The 40 days without YouTube last year were extremely impactful for me and many others. I was shown in no uncertain terms that YouTube had become a habitual method of effectively masking the creeping disappointment I felt with the state and direction of my life. I saw myself using it more and more often, putting something on while doing menial tasks, and also beginning to notice that emptiness which would go away when I would navigate to the page.
So this year, as with last year, I invite any who wish to participate. Youāll see that last year was a smashing success.
Weāll have Normal Mode (no YouTube app or website) and Hard Mode (no streaming video NOR audio servicesāfor those who really want to see what might happen!)
For Hard Mode, I am going to download any songs I want to listen to beforehand. Iām very curious to see what happens when I donāt surrender myself to the stream, the algorithm, the new opiate of the massesā¦when I only have a finite amount of songs to choose fromā¦you know, the way we ALL survived just fine doing between 1950 and the mid-2000s?
DATES
Wednesday, March 5th to Thursday, April 17th inclusive
SIMPLE GUIDELINES
Post in this thread with āIām in!ā or something equally unambiguousāand whether you have any exceptions or provisos (e.g. I still need to use it for learning how to do construction work)
Let us know what mode youāre doing
Please contribute to thread with your experiences, challenges, and VICTORIES
Iāll start:
Iām in! Doing Hard Mode. I will still use YT only for tutorials on construction work and NI software - and pulling audio from my already created āsamplingā playlist
I quit FB many years ago, same with Instagram, it think itās 2 years or something like that.
But YouTube, hmā¦ I see what you mean by becoming habit.
Toughest one for me by far, since i love having something in background while working.
Itās never actually in the background.
Hm, will think about it. Love the idea
I also donāt watch tv, except when me and mh better half have dinner, we would watch Severance or something for fun.
I think all info i get from the world is mainly coming from YouTube, and then some specific forums.
I am so addicted to YouTube it hurts I did just cancel my premium account so hoping that helps the amount I watch, but I also use it for podcasts and music not only to consume videos, I do also like it on in the background, but hopefully without having premium it gets annoying and I just turn it off.
Hmm I could be interested in this but damn thatās some late notice lol.
I watch YouTube constantly, whether itās listening to tunes, in the background as music, news, reviews, live streams.
But I donāt watch regular āTVā at all, so I guess this is just my TV. Which in some ways kinda means I watch a lot of TV.
It is definitely intoxicating tho because you can tune that to exactly the things your brain is into.
So I dunno Iām torn because on the one hand, when I was younger I was staunchly anti TVā¦ since it was a prescribed thingā¦ but now I can direct the flow there itās like, itās ok.
I guess the problem is it is completely on tap, and I sure would be curious to see where things went if I ditched it for a month or so.
But that said, I think I would need something way more hardcore, kindāve a total, consumption-based screen fast.
So, I can still use computers, but not for any online consumption of any kind. Because the crutch would likely fall on something else.
Iāll only use them for promoting my music on weekends (recently released something), weekly bad gear episode and a few subscribed artistās new music (thatās like 1-2 videos weekly).
And maybe if something reaaally interesting pops up on loopopās channel
All of humanityās problems stem from manās inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
ā Blaise Pascal
I applaud this - canāt have been easy. I think if you need a cold-turkey-type detox this approach is great. Even better (which is presumably the end goal) is balance in the first place. Itās easier than ever before to be totally overwhelmed by stimuli - itās basically impossible to bo be bored these days, and thatās BAD. Just look what itās doing to kids, who are growing up unable to concentrate or communicate.
Thereās a lot of research out there about what over-stimulation and -consumption is doing to our brains, about how weāre getting more irritable, less able to concentrate, less patient (do you find yourself skipping through videos because you can barely tolerate just how long itās taking to get to the bit that will satisfy you?)
I donāt watch TV or use FB, Insta, TikTok (the latter being an unfortunately named metaphor for the mental health crisis its overconsumption is helping to create.) YouTube I have definitely found myself at certain times needing to reign and become more disciplined on. Just yesterday I installed the Distraction Free Youtube extension for Firefox (thereās an equivalent for Chrome and Chrome-based browsers) to hide the sidebar of suggested videos. That helps a lot.
My approach, which I can recommend is to export your YT subscriptions via Google Takeout (closing your Google account afterwards is optional), import them into a feed reader. I use Lire on Mac/iOS, but used to use NetNewsWire, which is free, and great, but Lire also presents the video as embedded objects - so no Ads, no comments unless you really want to read them, and no far right/fascist propaganda pushed down your throat by the algorithm.
Since Iāve transitioned away from the YT front page (and other frontends, like Invidious, FreeTube, etc) itās broken my ādependencyā on YT, I still consume videos, but once Iāve sifted through my subscriptions, there is no more incentive to click.
Good luck to the participants. Reclaim your brain.
I am already bored, should watch Azure Ai Foundry Video, cant make myself enyoing it. (Its Educational) but man i hate it already. So i am in, only watching elementary things. My Bandcamp Libary is good with tunes.
Cause it allows for someone to agree to a positive step without committing to saying goodbye forever. It can result in a rebalancing, a discovery or insight, a new feeling of self-control. I think thereās a wisdom in saying āyou can always go back, but at least prove to yourself that you have some self-mastery.ā
I use Focus for Youtube extension on Safari and also disabled history and it really helps a lot. Still not satisfied though, so letās see what happens in this 40 days.
I just finished my first day and itās already happening.
Iām feeling my feelings coming back ever so gently.
For some reason not yet understood, the world looks like a series of paintings againā¦a place to see the beauty in and not a place to incessantly, compulsively find fault in and feel responsible for āfixingā in some grand way.
What awful thing does surrendering to the artificial, external audiovisual medium do to my dreaming mind? Does it hijack my desire to live life as a movie, to see life as nothing more than a movie and therefore more of a field of play? I donāt have all the answers but I love feeling like myself again, even with the familiar longings, melancholies, and bittersweet daydreams.
im gonna join in. been finding myself intentionally entering vegetative states too often. im also trying to get my online radio show running again after a year off, i wanna use my time effectively! lets go folks
I did just cancel my premium account so hoping that helps the amount I watch, but I also use it for podcasts and music not only to consume videos, I do also like it on in the background, but hopefully without having premium it gets annoying and I just turn it off.
