When I need mindless, lowbrow distraction (~twice a month) I look for either Russian Dashcam videos or Fail videos.
Every so often (~3 weeks) I’m looking for a how to or tear down video of something either gadget, house or car related. YT is the shit for how to/repair videos for home and car owners who aren’t afraid to tinker.
@0xg0ldpk3rx0 oh that’s a good point, we did watch a couple hockey preseason games on youtube this year. and all i can say is…thank glob the games are on regular tv now.
@DrWorm Hey, I saw Stan Ridgway do Mexican Radio at a small venue in Portland in the late 80s. He put on a good show. I wasn’t familiar with him at the time, but a friend had an extra ticket. Glad I went.
I am subscribed to 30 or more toobers on a wide variety of topics. That, Netflix, a bit o HBO. I no longer watch traditional tv except for the odd news show on YouTube.
1-2/month it is looking up DIY videos. 1-2/week someone sends me link or from a post here on Meh, I get more but don’t click most.
4-5/week my 14 yr old son comes over and shows me one on his phone he liked. He currently wants to be a YouTube sensation when he grows up. I gave him the same talk most parents have to give their kids who want to be in the NFL and make $MM: only a few actually make it, you need a backup plan. At one point his backup plan was professional sports mascot. <sigh>
(luckily he’s also considered cook or police)
I always feel a mild sense of annoyance when something leads to youtube. It’s too bad that site is synonymous with “all of the videos on the web”.
Don’t even get me started about video being the wrong medium for half of what it’s used for, or about why its increasing dominance as a medium is based on some foul combination of people’s thoughtlessness and its suitability for advertisements.
@InnocuousFarmer By biggest beef with the misuse of video is news sites that have a text based news story, but automatically launch an accompanying video. It’s mildly annoyingly when the video is actually associated with the story you wanted to read. But it progresses to full-on rage when the video is for some other random, non-related piece of “news”.
And don’t get me started on a page that simultaneously launches two unrelated videos.
@DrWorm my problem is with nearly anything informational coming from a video source, as compared to text.
Text is small, unobtrusive, skimmable, searchable, fast, silent, and easy to review. A page of text with a few images, if necessary, is almost always vastly preferable to a video for anything I would ever want information about.
The only exceptions I can think of are visualizations, or things where motion needs to be represented.
@DrWorm i have an extension for chrome that blocks autoplay for html5 and that gets most of 'em, thankfully. not only are popups/autoplay plain annoying, but i just really hate watching videos for some reason. most are useless or the point is buried in useless.
I’m too lazy to express myself via the medium of video (also not especially photogenic,) so I’ll post my long-winded explanation as text instead.
I use youtube for background music at work. All day, every day. It’s great. I just spider recommended videos and find new stuff constantly (within the micro-genre that I listen to.) But I don’t bother with subscriptions or anything like that.
I use it to get around streaming music blocks at work because YouTube is allowed and free.
I also have my own channel for my gaming that I occasionally upload highlight videos to for a particular game mode that I play, but they aren’t that great of clips, just ones I thought were decent or funny. Averages 20-30 views (5 probably from me)
Some day I will get around to recording a 3 part series about gaming controllers with paddles and how to start learning to use them…some day… youtube.com/TaRDyy
Oh boy… how don’t I use YouTube?
Sometimes it’s hanging out with the friends and a Chromecast, feeding a seemingly endless No Face of an appetite for “random crap we like”. Sometimes it’s life hacks. Sometimes it’s music. Sometimes it’s life advice from people I happen to like in a platonic YouTube subscriber kind of way…(Tessa Violet). For awhile there, it was basically just an endless stream of TED Talks. Some days, it’s all just Neil Cicierega content. Sometimes I just stop by for some You Suck at Cooking. But lately I’ve been extra active on ifixit.com/answers and throwing all of my Googling skills into finding solutions to problems I have no experience with myself. It’s more effective than I ever thought it would be. But I digress. That gale-force Googling sometimes leads me to YouTube repair videos. And then back to You Suck at Cooking.
