best thing is to turn off recommendations and history, which can be done with YouTube. You can also use uBlock Origin to block even more controls (on YouTube on other websites too), which make websites more unintuitive to use.

Lammy 1y ago

> I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. A lot of what I may watch on Youtube might be categorized as "background noise" I'm like this too, but I prefer stuff like railfan videos that are short on words and long on landscape shots and monotony-quenching machine sounds. They never leave me with that feeling where my attention snaps back to the video in a way that makes me feel like I missed something and need to skip back a few seconds. This channel is an especially-good example of what makes great background YT viewing to me: https://www.youtube.com/@7ideaproductions/videos https://www.youtube.com/@7ideaproductions/videos

TMWNN 1y ago

I bought an Nvidia Shield TV in 2019 expecting to do retro emulation stuff with it. I use it 95% of the time for YouTube (via the wonderful SmartTube client).

jwr 1y ago

> I'll come out and say that I am a full blown Youtube addict. I was a YouTube addict until I think late last year. Something changed in the recommendation algorithm and my recommendations became so bad that these days I can hardly find anything interesting to watch on the front page. I dig things out from my subscriptions. I still pay for YouTube and consider it money well spent, it is a great source of information.

munificent 1y ago
Try going through your watch history and deleting stuff that isn't relevant to your current interests. My experience is that the recommendations are keyed very heavily (entirely?) off your watch history so, unlike most apps, you actually have quite precise control over what it recommends. I'm really diligent about whenever I watch something that I don't want YouTube throwing more of at me, to just immediately delete it from my history. For example, if someone on Reddit mentions some funny dumb video, I'll watch it, but then delete it because I really don't want YouTube suggesting schlock to me.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  This is absolutely the biggest factor. I can forget to delete a single short clip a friend sends me from the watch history and still instantly know it the next time I browse the site because all of the sudden 1/3 of my recommendations are Lego videos or something equally as random.
- jwr 1y ago
  I prune my watch history regularly, but something really changed late last year. The algorithm became like "oh, you've watched a single video about X, how about I show you these 89 other videos about X for the next week or so".
  - bigger_cheese 1y ago
    Yes I have observed this as well. It happens if I watch one off sports highlights on Youtube. Most recently I watched a highlight video of Australia vs West Indies test cricket series my home page was endless cricket videos. A few weeks before that I watched highlights from World Cup Asian qualifiers, for a week or so endless soccer videos.

Retr0id 1y ago

> Even beloved shows like Mythbusters Not to mention, Adam Savage himself is also on youtube!

socalgal2 1y ago

I would be a Youtube addict if their recommendation system didn't suck so bad. So many issues. There's gold in there but you, or at least me, rarely find it. Instead (1) Youtube recommends tons of channels of random creators who clearly just watched other channels and are now making copy-cat content. (2) Youtube recommends insane channels - literally crazy people (3) If I happen to watch anything I haven't watched before, suddently 30% ot 60% of my recommendations are for that channel. It has no way of knowing that it was a one off. I'm perfectly capable of going to that channel to see their other content if I thought it was good. If I don't go, then please take that as a signal that I didn't find it that interesting. (4) even though I religiously select "not interested" it has no noticable effect (5) They shovel shorts at me with their fucking inane "Ok, we'll show you less shorts" BS At this point basically I have a few subscriptions of which only 1 updates daily, 2 update once or twice a month, the rest only periodically. Those I almost always watch when they have something new but most days there's 10-20 mins of content. Then, I look at the recommendations. See all the problems above and a few more I've mentioned before 20-50% music recommendations when I'm looking for video content and 20-40% recommending videos I already watched even though I'm looking for new content. So, I close the tab and do something else. I know they won't do it but if they let Gemini watch all the videos and let me give Gemini detailed instructions I'm 1000% sure it would do extremely better for me. I don't know if it would be better for Youtube. I'd like to give more specific instuctions like "Recommend French Language videos but only if they are business level French or higher, no beginner videos" or "Recommend news but never recommend anything about X or Y or Z as I'm just not interested in those topics". "Never recommend music or music videos. If I want music I'll go to music.youtube.com". etc etc

fluidcruft 1y ago
Shorts is why I stopped using YouTube. I wish I could just turn that brainrot off.
- aegis4244 1y ago
  You can. There are extensions and scripts for exactly that. I never use the app, only browse via the web, even on mobile, just with a user agent switcher.

msgodel 1y ago

I wrote an extension to deal with these sorts of addictions. One thing I noticed works incredibly well is only penalizing time spent with pages focused, so things like background music/documentaries are fine. You end up developing really intentional habits with the web and actually taking time seriously.