Why do you watch YouTube?

[Guest]

I'm pretty big into video essays lately, on a variety of topics. Shoujo manga, tech retrospectives, philosophical questions, whatever. I'm mostly on YouTube to learn and explore different ways of thinking.

Sometimes I'll use it to watch livestreams from personalities I enjoy though. I pretty much never catch them and I dislike using Twitch so YouTube uploads sustain me in that regard.

[hinafaery77]

For me, it's because I can find almost anything there. Documentaries about ancient civilizations, awesome music, silly comedy, etc. I miss the old youtube days before google ran it into the ground

[Guest]

I've been watching less Youtube over the years, to the point where I can count the number of creators I regularly watch on it with just one hand. Most of the content on there at this point is either spam or content farm creations, with the small amount of quality content buried. It's getting to the point where I'm considering just not even using it all together because there's little content that interests me. The only reason I haven't done so yet is because it's a decent way to listen to some music before I start a search to obtain it.

[div]

I increasingly don't have a good answer to this question. Sure, there are exceptional cases of good YouTube content, but jumping on YouTube and just seeing what you land on is a completely different experience than it was 10 years ago. And there is a lot of terrible content these days.

[deuil]

quilting videos! these days it's quilting videos. when i ice my elbow, i can't really do anything. so i have to watch videos. so i end up watching quilting videos, since i quilt! 

i really don't watch the "popular" video formats and subjects if i can help it. in my experience the best way to cut to actual information is to go for the youtube channels with 20k subscribers or less. i noticed that with paint review videos; the 500k subscribers channels will give you a 10 minute video and won't even tell you what pigment is in the paints, meanwhile there's a 2k view 20 minute video somewhere out there with the same paints that tells you exactly the composition of the paint and how it interacts with each other.

on the other hand though, i watch a LOT of asmr videos. chalk crushing videos mostly. when i'm on call with somebody i need something to keep me busy, and these are good to look at. if i want to listen to a podcast i put on one of these asmr videos and i start working on my quilt. it's pretty useful for me.

[EtherealSerah]

I mostly use YouTube for a specific kind of informative content. While there are definitely some exceptions, I don't tend to go for more documentary or traditionally formatted essay-type videos because I would usually rather read that information than watch or listen to it.  However, I really, really like stylish, artistically driven creative non-fiction type videos. Think ThorHighHeels, Maraganger, hazel, etc. Channels where the subject matter is interesting, but the real stars of the show are the visual spectacle and the emotional content. I'm the kind of person that would almost always rather be listening to music than a podcast while I'm doing something, so if I'm watching YouTube then I'm watching YouTube and so I do much prefer it if the video is visually stimulating.

Plus, it's just really cool seeing each creator's unique visual style. It has the same appeal as a personal website in that sense, I suppose; it's about more than just the information, it's also about how the creator chooses to express themselves.

[astraeusbleeds]

I watch youtube for documentaries and for some people i find funny. Most of the youtubers that do video essays listed here do non-fiction stuff! I probably forgot a bit bc i watch a lot lol. I really like documentaries about tragedies and/or ships :] I'm just fascinated by them for some odd reason. The human mistakes of the past is an interesting topic to me. I sorted which focus on tragedies primarily or otherwise in case you wanna go through these without feeling awful. Feel free to recommend me stuff you'd think I'd like!

yeah:
RTGame, Jacksepticeye, Skurry, Fireb0rn

GENERAL DOCUMENTARIES -- note that they occasionally do tragedies too:
Defunctland, Bright Sun Films, Jacob Geller, Oceanliner Designs (for big boats!!), hbomberguy, Part Time Explorer, Wendigoon

TRAGEDY DOCUMENTARIES:
Plainly Difficult, Dark Records, TrageDiaries (for man-made tragedies in the Philippines), Brick Immortar, Maritime Horrors (for maritime disasters),
Mentour Pilot (for plane accidents/incidents)

[Guest]

background noise and comfort. I repeatedly watch/listen to the same things over and over. and it's near exclusively gaming and ASMR content. I use an extension that hides all the recommended video stuff. I do not subscribe to every channel that catches my interest, because it's so easy to have a subscriptions page that's just too busy.

