Comment on A patient gamer youtuber explaining why she only plays old games

• ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  As I’ve said three times now, I barely use YouTube and then only direct links. This isn’t that. YouTube rewards civil bigots so civil bigots are common and have big audiences

  source

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Which is why my general rule of thumb is to avoid the top channels. Some things I especially try to avoid:

    • lots of jump cuts
    • stupid thumbnails
    • clickbait headlines

    Those are things that drive “engagement,” and going after engagement for engagement’s sake is a clear sign to me that the channel isn’t worth my time. If the channel largely avoids that crap and still manages to have a respectable subscriber count, it’s a lot more likely to be a decent channel. Some channels I really like:

    • Gamer’s Nexus
    • Digital Foundry
    • Tech Ingredients

    Each of those have high quality content, tend to avoid most of the above (still have BS thumbnails, but not nearly as bad as the big channels), and have a sizeable following. Good content absolutely exists, you just have to scrape away the crap on top to find decent channels.

    source

    • ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Absolutely. Sticking to the things they know and avoiding the recs is how a lot of people use Youtube. But all of the things you avoid are thrown in your face in the recs. Clickbait titles, bait and switch content, dogwhistling videos that start people down the path of ever more bigoted content (for example, the video the OP posted).

      I generally don’t engage much with video content though, so I’ll just continue to ignore it

      source

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        all of the things you avoid are thrown in your face in the recs

        Hence why I tend to avoid the YT website. I have disabled recommendations on NewPipe and Grayjay, and that’s where 95% of my YT viewing comes from.

        source