Also, @DrWorm, I understand your annoyance with news sites making videos of things they already have an article about with the exact same content and information, and then posting them together. When it comes to the news, I’d rather just read it, maybe with brief footage of what’s happening. However, I also get that some people prefer to have it all in video form. I wish they’d just be consistent about whether it’s useful to either watch the video or read the article, or do both.
the only time i really ever use youtube is at a particular friend’s house at a particular time of night/morning after/during a particular amount of inebriation to play particular songs from the 90s. and even now most of the time we just use pandora.
once in a blue moon i’ll visit youtube if i’m looking for a review of something fabric based or can’t get a song out of my head that alexa doesn’t have. i think the most time i’ve spent there in recent memory is when meh asked about ancient viral videos, actually.
oh, and a streamer i like played this on twitch the other night while he was waiting for other players to ready and i think about it every day now. so this is probably my main use for youtube -
(sfw)
Where is the option for “I fall down a rabbit hole of weird shit until my phone dies and I realize I got nothing accomplished in life”?
Sounds like a forum topic!
I usually start by looking for some specific instructional or meme, then just spiral into rabbit holes.
When I need mindless, lowbrow distraction (~twice a month) I look for either Russian Dashcam videos or Fail videos.
Every so often (~3 weeks) I’m looking for a how to or tear down video of something either gadget, house or car related. YT is the shit for how to/repair videos for home and car owners who aren’t afraid to tinker.
@RedOx I wholeheartedly agree everytime I can’t figure out how to do something I look it up on YouTube!
I some times get lost in YouTube land going from one stupid video to the next
@ragingredd
I kind of plod though it looking for random stuff
@cranky1950 I feel that way about life in general.
I subscribe to google play music, so I get my youtube red included.
Nice thing about youtube red, youtube with no ads.
Bad thing about youtube red, everyone wants to use your phone to queue up songs at parties to avoid the ads.
I thought maybe you were asking for instructions.
I use YoutubeTV because I was tired of watching crummy streams of hockey games that I couldn’t watch without cable.
@0xg0ldpk3rx0 oh that’s a good point, we did watch a couple hockey preseason games on youtube this year. and all i can say is…thank glob the games are on regular tv now.
@0xg0ldpk3rx0 I watched a couple of the state softball tournament games on it since that was how IPTV was streaming them.
Instructional videos. When I start a project and get to a WTF step, my next move is Youtube.com
I’m disappointed your poll didn’t include an option for people who watch lots of YouTube videos, but don’t subscribe. (Thanks @RiotDemon!)
@dashcloud That’s me. It usually goes something like this:
@DrWorm Hey, I saw Stan Ridgway do Mexican Radio at a small venue in Portland in the late 80s. He put on a good show. I wasn’t familiar with him at the time, but a friend had an extra ticket. Glad I went.
@DrWorm A Mexican whoahoah radio?
I have my own channel of mostly Gospel music, but did this one just for fun at Christmas time! You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch!
I am subscribed to 30 or more toobers on a wide variety of topics. That, Netflix, a bit o HBO. I no longer watch traditional tv except for the odd news show on YouTube.
@davido HA! I had a mr.bucket when i was little! Loved it
1-2/month it is looking up DIY videos. 1-2/week someone sends me link or from a post here on Meh, I get more but don’t click most.
4-5/week my 14 yr old son comes over and shows me one on his phone he liked. He currently wants to be a YouTube sensation when he grows up. I gave him the same talk most parents have to give their kids who want to be in the NFL and make $MM: only a few actually make it, you need a backup plan. At one point his backup plan was professional sports mascot. <sigh>
(luckily he’s also considered cook or police)
I always feel a mild sense of annoyance when something leads to youtube. It’s too bad that site is synonymous with “all of the videos on the web”.
