"How long have you been doing that???"

May 12, 2024 6:59 AM

YouTube is shoving animal videos at me, and so here are some animal videos! Here are 10 minutes of above-average cat videos; it's a compilation; it has annoying narration. Here are four minutes of owl videos with music that is not totally awful. Here is two minutes of an adorable rhinoceros calf getting acquainted with a zookeeper while mom looks on. And finally 3m30s of the most dramatic husky with their thoughts interpreted for the viewer.*

*I've known much more dramatic huskies than this. But wow, still!

posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

This is excellent, thank you for sharing! The baby rhino in particular sparked much joy :)
posted by pahalial at 10:27 AM on May 12

I love that you're becoming so much of a connoisseur of the form to try to surface the videos that are less annoying, because frog knows there are some overly-cloying animal videos out there.
posted by JHarris at 10:51 AM on May 12 [1 favorite]

Mother's Day is always a little melancholy in my family because my grandmother passed away that day a few years ago -- losing loved ones makes you more appreciative of the people in your life, but it's hard to celebrate with your mom when she's got that memory of losing her own mom weighing on her.

My grandfather was a small-time farmer in northern Alabama -- he kept horses and goats and worked the field with his dog and the house was perpetually the home of at least two cats. So my grandma raised my mom surrounded by critters, and when she got internet in the 00s she loved forwarding us the latest funny animal videos the web (or I guess her AOL contacts) had to offer.

I kind of rolled my eyes at these sorts of compilations -- reminded me of the cheesier America's Funniest Home Videos. But tbh I kind of missed getting them these last few years.

This morning after having brunch with my mom we were talking about their old menagerie, and I pulled up this post and showed her the husky video. Maybe it's because she's always a little teary this time of year, but she laughed so hard that she cried a bit. "JUST like Bigfoot!" (The big protective melodramatic German Shepard she had as a kid)

So yeah these vids can be a little corny, but today it was exactly what we needed. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:37 AM on May 12 [2 favorites]

I loved the baby rhino! Thank you!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:51 PM on May 12 [2 favorites]

I love that you're becoming so much of a connoisseur of the form to try to surface the videos that are less annoying

Honestly it's an act of desperation and self-preservation. YouTube just decides sometimes that I'm somehow interested in a thing and suddenly my suggestions are full of annoying shit and a ton of the thing. Right now, I'm having to deal with it having decided that I really really really like various covers of the Ween song Ocean Man. I didn't know there were so many! I'm not watching any of them! But it keeps insisting I must want one!

Anyway, animal videos are fun, and so I don't mind when it decides my page will be 1/3 just animal videos. And I do try to share the ones I think are most worth sharing.

I will not be sharing covers of Ocean Man.
posted by hippybear at 3:13 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]

Oh, and just because, here's 7 second Elephant Fart [28s]
posted by hippybear at 3:20 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]

Barn owls are cool. Baby barn owls are fugly.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:42 PM on May 12

Right now, I'm having to deal with it having decided that I really really really like various covers of the Ween song Ocean Man. I didn't know there were so many! I'm not watching any of them! But it keeps insisting I must want one!

That's Youtube's algorithm, which is supposed to be magically capable of determining exactly what you like, but actually just takes whatever you've seen most recently and assumes you must want more of it. That's why my feed is full of video game stuff. I regularly search for game stuff to blog about, but Youtube has decided that's all I like, while usually giving me the worst examples of that form too. Youtube's algorithm for me has mostly been a failure.
posted by JHarris at 8:35 PM on May 12

Delete your activity history, folks. And not just in YouTube, google is tracking your searches across all of their products. YouTube also irritatingly tracks thumbnail views so if you even accidentally hovered your mouse over a thumbnail that's now feeding the algo.

If the algo has latched onto something weird/annoying then chances are something is in your history and you need to delete it.

https://myactivity.google.com/

I recommend turning off thumbnail previews in YouTube settings and checking/pruning your activity regularly. Consider auto deleting history regularly or turning off web/app activity history to make YouTube focus on what you are doing there.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 11:59 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty certain that my youtube feed is a strange mix of lots and lots of animal videos (particularly rescues and the Dodo, lord help me), music analysis, cooking, wood carving, restoration stuff, beer making, more cooking and animals and then about 50 gazillion videos from the last new channel I watched if it has any sort of audience.

(Meanwhile, that Husky is hysterical and fits the drama queen husky stereotype)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:10 AM on May 13

Ah, based on forbiddencabinet's suggestion, I just now deleted my Youtube history. I turned it back on to see what kinds of suggestions I'd get after watching a couple of videos... and they pretty much matched the ones I had been getting before! Evidently their suggestions aren't just based on history, but some other form of profiling.
posted by JHarris at 12:56 PM on May 13