Come on, YouTube.

You used to be a place where I could sensibly browse for videos. Now you offer me a few topics and "Recommended for You" shit. I loved when there were 15 pages of 'most viewed today' videos, and you didn't creep my video history to tell me what to watch. Every one-off video I watch when I'm logged in now means I get a bunch more recommended and have to go all over the place in search of something original.

Oh, for Me?

"Most viewed" is too archaic, apparently. I can only watch what you want. Sure, there used to be all kinds of segregated sections of videos, and lots of things were hard to find, and there was pretty much always a bunch of bullshit. You always hyped the worst things based on the metric of how popular they were. I didn't care. I knew there was always an unbiased list of worldwide views. People gamed that system all the time but it generally brought me joy and decent videos. There used to be a front page where unsorted videos could be browsed according to whether they were recently posted, most views, most liked, most subscriptions. Y'all remember that? That was awesome. There was a 50/50 chance, every day, of finding something new and either interesting or funny, or just completely strange – no searching, just actual, lazy, unguided browsing.

You still got the search bar. If you got rid of it you'd be Web 3.0, of course: the era in which all the internet, like a modern game, plays itself. You redesigned a bunch of times. I never saw the reason for it, but I'm not a capitalist so my opinion doesn't matter for shit. I realize people need money to make things 'better' and the internet is hugely profitable. But your reconstruction wasn't for the better. If I can't see ~100 of the day's most viewed videos then what's the point? You want me to play the game your way, but there's not that many channels worth subscribing to, no matter how many of them can waste my time more or less enjoyably.

It's not about me anymore, it's about You. I understand why I can't find any television show ever made anymore. That was never going to last. I just want to actually browse. I mean I want to see a large variety of things in one place arranged logically, not according to metaterms or what's trending or what you think I should watch. I used to be able to do this, to find new, unlisted, unhyped things every day, but now I feel blind. I get 'trending' instead of 'most viewed' and it's just plain frustrating that there's no way to arrange things logically anymore.

You're like a giant focus group now, YouTube. Except they're all yes-men and cronies, and they're crowding me into a small room, and there's no window, so all I smell is their terrible coffee breath, and all I hear is their terrible opinions about what's good, and it's dark, and I don't want to have Minecraft videos recommended to me. 2010 is over, YouTube.

Maybe I'm a bad internet browser. Maybe I get frustrated about nothing, and I just don't know how to navigate your many avenues properly, and you still offer a 'most views' section, and I'm just crazy for not getting to it. I hope that's the case, because then I'd have a reason to have a bit of faith in you, and it would have been me who was blind. Not you blinding me. I don't think I'm crazy. I think you changed for the lamest, like you've always been doing, and if this is the future of the internet then good luck with it. We both know I'm not the center of the universe, and playing some terrible algorithmic joke to make it seem so is unimpressive and creepy. I want options, and less of this Mickey Mouse horse shit.

I know that much of the internet wants to know every last thing about what I do so they can further reduce my purview and essentially control what I see, do, and buy. Nationalism online is already an old story.  I don't want or need that kind of reduced outlook, and their methods are increasingly obvious. The worst part is that I couldn't even put a date on YouTube's last upgrade, but essentially it was the day the videos died. At least there's still a search bar.

This Moment's Most Hypeable Movie

Out of nowhere I see this movie trailer on YouTube. It's about the David Mitchell novel. There was one part of it I have read, the futuristic cyper-punk dystopia, which I thought was pretty sharp on a few levels, both as genre fiction and social observation. So the trailer, to me, makes the film look like it's the next Inception. Except potentially more confusing.

So Tom Hanks is in this movie, they've got 'Outro' by M83 playing in the trailer, and the words "EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED" show up on screen at one point  – really exciting stuff. In a five minute trailer I've seen a bunch of stuff out of the movie. They've referenced a bunch of concepts: metempsychosis (this one's about to trend, trust me), love, action, dialogue, narrative exposition... if you watch the trailer you will discern a dozen more. Considering the nature of the trailer, I wonder if I've seen a condensed version, which also makes me wonder, taking the unfinished book into account, if it's going to be a must-see.

It sounds like the sort of achingly metaphysical and deep movie that will keep people thinking until they reach their cars or have walked for a half hour. It definitely looks cool, and you can forgive any foreseeable cliches and laziness by the sheer variety of settings. It just seems like the trailer generously lays the movie out and, really, how hard is it to pair the movie with a neat little conceptual trailer, even if it has to be half as long?

