The Blackberry Walk

My personality has always tended towards obsession. To curiosity. To over-consumption. I love to eat, always have since my earliest days, so my mother says; but it isn't a life-long love of food I'm to talk about today. No, it is not the gluttony of the mouth, but rather the gluttony of the eyes: an addiction common to each and every one of us today, that being media addiction. I've likely talked about similar topics umpteen times, like some hectoring parson, but on this blog I write about things on my mind, whatever I've been thinking about of late. And oh so often is this issue, this addiction, on my mind. I think of what people of the past must've spent their time doing, and I'm at a loss. How I my spend free time, from my youngest years, has been to spend it in front of the glowing rectangle, and I struggle to imagine a different life. I would liken my introduction to my drug of choice, YouTube, to when Mephistopheles meets Faust in the 1926 silent film adaptation of Goethe's Faust. An esoteric reference, I know, but it's an image which has stuck with me. In this version Faust's village is suffering with plague, and Mephistopheles offers Faust the power to heal his kin in exchange for his compact. Thus was the beginning of Faust's powers, powers which would slowly erode his grip on himself. My 'fall' was not as dramatic - of course, no demons involved (at least no visible pact-making demons) - but follows a similar pattern. I was nine years old, and I had a crisis: I was playing Bowser's Inside Story on my DS Lite, and I was stuck on a carrot eating mini-game. I remember it vividly, spending what felt like weeks trying to click on all the little carrot pieces in time to beat the puzzle, but to no avail. I remember trying everything, even in desperation using a Lego brick to try and increase my clicks per second. This of course didn't work. Likely, it was soft-locked because of a bug in the rom I was playing on my R4 card; though I wouldn't have known this at that tender age. And thus, in my irritation and agony, I sought a walkthrough on YouTube. I remember it so clearly: I found a walkthrough for Bowser's Inside Story, and watched up to the point where they play the carrot clicking puzzle. A puzzle he clears with ease. I sighed, realising I wasn't able to finish this game; but also realising I enjoyed watching the walkthrough quite a lot. And so, I watched the remainder. There was no dialogue, no banter, nothing, and I spent the next long while watching him finish the game. Then I watched the same guy play through the prequel to the game, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, from start to finish. Then in time I watched far more, finding the YouTuber 'Chugaaconroy' - oddly at the same time as friends from school found him also - and I set about binging his whole back catalogue. By some point, I had watched a Let's Play of every Zelda game, having not played a single one. Watching the game for me became more enjoyable than playing it. It was 2010 I believe that I first found out about Minecraft, and soon after that Terraria, which had Let's Players releasing footage to promote the game prior to launch. The Yogscast. TotalBiscuit, rest his soul. These were the people who defined my childhood. Not television; I didn't watch any TV shows, just YouTube. And though I played Terraria far more than I watched, Minecraft for myself and for many was a game incredibly well suited for watching. I spent much of my youth like many others watching Minecraft YouTube. Big channels, like the Yogscast, and small Let's Players with, what I discovered looking back a few years ago, only a few thousand subscribers despite making hundreds of videos. Where I found these channels, heavens knows. Wherever that may have been, these videos were crack. Then came 2015/2016. Prior to this, I was a little young to understand GamerGate unfold before me - though I saw it around me, I didn't really get what was going on - so it was only then, in 2015, that I found YouTube politics. Alongside the educational YouTube I was consuming, channels like VSauce and other science and history channels, politics YouTube was a particularly processed and unhealthy part of my entertainment diet. This itch has never really left me. It is an open wound I cannot help but itch, to paraphrase St. Augustine. So between watching educational YouTube, politics, and, in my lowest moments, e-celeb drama tripe, YouTube to this day has been my vice. In moments of boredom, I click the little button at the top and let it decide, or at the very least curate, a selection of videos from which to pick. I pick from the menu, and have my mind unwind and unravel, watching the phantasmagoria of the screen, as if I were one of those fat people in Wall-E. The unwinding is a point to unpack. Because though it feels like a kind of unwinding, a sense of relaxation, to the mind it is anything but. In ordinary consciousness, it is harder to discern, since your faculties are wanting to be used; but when you are feeling under the weather, tucked up in bed, watching videos and paying attention becomes really quite difficult. There, coughing and snotting, you realise how much more at peace the mind is untethered from a computer screen. Though YouTube may numb the mind it is incredibly stimulating, which is unsurprising when you consider it's channelling pungent information, visuals, and audio straight to the mind. It is a strange form of relaxation. A kind where you seem to lose yourself a little, your soul sucked