YouTube Brainwatched Me!

I’m gonna tell you how YouTube rewired my tiny little cranium even as I laughed “Oh ho, I am too smart to fall for this manipulation” -

But first, let’s discuss my serialized novel for juuuust one second.

We have now caught up with The Cathedral of Portals to the point where it’s at when I first realized I was Onto Something - that delightful watershed moment where I’d realized that the genderless priest I’d created was clever enough that they’d taken on a life on their own, that I’d set things up so that the dysfunctional family was being held together thanks to being forced into tragedy but knowing that couldn’t last - and, most importantly, the world and the religion of that world felt real to me.

So what I’m saying is, there’s a good 30,000 words there - a third of a normal novel. If you haven’t given it a shot yet, well, there’s enough there to occupy a couple of afternoons. (And there’s about 250,000 words to come.)

And if you like what you read, well, this is the last week to sign up for my Patron at the paid level and get a copy of the full novel if you hang in there until it’s done in October. So it’s a make-or-break week; help if you can.

Anyway, let’s talk about how YouTube molded my mind even as I understood exactly what it was trying to do.

It all started innocently enough: a list of 25 microbrand watches. I had no idea what “microbrand” meant, of course, but it auto-played while I was working and I looked up mid-video.

The first thing I discovered was that a watch could cost $25,000.

And it was an ugly watch.

Now, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but even the most agreeable beholder (CR 14, Wis bonus +7) would would have to admit that buying this gilded piece of junk was like pissing your salary down a gold-plated toilet….

But that was the satisfying part, wasn’t it? Look at this doofus doohickey that rich people were paying actual money for! What bad taste these millionaires had!

And of course, the pretty watches, well, I couldn’t see paying car-sized money for them, but they at least made for a pretty show of clean-cut, pleasantly-ticking machinery.

Which is when YouTube slipped the first electrode in betwixt my neurons.

Because the next thing it suggested, once it had determined that I would watch a video on watches twice (because of course I had to show these ugly watches to my wife), was a walkthrough of a microbrand watch factory - showing me exactly why these watches were worth $25,000.

Which made sense! Gini’s a quilter, and when she’s asked “How much would I have to pay for one of your quilts?” the answer is “You couldn’t afford it.” (Which is when she offers to make one for you, if you’re a friend.)

I’ve seen Gini toiling for weeks over a specific quilt; I’ve witnessed the skill that goes into choosing the right fabrics and cutting precisely and quilting the top and of course the expense of all the tools she needs to make that quilt happen. If she was paid, fairly, on a per-hour basis worthy of the years it had taken to master her craft plus expenses, each quilt would be thousands.

Would I pay thousands for a quilt? Of course not. But the justification for the expense was clear.

And after looking at a couple more watchmaker videos, I was like, “Yeah, all right, after designing it and then hand-tooling each miniscule part and the beautiful finishing and the craftsmanship to fit everything together, yep, it can take half a year for a watchmaker to assemble this. These watches are, objectively, worth $25,000.

“…I wouldn’t pay that amount for, you know, a watch, and particularly an ugly one - but it’s a equitable amount for someone to ask for.”

Ah, but that was the first mistake. Once $25,000 becomes reasonable on some level, well, your ceiling done been raised.

And it was also a hoot to see what people cared about when it came to watches. There were all these stern videos on The Watch Mistakes You Must Never Make, mostly by either skinny, goggle-eyed try-hards in expensive suits and shiny leather shoes, or craggy, beardgroomed dudebros in leather jackets wagging fingers at the camera.

And they’d tell you, in all seriousness, things like “This clunky fool wearing a 40mm watch on this too-slender wrist might as well be walking around wearing a sodden diaper! Everyone in the room is laughing at him for not realizing a 38mm watch is more his speed!”

There was this whole bizarre culture around watches, and YouTube was my window.

It was all ridiculous, of course, because you know what we all have to tell time these days? Phones. And they’re way more precise than any manual watch can be. Or it’s a smartwatch, which again, is not only more accurate than any mechanical watch but also receives texts and monitors your heartbeat.