It's got me thinking all existentially, even at this moment, and for me this is the most hypeable moment of this particular upcoming film release. Really there's always a reason to cheer when a book is turned into a movie, or concerning movies anything that's not a sequel, prequel, remake, or franchise reboot. I just wonder if Cloud Atlas will suffer in the same way Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did.

Anyways it's a cool trailer. It starts out with ethereal music and then kicks into more tense music and then goes insane. Dudes on horses, clones in a future dystopia, inspiring quotes. Then an explosion and a moment of silence and M83 and some more inspiring material. It's hard to resist, and in just a few months we get to see if it meets or exceeds expectations.

YouTube Again?

Today the 'Most Viewed' feature on YouTube showed only two pages of videos. For people like me, who usually start at page 10 and work backwards, or who don't visit the site every 2 hours, this is an unmitigated disaster.

So far as innovation goes, this is another case of walking backwards. There's the odd day when the #1 most viewed video is actually decent, interesting, or informative, but that doesn't actually happen enough to warrant having only two pages, which end on a depressing but not unexpected note:

33 most viewed videos and, yeah, that's all we get now. I guess. I hope this is simply due to some updating or other work, because it's downright shitty. I thought it was bad enough when I had to click an extra time for the charts because of the 'Videos from around the Web' feature – seriously you think I come to YouTube to watch videos on other video sites? I go to YouTube to see if there's anything interesting or redeeming going on, and more often than not I am disappointed.

On YouTube there used to be 100+ chances for a lazy man to find something, anything to revive his faith in the world, with maybe 5 mouse clicks. Now it takes 100+ clicks to find 5 chances for amusement, information, or decent nonsense. And people game that system all the time. If you have an account, don't you ever wonder why all these unsolicited users want to be your friend?

Youtube's Movie Section Back Online

I was on YouTube today, more or less wasting time, when I discovered the movie section was back online. They took it down a number of months ago, and I was wondering where it went. Have no fear: Slacker is still available. Many of you no doubt remember using the movie section during periods of extreme boredom and lassitude, and its return is both a blessing and a curse. First: lots of the movies are of middling quality and may not hold your interest. You may have to force yourself to watch some of the movies in their entirety. This is alright if you consider watching bad movies a type of humorous sport, but if you have limited time, no sense of humor, or are otherwise a tight-assed nincompoop, it's best to stay away from the YouTube movie section unless your beloved critics give you the 'Okay'. Or, you know what? Just drive to the movieplex and spare your bandwidth.

But everyone knows that the best deals on YouTube are the movies you'd otherwise have to buy. That's right. Pirated movies on YouTube. Recently I watched Dune, and I'd like to post about the experience, since I've already delivered the news in a concise, informative, yet irreverent manner.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Takes in This an Interest

My unaccountably small audience, YouTube has become self-aware!

You can imagine how painful the internet is for anyone who is not YouTube or Facebook. Go ahead, imagine, and I bet it feels good. That's good pain right there. Wait! This is a disaster! In my bombastic, semi-Colbert-semi-internerd style, I warn you that this new self-inflating digital economy is actually a bubble, and may burst!

I just made that discovery, when I was as usual researching the decline of my era on the internet, on YouTube itself. I realized that my sources could be improved a little, but more importantly I learned that:

No wise body on earth can watch the next two complete videos in sequence. I have prepared them as a perfect deathtrap. To even attempt to complete the watching of either (let alone both) will probably result in an exploded head, internet's Homestar Runner-style. I watched a bit of either, and I'm not going to review the experience here – YouTube's comment sections, here I come!– but this is basically the sort of challenge that is a long, subtle joke about the world right now. What makes it a challenge is not finishing it, even, but comprehending the exact style of your death this entails.

The first sequence in this challenge will serve, at most institutions, as an introduction to internet politics.

Now, the second is an advanced choice, doubles as internet politics 1102, and is a reckless move on my part; I feel a certain duty to the internet so am forced to post it in sequence, with a long introduction link sentence.

In an alternative YouTube Video Sequence, you may laugh harder – but you will learn less, and your mind will be less damaged. Feel free to comment about your general sense of dread, bigoted sense of superiority, or experience with the challenge! As a scientist, I may be able to make some use of your otherwise pointless generosity.