The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) removed the Github repo for program that I use to download Youtube Videos for later viewing (youtube-dl). This has upset me in a few ways, not the least of which is that Youtube changed in a way that makes the version that I have no longer work. I used this for downloading videos that I want to watch later, which has been accruing a large number of "watch it later" videos. I decided that it was time to remove all of my Youtube subscriptions. Furthermore, I took the opportunity to delete (wholesale) the videos that I had downloaded (after a brief look to see if there was anything that I truly wanted to watch later on). The results were pretty enlightening. By removing all of those little commitments I had on my local drive (and let's be honest, every one of them was a little commitment) I felt like I had just freed up a bunch of time and attention. By not looking in my feeds for those video subscriptions I felt like I'd carved out more time in my day. It's absurd because most days I don't watch videos, but just knowing that I had removed those little commitments for some future date was amazing.

It's not often I can say "Thank You" for something that pisses me off as much as the RIAA and Google have, but their short-sighted action has made me better understand my interactions with their media and content. It's made me realize that keeping some mental space in there to dip in there and watch a bunch of "feel good" content is just another dopamine hit-parade that I don't need to keep servicing.

(To all of those Youtube Content Creators out there that I unsubscribed from: Please thank the RIAA and Google for the small dip I made to your subscriber lists. They earned it.)

(Oh, I'm sure I'll be really pissed when I can't do a simple Youtube Import on Peertube of the livestream for our Michigan!/usr/group meeting, but hopefully this will get resolved soon.)

Now to do something better with that mental bandwidth I was reserving for watching videos.