[dozzleDsnozzler]

im  getting pretty sick of youtube. my recommendations are always terrible or something i've already watched, the shorts actually suck me in and are always bad. i really hate short form content

[sokil]

i almost exclusively watch youtube for long-form analysis videos !
theyre good to have in the background while doing chores or grinding in games.
there are a couple youtubers who put in enough effort to be visually entertaining that ill watch their videos as the main form of entertainment
(usually its just a supplementary/background thing)

this is pretty much what i do as well, i like to put on video essays when i'm working on stuff and don't feel like listening to music. lately i've been putting on a lot of video essays about lost media since it's one of my biggest fixations :D

i also look for videos in the languages i'm learning so i can immerse myself in them and continue my learning. these are usually shorter videos right now since i'm a slow learner, but it's pretty fun!
sometimes i'll use youtube to listen to music if i can't find the songs/albums anywhere else, or i try to discover new music by clicking through songs on a random playlist.

[glow]

it sounds like i'm in the same boat as others here, where i turn to youtube videos for comfort and familiarity as well. i keep a lot of "odd hour" schedules that can make it a little hard to align with friends sometimes. so the companionship found through a video's narration can be really nice! whether that's listening to someone recounting their personal experiences with a piece of art they love, reviewing something i'm interested in, talking about a wild piece of history, playing a game, producing a passion project, or just being a faceless account sharing full uploads of obscure music they like. that comfortable presence is the same reason i also come back to videos or channels and rewatch things i've already seen before from either. it's like the modern day equivalent of leaving the tv on and watching reruns you grow to be pretty fond of, and put on in the background while multitasking. i've more or less used the website since its infancy too so it becoming this massive platform over the past few decades, that has replaced cable tv since then, has made it hard to avoid altogether for general video watching anyways.

i definitely go through bouts of uninterest in its enormous library of media too though. i think it's just a byproduct of having everything at your fingertips, and it becoming too overwhelming to sort through for the "good stuff" every now and again. that, and sometimes i just won't be in the mood for longer video formats, even from creators i typically enjoy and subscribe to. when that happens, i usually settle in using it just for informative tutorial type stuff that i can visually and quickly learn from. then scuttle off to other things and hobbies, like music and generally shorter form media. though what usually helps the most in eliciting that joy for discovery again, is using third party sites for queuing youtube videos together with some pals. where their personal interest in a video or subject matter, and being able to talk and laugh in a group about it, ends up rubbing off on me enough and becomes a personal motivator for finding and sharing worthwhile videos all over again.

[zanarkand]

i watch so much youtube, just hours of it all day XD i like to have on background ambient video game music or nature/rain videos. i also am a fan of video essays, i watch a ton of those because i always learn something new and there are some really funny and amazing creators on there. i'm also a big fan of ASMR, i've been watching it for probably 10 years or more for anxiety relief and it's really meaningful to me. and then of course there's all the music videos! i love music videos and it's great to be able to watch them whenever i want from any decade or era.

[serenefork]

I watch a lot of deep dive videos, and gameplay on YouTube. Some of videos I watch are hours long and I watch them over the course of a couple days. It's really a combination of a desire for knowledge about things and a need for background noise. Some videos I mostly listen to as if they were a podcast...

[virtue]

I am just in general an enjoyer of video content. I have content creators I want to follow, and it just so happens that youtube is unfortunately the only place they publish their work most of the time. Outside of personal websites, there's not really an alternative that isn't between questionable and an outright shithole (odysee and rumble respectively) but generally speaking, my interest is merely in following creators who often make content I enjoy, like vlogbrothers or Big/Little Joel. I use piped+libretube because I have absolutely no interest in direct interaction with youtube (or any google service for that matter) and especially would like to avoid the youtube algorithm. A chronological feed of your curated creators should be more than enough if you don't want to willingly form a dopamine addiction, lol.

[mahoroa]

There's a lot of video essays there that I like. I'm a big fan of learning about basically anything, even if it's something "meaningless".
I watched a small handful of streamers and sometimes I miss their streams so I watch their VODs on youtube.
There's a good handful of songs that I can only find on youtube that I really like. There's also guides for video games which helps because I'm more of a visual learner.
And of course there's a bunch of free movies uploaded there, mainly low budget horror flicks from the 80s which are my absolute favourites to watch.