Online video wrecked my brain (Here's my recovery plan)
Plus: The launch of my new watercolor course.
"I wonder what would happen if I stopped watching YouTube entirely?" I asked myself last Sunday.
I've written about it before: my increasing reluctance towards the video format. Both in my work, (I haven't posted a video on my YouTube channel for three months), and in my life in general. We live in a very visual culture. Videos are everywhere, videos are the new default, and for a reason: they capture, and keep, our attention so well. Our attention is worth a lot of money nowadays. And so online videos are weaponized against us. Becoming shorter, more fast-paced, sensational and engaging, to grab and hold our attention better. Like fast food, they promise quick hits of stimuli. Like fast food, they can be addictive and less-than-optimal for our health. But as with fast food, it’s hard to stay away.
It’s tangible, the way my eyeballs are being grabbed and tugged at from all directions. We all feel it. But not everyone is aware of it, or feel negatively impacted by it. I didn’t, at first. But just like with advertising, popups, spam email, and all of the other tactics that have been used and abused online, my brain has started setting up defenses against video. A kind of internal, zero-tolerance policy. My rapidly shrinking attention span is one of those defenses. As soon as I start watching a video, even one I want to see, I turn into a five-year-old with ADD. My brain shuts off, my eyes wander, and my hands start fidgeting. But despite being so bad at watching videos, I still crave more of them.
I've both consumed, and created, videos intensely for a few years now. It amazes me how quickly I got used to it. How quickly it became the norm for me, despite being a life-long devotee of the written word. I've always been a voracious reader. I was a writer and content creator both before and during the video boom of the early-to-mid 2010s, and I stubbornly resisted it. A lot of it was principle. I don't like giving in to social trends. But mostly, making videos felt too foreign and uncomfortable to me as a camera shy introvert. It still does, even though I've gotten a lot better at it.
I almost can't remember what my relationship to YouTube was like before I started my channel. Did I watch for hours each day before that? Did I follow channels? Did I have the YouTube app on my phone? I don't think so. I don't remember watching habitually, or scrolling the home screen looking to be entertained. I watched sporadically, with a specific goal in mind. When the information wasn't available in text form, I would reluctantly, and somewhat annoyed, sit through a video. (Where someone would ramble, into a bad microphone, for ten minutes before getting to the point.)
And yet, over the course of just a few months, video became the standard for me. The go-to for researching a topic, or learning a skill. The backdrop at lunch or dinner. The preferred company on the treadmill, in the bathtub, on the couch.
How the hell did I get so addicted to video? And so unable to consume it in a healthy way?
This is what led up to my inquiry last Sunday. A realization that I no longer enjoy watching videos. That I'm kind of, almost, addicted to it. That it gets in the way of the kind of life I want to live, and the type of thinking and creating that I want to do. I’ve already quit posting to YouTube, indefinitely. What if I also quit watching YouTube entirely for a while, and see what happens?
And so today, in true Digital Minimalist fashion, my video detox experiment begins. For 30 days, I will do my very best to not watch any videos online at all. The only exceptions are background ambience for board games, and videos I can watch quickly in order to solve an immediate problem.
I'm so excited to see how I'll feel. (Much better, I’m sure.) And how much work I'll get done. (A lot more, I suspect.)
I also look forward to at least 30 days of not having to film or edit videos. It's taken me four weeks to film and edit my new course, and it only got fun towards the very end, when I got to add the music and fine tune the final result. But it was worth it. I'm very happy with this course. It's the best one I've made so far. And it's out today! 🎉
This is the course I wish I'd had when I took my first, wobbly steps as an artist and started learning watercolor. And I hope it will introduce this magical medium to more people, in a gentle and relaxing way. No information overload, no unforgiving, technical exercises. If you've been wanting to learn watercolor painting, or just start a meditative hobby, this class might help you. And from now up until the 1st of March, I'm offering it with 20% off just for my email friends here. You can read more about the course below.
Just like after all of my launches, I feel exhausted, brain-fried and a bit empty inside. Relieved to have reached the finish line, but also melancholic to no longer have that finish line to work towards. (Who else relates to that?)
To celebrate, I'm going to go lie in a bath, (without my phone). Take a cold shower. Have a glass of something sparkling. And then play Spirit Island and read on the couch with my partner. 🖤
I hope you will have a great weekend as well. I’ll see ya next week.
With love,
New:
Watercolor Magic: Awaken Your Creativity With Watercolor Abstracts
My watercolor course for beginners is out! Up until March 1st, you can get 20% off the course by entering WATERCOLORMAGIC at checkout.
Things I like right now:
The Dark And Lonely World Of YouTube Addiction, by Domingo Cullen. I stumbled upon this writer last week and immediately fell in love with his voice. This piece in particular inspired my choice to take a break from YouTube:
“I couldn’t watch anything that i enjoyed. I couldn’t sit down and watch an hour long documentary about wine-making or the Pyramids of Giza. That was the truly pathological nature of it. I had to watch short clips, back to back to back to back, about absolutely nothing.”
“There is another part of us […] that is hungry for silence and quiet, and thinking very hard about the same thing for maybe half an hour or more, rather than just thirty seconds. Of standing and looking at the branches of a tree, or listening to the birds singing. And this part of us doesn’t get fed.
And what happens is this thing makes itself felt in our bodies, as a kind of dread, deep inside us. Every year it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read a book, or to listen to a complex piece of music that takes work to understand. Because now in computer and internet culture everything is so fast. And the faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves that needs something immediate, that needs instant stimulation, and we don’t feed the part of ourselves that needs quiet.”
Peaky Blinders. We were late to the game with this gem of a series. What a piece of art it is: the set design, the photography, the music, the acting, the costumes, everything.
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson. The third installment in the Millenium series. I'm loving re-reading these.
The Man Who Played With Fire, a Swedish documentary about journalist and crime author Stieg Larsson. This film interviews family, friends and co-workers of Larsson, and tells the story of his journalism career, and his fight against far-right extremists and neo-nazi groups. I'm deeply affected by the fact that he passed away only 50 years old, and never even got to see the publication of his books that went on to become a global phenomenon.
The Well of Ascension, by Brandon Sanderson. I'm finally moving along to book two in the Mistborn series. 150 pages in, and I'm thoughoughly hooked. Apparently, around here is where this series starts blowing the socks off people...
The Last Of Us. We are still enjoying the show, 6 episodes in. The lead actors are what captivates me the most. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey really shine in these roles. And the environments! I have a thing for overgrown skyscrapers and abandoned highways...
The Witch Trials of J.K Rowling. A limited podcast series that just lauched with the first two episodes. I binge-listened to them yesterday, and can't wait for the next one. It's very well-made.
“Herein lies the problem with the sudden surge and interest in artificial intelligence. AI-generated creativity isn’t creativity. It is all hat, no cowboy: all idea, no execution. It in fact relies on the obsession with, and fetishization of, THE IDEA. It’s the core of every get-rich-quick scheme, the basis of every lazy entrepreneur who thinks he has the Next Big Thing, the core of every author or artist or creator who is a “visionary” who has all the vision but none of the ability to execute upon that vision.”
