8000 hours of ineffective youtube viewing

Spending ~5% of my life being a linus tech tips fan girl & minecraft parody enjoyer

As I mentioned in my minutely 2015 timelog, I spent a huge amount of time on YouTube. Categorizing my whole life so far, it’s probably #3 after sleeping and school.

I guess approximately ~5% of my life was spent watching YouTube

I have over 8000 hours of recorded YouTube video history watched, and this excludes phases where I didn’t have YouTube watch history but still watched a tonne of videos. this excludes non-recorded time, which probably puts the total somewhat above 10k hours.

I learned a lot, but I also just wasted a lot more. And I reveal my excellent cringe-maxxing YouTube strategies.

I’ll let you know exactly how!

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Techniques and Caveats

For this analysis, I did a google Takeout, and used Claude to analyze my data. I also add some personal comments on what I liked most (and some of the most cringe parts too…)

Some caveats:

Before 2015 I think I probably used a different account, or there was some migration, which just means that my history before then didn’t really exist.

Also, starting around 2021-ish, I had a “privacy phase”, where I stopped using the official YouTube app, and instead would use NewPipe or Youtube Vanced or GrayJay. These are nice, I still use GrayJay app but signed in, though for some of this time I didn’t end up watching things.

Phases of viewing

This was successful at making me watch less YouTube (these would show subscribers only instead of recommendations).

For the most part, I basically always watched most videos to the end until some time a few years ago. As I mentioned before, I am not really sure I was conscious when I was younger so I never really considered stopping a video part-way through…

(Yeah I was a weird kid I know)

But the algorithm was also just like, pretty good at getting me content that I wanted to see. Often to my detriment.

I was addicted to content. I needed more content. I would non-stop watch content. I love content <3

I did later start to gain more consciousness in my early 20s, and start to not always watch videos to the end if I noticed I wasn’t gaining anything from it.

Also, a huge note is that I did watch things on variable playback speeds. I hyper-optimized watching things at barely-legible speeds so I could consume more. (I loved content <3). It started with 1.25x, then 1.5x, then there was a while where 1.75x didn’t really exist, but that got added and I upgraded to 2x, then with extensions it was possible to go beyond that. I think I’ve done this since late 2010s at least.

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Most Cringe YouTube viewing

What did I end up listening to the most on YouTube (rather than YouTube Music)?

Ok yeah I mostly listened to Minecraft parodies. You know your girl loves minecraft parodies. I know all the words to at least 3 Minecraft Awesome Parodies songs, and bought the album on Google Play Music before they shut it down.

I didn’t really listen to much music for most of my childhood other than things that caught my attention specifically. I might write about this another time.

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I watched only a few categories of Youtube mostly

No matter how you split the data, it follows a power law of some sort. Everything is continuous when the numbers are big enough¹. And 30k videos is enough that it becomes continuous.

Power distribution of YouTube video categories

Or we can also look at individual channels to some extent.

Channel Breakdown by number of videos watched

Basically, I ended up mostly watching “Science and Technology”. Which splits into “Technology” and into “Science”.

Technology

The most prominent category, by far, was watching LinusTechTips.

I watched 1,971 videos over the course of 904 hours. This excludes that I also watched, eg: TechLinked, another Linus Media Group channel for 546 videos, or 70.4 hours.

What can I say, I love tech >u< those blinking lights and moving electrons and water coolers and many many FLOPs and high transfer speeds and such are just so so fun…

I love computer.

You can see in the whole 2014-2026 period, Linus Tech Tips has been a factor in basically all of it. Over 1000 hours of my life has been dedicated to Linus. This would be 20 hours a week for over a year.

I of course watched many other tech Youtubers too. NCIX Tech Tips then TechLinked, ShortCircuit, Marques Brownlee, Hardware Canucks, ThioJoe, Techquickie, Dave2D, ETA Prime, The WAN Show, The Friday Checkout, Austin Evans, Mrwhosetheboss, TechAltar, Jon Rettinger, amongst others that didn’t make the top 100.

This later became more linux hardware ones, such as ServeTheHome, Lawrence Systems, Jeff Geerling, but also general linux and privacy channes, such as TechLore, Gardiner Bryant, The Linux Experiment, Mental Outlaw, Luke Smith, Naomi Brockwell TV.

