Quick review: I am experimenting with only getting on YouTube two
days a month-- the first weekend of the month, so I just got done
with my time this month. Furthermore, my daily driver is a
Chromebook which I have converted into a Linux which I have set up to
work for my command line needs, and does not even have a normal
graphical browser installed [1].
Just out of the inertia of the thing, this means that most days I do
not leave the command line at all... It's probably time to point out
I am blissfully unemployed right now, so this is an untainted
experiment in information flow. Still, the rule is actually only
limited to YouTube, not about a modern graphical browser, so for
example when I rebalance investments, I can boot up the other
computer and use the browser. This is not about making modern life
impossible for me; it is about trying to waste less time.
I felt a real sense of weirdness getting on Firefox on Saturday. And
I both enjoy and wish to cultivate that feeling. It shows where
possibilities are -- that things do not have to be this way. With
that said, I did get some quality things out of YouTube. An
interesting cooking technique, a video from the channel Clickspring
that I now see as the paragon of what someone can do with hand tools,
even just the amusement of King's Quest speed-running... Because the
thing about the normie web is that it is still where the people are,
and so there is much to find IF you can get past the mediating
bullshit.
But to be honest, it was probably only a half-days worth of content.
The recommendation engine didn't present me with much after a very
short time, and so I had to dig into my text file I keep here of
possible things to search. SDF... it's my cloud.
==
[1] I do have links2 installed as a backup to lynx. If something I am
reading seems to hinge on a picture, then I have used link2 in
graphical mode to at least see the picture. From this, I have given
thought to just switching to links2, but I have grown to like a lot
about lynx (and let's not forget that it allows gopher to be my main
computer home)... One odd thing I like is how in lynx I have to hit
space several times if a site has a lot of cruft... Well, I want to
be made aware that the website deals in cruft as a kind of meta-data
for me the user. The way I look at it, it is still quicker than
waiting for all the JavaScript to load.
==
This work is hereby in the public domain.
Do what you want with it.
