Some
people snort cocaine. Others shoot up on
heroin. I watch YouTube videos.
As
far as I know, there is no support group for people like me, and there are many
of us. If there were a support group, I
suspect that the church basements where the meetings took place would be so
tightly jam packed they would have to hire Japanese subway pushers to make room
for new arrivals.
It
has become almost a requirement, around the world, for anyone who has made a
video of anything to post it on YouTube.
Did
your crazy uncle say something stupid when you had the video camera going? Put it on YouTube.
Did
your neighbor’s security camera catch your cat in the act of stealing their
Fruit of the Looms off their clothesline?
Put it on YouTube.
Do
you have the world’s dumbest dog? Put
him on YouTube, so that the world can laugh at the unsuspecting animal with
you.
Did
your daughter, a soprano who you swear can sing better than Sarah Brightman,
win an honorable mention in her school’s talent contest with her special
rendition of the tenor aria “Nessun dorma?”
Make sure her performance goes on YouTube and try to make it go viral.
Can
you summarize the entire history of pre-historic man in one 20-minute
video? Make that mini-documentary, claim
that it is scientific, and put it on YouTube.
I
don’t dare log onto YouTube. I don’t
dare, but I do it, anyway. It only takes
one YouTube video to send me into a binge.
I can’t help myself.
This
is how it often happens:
One
of my Facebook friends posts a video that I feel I must, for one reason or
another, view in its entirety. Clicking
on the video leads me to YouTube.
YouTube automatically logs me on, which means that my entire library of
saved videos is handy. It also means
that, over on the right side of the computer screen, there is a tantalizing
list of videos that YouTube feels I might like to watch, based on the one I am
watching now and the ones I have watched in the past.
I
do my duty and watch my friend’s posted video.
Then, instead of going back onto Facebook, I look at the list of videos
on the right side of the screen. In the
meantime, my computer is automatically playing the next video on the list
because I have neglected to press STOP.
I’m that kind of person.
The
list is eclectic, because I am one of those people who delights in learning all
kinds of trivia about a lot of things, and my YouTube fare reflects that. I can’t blame YouTube for this. My brain is the perpetrator here. It is infected with Adult Attention Deficit
Disorder. I like little bits of quick
knowledge about a lot of things, and I get bored easily when I am surfing.
What
starts out as a viewing of a video posted on Facebook turns into a binge
something like this one. Bear in mind
that most of these videos are short:
Mario
Lanza singing a Neapolitan song
Enrico
Caruso singing a Neapolitan song
The
differences between Italian and Latin
How
the ancient Romans pronounced Latin
The
Romance Languages
The
Slavic Languages
Billie
Holliday singing “One for my Baby and One More for the Road”
Mahalia
Jackson singing “On My Way (to Canaan Land)”
A
mobster biography
Another
mobster biography
Reconstructing
the face of Cleopatra (who was sexy, but not all that beautiful)
Reconstructing
the face of Julius Caesar (who looked like a typical bald Italian)
Why
so many Europeans are part Neanderthal
Humanity’s
genetic trails
Etc.
By
the time I am finished, I have used up a couple of hours of my life, having fun
and gaining mostly useless (for me) knowledge.
I haven’t figured out yet if I am enriching myself or wasting my
life. I suspect there are elements of
both here.
I
must stop now. I just remembered that I
was interrupted in my last YouTube binge and I want to go back and find what I
was watching.
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