Some programming channels too.

I watched so much, I could give detailed opinions on each of these now.

The only ones I tend to still watch sometimes now, are Linus Tech Tips, Dave2D and Marques Brownlee (in part for the nostalgia factor), and I most enjoy watching The Friday Checkout / TechAltar.

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Science

Another main branch of videos I liked to watch was more science and generally educational ones.

My favourite for most of this time was PBS Space Time, which posted a high-quality 10minute video about physics topics each week. I loved it and waited eagerly for new videos. I watched since before they switched hosts, and it helped inspire me to study Theoretical Physics in university.

My other favourite, which I learned about at a similar time, was Isaac Arthur, who posts weekly videos on Science and futurism topics, mostly explaining the physics behind sci-fi worldbuilding. I religiously watched this for years and years. Over 200 hours watched since ~2015 when I got interested. Eventually, after many years, it felt like the fraction of new content became low, so I kinda eventually started to lose interest. But I loved it for most of that time.

Otherwise I watched many other videos. Veritasium was really good, Vsauce was excellent too. Kurtzgesagt was quite nice. I liked Flammable Maths, and various PBS channels, 3blue1brown, tibees, ex1rbia, Cody’s Lab² NileRed, Economics Explained, Up and Atom, Physics Girl, and Sabine Hossenfelder, Stand-up Maths, acapellascience, blackpenredpen, Simon Clark, Andrew Dotson, Tom Scott, Logically Answered, Joe Scott, Half as Interesting, Healthcare Triage, AsapSCIENCE, Minute Physics/Biology/Earth, DIY Perks, etc….

I could give detailed opinions on basically any of these too….

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I watched phases of gaming content

I had a good few phases of watching Gaming content.

The first was watching Survival Island series on Yogscast, I barely remember this much, but it was the first.

The second was watching Captain Sparklez when I was quite young. I loved the skyblock series in particularly, but I did watch others.

Then I kinda quit Minecraft content for a while. I would watch general channels like The Game Theorists sometimes.

I then got into watching Hermit Craft during Covid, mostly Mumbo Jumbo and Xsumavoid and Grian.

Then I learned about ilmango and I loved his content.

I also did often watch content about whatever game I was currently playing. Probably a favorite for this was Inscryption a few years ago.

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Other Phases

Philosophy

I had some phases where I watched philosophy too. The first was Crash Course Philosophy I watched in 2015 or so. I then ended up watching a lot of other creators, most memorable is Alex O’Connor.

Personal Finance Phase

I had a phase of being very frugal. I was naturally inclined this way and it probably got me to update too much in this direction too. I kinda moved on from this, and eventually did start actually investing in index funds but I was too scared for a while too.

Programming Phase

I watched some tech programming Youtubers. They told me to learn to code and do internships, so I did that. Many videos were cringe, but it was good advice anyway.

Vegan Phase

I had a really strong vegan phase. After I went vegan in 2017³ I really loved nutritionfacts.org and watched so so many videos on many topics, and also loved various other vegan channels too. I eventually stopped being so interested in keeping up with this.

Entertaintment

I watched other entertainment, but idk, I am running out of time to publish so I will spare you the extensive list of things to save you skimming the list

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It had it’s pros and cons in my life

I basically stopped watching youtube and instead ended up moving to listening to more books, listening to podcasts, using TTS to listen to articles, and such.

I guess I often didn’t really watch the actual video content, mostly the listening (depends on the topic). And to some extent, you start reaching a limit with what you are able to watch online on YouTube anyway.

My favorite activity these days is to just use claude code, which will be let me be hyper specific to learn about whatever I want tbh.

In some ways, many of the best things in my life I do owe to YouTube, so it seems better than other options I had when I am so averse to reading (maybe a future post), but I also still regret that I didn’t stop watching it sooner and do better things too. Like, probably at least 80th percentile good compared to other options I would have realistically taken in Ireland at that time though.

I had fun, I guess I learned of some good paths, I guess it meant I didn’t take even better paths sooner. But I’m sure I will look back to the present and think the same about it too.

1. Guh I find things being always continuous in aggregate it so weird, I know it’s just common, but idk. I will maybe write about this at some point.

2. Most memorable was the magnet implant video, I still want to do it some time

3. Oh, did I ever mention that I was vegan?