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diff --git a/website/src/content/blog/2024-05-02.md b/website/src/content/blog/2024-05-02.md deleted file mode 100644 index 4665245..0000000 --- a/website/src/content/blog/2024-05-02.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,58 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: How I made YouTube work for me -description: >- - I just learned YouTube channels have an RSS feed. This is terrific news. -pubDate: 2024-05-02 ---- - -One of my bad habits in life is wandering through YouTube. I've always had -AutoPlay turned off, but I still found myself switching off and sleepwalking -from one 'recommendation' to the next. - -A lot of what I watch in these times is crap. It's often when I'm tired and just -want to switch off, so naturally enough, longer, more emotionally or -intellectually material – in other words, exactly the kind of videos I actually -**do** want to watch – I ignore. (For me, it's often mediocre sketch comedy -videos. That's my poison, it turns out.) - -Now, there is a time for switching off and doing something light. But I don't -want watching junk videos to be my answer. Any more than when I'm hungry after -a long day of work, I don't want to be resorting to junk food all the time. I -really want to get out of this bad habit, and though it's not a huge problem, -I've still not been able to fully kick it, either. - -Still, there are YouTube channels I really _want_ to keep up with. Musicians. -Short film channels. Video essayists. And, yes, even one or two sketch channels: -though YouTube is a bit flooded with sketch comedy, some it is really good and -brings me joy, and that's a good thing! - -This is where RSS comes in. - -So if you don't know, an RSS file is a file someone puts on their website which -tells you, in a standard format, what pages are on their website. It's a pretty -old standard in Web terms, and it's very stable. There are a wide range of apps -out there, called 'feed readers', which you can use to keep track of RSS feeds, -notifying you when something new gets published in your website and putting it -in a feed for you to review. - -It turns out YouTube channels have RSS feeds. - -This is terrific news. - -It means I can use my RSS feed reader to subscribe to YouTube channels, instead -of YouTube's own subscription system. - -And that means I don't need any of YouTube's personalisation features. I can -delete all my search history, all my watch history, and stop them from -collecting any more. This means YouTube is now incapable of providing -recommendations that I'm actually likely to click on. Which is exactly what I -want. - -This is what my YouTube homepage looks like right now: - - - -So I can both subscribe to the channels I'm genuinely interested in, and not -get sucked into watching junk. - -Awesome! |