free your mind and you will see signs of life (part one)
Watching one of Markiplier's videos, wherein he did an experiment--nothing extravagant, just opened YouTube in an incognito window, whilst signed out of YouTube, to see how long it would take to go from total tabula rasa to something really abhorrent--and to him, "really abhorrent" means racism, homophobia, or crazy conspiracy theories about 9/11, Flat Earth, government conspiracies, et cetera.
I was intrigued, so I decided to do the same thing.
Basic incognito mode activated.
So starting from scratch on YouTube, I have no recommended videos, just topics. And I grant you, what may be intriguing to me may not intrigue others, but I'm just following along. So the first thing that stuck out was a video for Rihanna's "Love on the Brain". I clicked that because I vaguely remembered a couple of conspiracy channels breaking down the "Illuminati symbolism' (yes, really) within it. I watched part of it, ran the counter to the end, then clicked the YouTube logo in the upper left to return. Now, I should have recommendations; the algorithm should be starting to figure out what it thinks I want to see.
My recommended videos are now...strange. Sports, entitlement, military equipment, fights, exercise, search engine battles, and how to escape a standing rear choke. What the hell, I'll click that one.
I don't entirely get the embedded video bits. Just showing standing rear chokes in general? Okay...
So that's two videos in. Now we check recommended videos again.
I...don't even. How did I get from there to here? How do any of these relate to self-protection, or music? But I have to click on something, so...let's watch the tiny gun firing for video three.
Let's check again. Now I am utterly baffled by YouTube's algorithm. Let's learn about the giant hole in Chicago.
Huh. Skyscraper that never got built. Odd, but let's check our recommended videos after video four.
I don't really want to see any of these, but let's click on "MUST SEE INSANE TRANSFORMATION", in the faint hope that watching something with "insane" in it will advance the algorithm away from randomness.
He looks nervous here, but he has a really nice smile elsewhere in the video. And I won't lie, I actually watched all of this one, it was somewhat meditative watching the hair coming off.
And recommended videos is now nearly all hair. Clearly that was a mistake. Okay, let's try this again in part two.
I was intrigued, so I decided to do the same thing.
Basic incognito mode activated.
So starting from scratch on YouTube, I have no recommended videos, just topics. And I grant you, what may be intriguing to me may not intrigue others, but I'm just following along. So the first thing that stuck out was a video for Rihanna's "Love on the Brain". I clicked that because I vaguely remembered a couple of conspiracy channels breaking down the "Illuminati symbolism' (yes, really) within it. I watched part of it, ran the counter to the end, then clicked the YouTube logo in the upper left to return. Now, I should have recommendations; the algorithm should be starting to figure out what it thinks I want to see.
My recommended videos are now...strange. Sports, entitlement, military equipment, fights, exercise, search engine battles, and how to escape a standing rear choke. What the hell, I'll click that one.
I don't entirely get the embedded video bits. Just showing standing rear chokes in general? Okay...
So that's two videos in. Now we check recommended videos again.
I...don't even. How did I get from there to here? How do any of these relate to self-protection, or music? But I have to click on something, so...let's watch the tiny gun firing for video three.
Let's check again. Now I am utterly baffled by YouTube's algorithm. Let's learn about the giant hole in Chicago.
Huh. Skyscraper that never got built. Odd, but let's check our recommended videos after video four.
I don't really want to see any of these, but let's click on "MUST SEE INSANE TRANSFORMATION", in the faint hope that watching something with "insane" in it will advance the algorithm away from randomness.
He looks nervous here, but he has a really nice smile elsewhere in the video. And I won't lie, I actually watched all of this one, it was somewhat meditative watching the hair coming off.
And recommended videos is now nearly all hair. Clearly that was a mistake. Okay, let's try this again in part two.
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