occasionally

Something tells me that you either haven’t been on yt since 2010, or you block their ads yourself. When I watch family members use yt, it’s 3x 30-second back-to-back unskippable ads for a 5 minute video. If it’s a longer video like a show episode, several randomly placed ads interrupt the video. It pains me.

It was acceptable when they did a toast overlay for 10 seconds at the bottom of a video during the midsection, that you could also click away with no delay if it bothered you. Now it’s just like cable TV. (shoutout to yt TV which started at $35 and is now like $85 even if you don’t want 90% of the content)

I wouldn’t say it ‘made the world a better place’ either, as most content is redundant (lets have 75 short unboxing and first impression vids of this week’s new phone!) or just pointless (reaction videos, prank videos…). It’s a place for netizens to throw videos at and see if they get lucky.

I subscribe to 65 people, most of which have stopped producing content long ago (10y+). I have… 4 creators that I actually care about (2 of them I support through patreon, 1 via occasional merchandise, the other doesn’t have any means of external support). If they relocated, I’d follow them. But if the rest (~25 active-ish) suddenly stopped, eh it’s a bummer but no real loss.

Kinda akin to MySpace. Everyone in my circle knows about it and remembers it fondly in the early days, but now it’s not really maintaining a pulse. It’s just there, existing - and always craving more money.