Yet the thing is, as much as I laughed at the obsession, viewing all this watch content was normalizing it. Like, yes, I could LOLercopter all I wanted - but spending twenty minutes a day on watches quietly shifted the Overton window away from “these whackadoodles are obsessed with watches” to “these whackadoodles are too obsessed with watches.”

As in, “Watches are important, but these schmucks take it too far.”

And soon enough, I was looking at people’s wrists to see what they were wearing. (Answer: Either “nothing” or “a smartwatch,” but once a month or so I’d snag a glimpse of something truly impressive, like catching a $25k Pokemon.) Unbidden, I had opinions on which watch manufacturers were the “good” ones and which once were flailing. I slowed down when I walked by jewelry stores…

And that’s how the bad ideas take root. I remember having some legitimate qualms with The Last Jedi - a film that took bold swings, not all of which paid off, but I liked its ambition even as I didn’t appreciate what it did to my boy Luke.

I also remember YouTube going, “So - you hate Last Jedi, riiiiight?”

I didn’t watch the videos because they were, mercifully, by folks I had correctly marked as right-wing choads - but if I had, I could easily see my Overton window shifting from:

“Wow, these folks feel way too betrayed at how Rian Johnson portrayed Luke Skywalker”

To:

“These folks have a point about the way Rian Johnson betrayed them.”

The main lesson to learn about Holocaust Denial is that giving anything attention in any way gives it credence. You can say all you want that you’re gonna destroy these factless bozos in a debate - but having them seated at the debate table makes it seem like there’s an argument to be had.

And YouTube is extremely good at giving someone a seat at your table. All you have to do is view the right videos. The context these videos provide will be normalized - you’ll go from “These fans feel too betrayed” to “But they do have a point in being betrayed” to “I guess Kathleen Kennedy did ruin parts of my childhood”…

Yet never will the fundamental question of “Is making an artistic choice you don’t like really a betrayal?” arise.

Yet that’s what videos do: They seethe and bubble with unquestioned assumptions. Movies owe you - you personally - satisfaction upon watching them is a message buried in 90% of any video expressing fandom anger. If you’re not careful, you’ll slurp down that framing and ignore salient facts like Sometimes movies aren’t made for you and People can intend to please you and fail and the ultimate truth, criticism that starts and ends with “I didn’t like it, so it has no artistic merit” isn’t actually criticism, it’s just a gut reaction without any intellectual content.

Likewise, you can start watching a couple of videos on Hey, dudes, here’s some advice to help you get your life together! and quickly slide down the ego-shredding log-flume of If you had only followed this advice exactly you would have 100% had success, and anyone who doesn’t have 100% success is too stupid to follow the instructions.

YouTube will quietly reframe your reality, bit by bit, because the people who make the videos build that reality. They focus on the bits they think are important, like watches. They leave out the bits that don’t occur to them are worth discussing, like whether an entire (beautiful!) industry designed around catering to financial excess is maybe not the healthiest consumer habit to encourage.

And in most cases, it doesn’t matter if you participate ironically. The Internet is rife with old, dyed-in-the-wool racists who once rolled their eyes as they made patently ridiculous black jokes and fat chick jokes, but never realized that the joke itself carries a payload. Every joke about how lazy minorities are or how stupid women are embeds an assumption that seeps.

Hell, the point is this: I was viewing these watch videos ironically. And now?

I own a watch.

This is not a $25k watch. It’s a gift from my Mom, a $975 Christmas/birthday present to remember her by because all the other kids and grandkids are getting her old jewelry when she passes, and I wanted something from her that I could have while she was still alive. And in terms of bringing happiness, it works. The Chemin des Tourelles’ smoked-crystal skeletal mechanism, which shows the little cogs ticking along right in plain view, brings me a deep satisfaction.

But even now, occasionally, I think, “Wow, I really did want that Cocktail Time Seiko Negroni watch, it would be easier to read in dim light” or “Ooof, that new Tissot line is clean.”

That urge did not exist as of the beginning of 2025. And I have that rogue addiction under control, mostly, because I’m not spending another $400 when I have a beautiful watch already.

But the desire has been implanted. Even though it started as mockery.

Even though I thought I was smarter.

You probably aren’t either.