How I Unsubscribed 400 YouTube Channels to Just 40!

Of the over 40 videos I watched yesterday, which ones do I remember now? Just 2!

YouTube is an excellent source of entertainment. While I value its presence in my life, it clutters my online experience by utilising its immoral algorithms.

If you think your YouTube browsing experience is a form of addiction, I’d like to offer some help using what I’ve learned in my journey to beat the endless scrolling of video content.

Technology Isn’t Our Friend (Yet)

Technology is fundamentally a tool to improve our lives. Often, we forget its purpose as Big Tech push its algorithms to target our behaviour with addictive traits.

It’s unfortunate seeing Big Tech resort to dark UX instead of building better products. Such practices have a daunting effect on society, where people use the newest technological innovations as emotional support to answer life’s misdemeanours.

The Problem

I had a problem with YouTube. It was an excellent service, but I watched too much content, and it seemed as if every video was valuable.

As mentioned in the Digital Minimalism book by Cal Newport, I was falling for a dark pattern called the Slot Machine effect — Scrolling to the following video and expecting a price.

This addictive behaviour was frustrating. One night I fell asleep by mindlessly watching YouTube. The next morning, I woke up, had a quick breakfast, came to work and saw the YouTube webpage open on my Mac.

I stared at it for a couple of seconds, then I realised something:

Of the over 40 videos I watched yesterday, which ones do I remember now? Just 2!

That number was scary. If each one of those videos, on average, were 5 minutes long, I wasted 200 minutes or over 3 hours of my day watching videos that I don’t even remember. That’s around 20% of my day!

The Point

It was fortunate to see that number. After the initial shock, I tried hard to remember the videos I watched, and I could only remember a few.

Those videos I did remember were entangled with my values, the ones that keep me content and help me stay on the road.

In this story, I’ll help you reduce your subscription count to lower your overall watch time on YouTube so you can focus your time on building a positive digital experience.

How Does It Work?

I firmly believe in not prescribing a single solution for the masses. That means not suggesting what works for me to everyone. I suggest reading the essay called The Advice Epidemic by the Minimalists.

All advice is indeed flawed. Therefore, I urge you to find your values. If you know them, great; if you don’t, don’t worry, it’s easy and fun.

The most straightforward path towards finding your values is by using a PDF from the Minimalists. Just open the website, enter your email, and the PDF will arrive in your inbox.

Once you have that, use the guide within the link and figure out which value aligns with your worldview and how you perceive life.

Once you have them written, list the top three values and memorise them. Then, ask the following question on each YouTube channel? Fill the placeholder with the name of your value.

I value ___. Does this channel align with my value?

To help you better understand this question, the following are my values and how they helped me reduce content consumption on YouTube. Hopefully, this can reduce any confusion.

Value I. Beauty

I love Beauty — no matter its shape or form. I’m an aesthete person, and my soul resonates with art, music and many forms of beauty.

If it’s aesthetically pleasing with an elegant appearance, I deeply value it. No matter if it’s internal or external.

Knowing that, I constitute my first question as such:

Does this YouTube channel offer any content that’s aesthetically pleasing with a beautiful visual?

Value II. Respect

I desire Respect — an essential element in productivity. While many individuals have different interpretations of respect, mine is simple: A framework that values time and personal characteristics.

If I realise my time is taken for granted, I’ll leave — No matter the intention.

Knowing that the question for deciding the fate of a YouTube channel:

Do videos from this channel respect my finite resources? Time, manners, simplicity and more…

Value III. Focus

I admire Focus — a trait that’s usually in parallel with brevity. It’s crucial to consume content where the focus is artfully creative.

In a world where our attention is the currency for Big Tech, I deeply admire content creators who prioritise concise, serious and objective information in their videos.

If I lose sight of its objective goal, perhaps the channel isn’t creating meaningful content. With that in mind, the question becomes:

Is this channel serious in its objective goal while retaining its art?

Thank you for reading my story on Medium.

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