out through the 'you-tube', through a constant stimmed-up state. I've read it crassly put as a kind of gooning, an endless stimulation without release, keeping you fuzzy-minded. This can't be good. A relaxation crafted from excitation and its numbing is a paradox of sorts, and cannot be healthy. I've always known this, and have attempted to kick my YouTube addiction at various times in my life. Every year for some years now, I give up YouTube over Lent. This works, despite real itchings and cravings for video content. Always, after dinner, I sit down to relax to a few videos. Sometimes from then onwards, I continue watching until I go to bed. But over Lent, without YouTube there to pair with a full belly, I just felt rather drained - similar to caffeine withdrawal - where my body is expecting a rush, but that rush is not provided. Naturally, after Lent there's that post-fast afterglow where you feel as if you're in charge of your addiction, then, only a week or two later, you return to old fetid habits. There are many ways to tackle an addiction. When I mention acts like going complete cold turkey to colleagues at work, they think me mad. "You should just cut down instead," many have said. This may work for some, but never for me. Cutting down, on say sugar, becomes a slippery slope, where exception after exception is carved out for every little circumstance until, in short time, any such pretence of cutting down is lost. The alternative I've tried is cold turkey, but this too has proven ineffective. It only lasts for so long, never permanent, because there is some good content on YouTube that I'd be sad to forever forgo; and temporary fasts fail to instil any lasting restraint. Therefore this time, in my quest to fight this addiction and reclaim some of my life back, I've tried a new strategy, using some wisdom from my mother. I remember, long ago, my mother telling me how you wean a child off of a dummy. When a child grows too old to be sucking on a dummy, you don't take it away - then they'll cry for it, long for it, and want it all the more - but instead you snip off the tip of the dummy. No longer then will the child get any satisfaction from the dummy. It'll have a coarse tip, and be unpleasant on the tongue for the little lad. Therefore, each time the child wants his dummy, he'll suck on it to find it no longer gives him the calm it once did, no longer delivers the feeling it once delivered. He grows not in longing for his dummy, but in it he merely becomes disinterested. This has been my plan for YouTube, and I've achieved this in a few simple steps using uBlock. Any adblocker will work. What you must do is delete any part of YouTube which recommends you new videos or suggested videos. This is in three places, the home screen, the related videos section below a video, and in the recommended videos which appear once a video ends.¹ If you delete these HTML sections, and block them from view, you too will be able to snip the tip of the dummy. In blocking these panes, what you'll achieve is a break in the cycle. YouTube is still available, every video you could've previously watched is right there, only now YouTube won't keep serving you more and more videos. Gone is the yiayia, the Greek grandmother, serving you plate after plate of food, expecting you to eat to bursting (an experience I am well acquainted with). Once you've had your fill, you are done. I've noticed significant changes in my habits after having made these tweaks. I still, like Pavlov's dog, refresh my YouTube page after dinner, but now it comes up blank. There's a slight sadness each time, since the easiest, 'kinetic' option has been taken away from me, so I have to go for a 'thermodynamic' option, to co-opt some scientific language. Instead, I look at my list of subscriptions and find videos there. Creators whose content is good - I subscribed, after all - but whose content I haven't watched because it wasn't the easiest, most appetising option. I've given up the junk food for something more refined. And though these options aren't as immediately tasty to numb my mind to, I come out feeling more full, more fulfilled. Sometimes, nothing on my subscription list interests me, and there is no YouTube to watch. Somehow my mind is tricked into thinking that YouTube, a site which was only recently a cornucopia of content, has now been exhausted, and that interest must now be sought elsewhere. I then turn to the stack of books I've been meaning to read for years, and read those instead. Again, even less junk-foody, and thus even more fulfilling than a healthier YouTube video. This is good. This is a small change, three lines in a config file, which has stopped my spiralling deeper into the slopzone, and instead set me spiralling up into the heavens. Otium cum dignitate, as the Romans said. In short then, the best way to counter an addiction to drain it of its satisfaction. This, of course, won't work in all circumstances. A drug addiction likely cannot be handled this way. But for small niggling habits which suck the vigour from you, snipping the dummy's tip, and making the habit unsatisfactory is a successful cure. A middle way of sorts between cutting down and cold turkey. And I hope, dear reader, such an insight will help you to overcome your weaker habits. 1. Here are the uBlock filter rules I used to achieve this:

www.youtube.com###secondary www.youtube.com##.ytd-two-column-browse-results-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope www.youtube.com##.ytp-fullscreen-grid-stills-container