Why do you watch YouTube?

[mustang1]

Not what, but why do you watch YouTube?

I use it as a learning tool but more frequently, just as a "get away from life for a while" thing. It got me thinking as to pre-YouTube days when people would just sit in front of the TV and watch rubbish regardless of whether they liked it or not. Now, they have YouTube; at least they (and I) can watch videos upon videos of things I'm interested in.

Some time ago I noticed I just started watching anything on youtube and I had to get myself off the "stop watching crap" syndrome that people used to say about TV. I would sit there and watch stuff, it would then recommend a new video I might be interested in, so I'd watch that. Ooh, i have 3 minutes to kill, let me find a 3 minute video. Oh that looks interesting but thats 15 minutes long, let me put that into my "Watch Later" feed and before I knew it, my Watch Later feed had over 100 videos I was waiting to watch and I only ended up watching a few of them. But I found myself not concentrating on the video and just waiting to watch the next one.

It irked me. So I started unsubscribing to channels and removing videos from Watch Later. Slowly over time I found myself subscribing to channels again and need to break out of that habit once more. So, why do you watch YouTube?

Caveat: TikTok, oh how i sympathise with people addicted to that! And also YouTube Shorts....

 

[Oldhippy]

I don't.

 

[guitarpete247]

Cycling Mikey and the likes. When I'm home on my own, days off work, I can spend hours wasting my time seeing who is made to turn back at Gandalf corner or which celeb gets done driving on the phone.

 

[mistyoptic]

Sometimes (mostly) for “how to” but also for events I missed and a certain proportion of “car crash” type stuff, e.g. “10 scary aircraft landings”.

Wood-turning “porn“ is quite therapeutic and very educational, even though I don’t do wood-turning myself

 

[PeteXXX]

Music, generally, but also YT is a great resource of instructional videos on stuff I need to repair or service.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Mostly music, a little bit of information, learning how to do stuff and occasionally films.

 

[Chislenko]

I don't.

I'm with you.

 

[dan_bo]

YouTube can be very useful and entertaining, but also a massive time drain......but any bill paying adult that spends much more than toilet time on Ticktok needs to take a good hard look at themselves.

 

[PaulSB]

I don't use it often but if I do it will be a "how to" video, music and comedy clips.

The "how to" videos are very, very useful and save me hours of fiddling and puzzling over one-off tasks.

I don't see it as a substitute for TV which I probably wouldn't switch on 6 nights out of 7 but my wife can't live without it. I do enjoy Netflix where these days I can find much to watch which is more entertaining than the BBC........I haven't bothered with ITV in years.

 

[Dave 123]

I like acoustic performances by artists. They are often on YouTube as a live radio broadcast.
A stripped back song and a performer who can perform.

 

[Brandane]

I watch YouTube because "normal" TV is crap.

 

[HMS_Dave]

I watch YouTube because "normal" TV is crap.

Exactly this. Some good stuff on there, obviously a lot of pap too. But unlike TV where it is mostly pap, i can choose what i watch, when i watch...

 

[Chief Broom]

Certainly not for music,,,most tracks have been distorted for copy write reasons and are painful to listen to. I unwisely dropped in there the other day to listen to a favourite track- Concierto de Aranjuez played by Narciso Yepes [imho the best version ever] and it was utterly destroyed.

 

[Cycleops]

YouTube is an incredible resource for all sorts of things, entertainment, how to do, history, cycle related, stuff you never knew, and just plain interesting. How else would I know how someone in India repaired a truck engine without a full workshop at the roadside or how Leo Fender developed the electric bass guitar or how to reprogram my Toyota key fob. It’s just so diverse.

 

[welsh dragon]

I use it as a how to tool. If I'm stuck on a project it's a great place to find help.

Also if I want to purchase an item, it's great for finding reviews