Don’t even get me started about video being the wrong medium for half of what it’s used for, or about why its increasing dominance as a medium is based on some foul combination of people’s thoughtlessness and its suitability for advertisements.
@InnocuousFarmer By biggest beef with the misuse of video is news sites that have a text based news story, but automatically launch an accompanying video. It’s mildly annoyingly when the video is actually associated with the story you wanted to read. But it progresses to full-on rage when the video is for some other random, non-related piece of “news”.
And don’t get me started on a page that simultaneously launches two unrelated videos.
@DrWorm my problem is with nearly anything informational coming from a video source, as compared to text.
Text is small, unobtrusive, skimmable, searchable, fast, silent, and easy to review. A page of text with a few images, if necessary, is almost always vastly preferable to a video for anything I would ever want information about.
The only exceptions I can think of are visualizations, or things where motion needs to be represented.
@DrWorm i have an extension for chrome that blocks autoplay for html5 and that gets most of 'em, thankfully. not only are popups/autoplay plain annoying, but i just really hate watching videos for some reason. most are useless or the point is buried in useless.
I’m too lazy to express myself via the medium of video (also not especially photogenic,) so I’ll post my long-winded explanation as text instead.
I use youtube for background music at work. All day, every day. It’s great. I just spider recommended videos and find new stuff constantly (within the micro-genre that I listen to.) But I don’t bother with subscriptions or anything like that.
Since this was posted on mediocre.com:
https://mediocre.com/forum/topics/really-dumb-toys-with-bad-commercials
I’ve been looking at Youtube videos of banned, crazy, and weird toys — some of which I had growing up.
I use it to get around streaming music blocks at work because YouTube is allowed and free.
I also have my own channel for my gaming that I occasionally upload highlight videos to for a particular game mode that I play, but they aren’t that great of clips, just ones I thought were decent or funny. Averages 20-30 views (5 probably from me)
Some day I will get around to recording a 3 part series about gaming controllers with paddles and how to start learning to use them…some day…
youtube.com/TaRDyy
Oh boy… how don’t I use YouTube?
Sometimes it’s hanging out with the friends and a Chromecast, feeding a seemingly endless No Face of an appetite for “random crap we like”. Sometimes it’s life hacks. Sometimes it’s music. Sometimes it’s life advice from people I happen to like in a platonic YouTube subscriber kind of way…(Tessa Violet). For awhile there, it was basically just an endless stream of TED Talks. Some days, it’s all just Neil Cicierega content. Sometimes I just stop by for some You Suck at Cooking. But lately I’ve been extra active on ifixit.com/answers and throwing all of my Googling skills into finding solutions to problems I have no experience with myself. It’s more effective than I ever thought it would be. But I digress. That gale-force Googling sometimes leads me to YouTube repair videos. And then back to You Suck at Cooking.
Also, @DrWorm, I understand your annoyance with news sites making videos of things they already have an article about with the exact same content and information, and then posting them together. When it comes to the news, I’d rather just read it, maybe with brief footage of what’s happening. However, I also get that some people prefer to have it all in video form. I wish they’d just be consistent about whether it’s useful to either watch the video or read the article, or do both.
the only time i really ever use youtube is at a particular friend’s house at a particular time of night/morning after/during a particular amount of inebriation to play particular songs from the 90s. and even now most of the time we just use pandora.
once in a blue moon i’ll visit youtube if i’m looking for a review of something fabric based or can’t get a song out of my head that alexa doesn’t have. i think the most time i’ve spent there in recent memory is when meh asked about ancient viral videos, actually.
oh, and a streamer i like played this on twitch the other night while he was waiting for other players to ready and i think about it every day now. so this is probably my main use for youtube -
(sfw)
I make mostly railfan/railroading videos. Yes, I like trains.
youtube.com/SpeakerPolice
@PooltoyWolf
/youtube I like trains
@RiotDemon Yep that’s me lol