Casual Conversation

5,500 hours in Team Fortress 2 and over 6k in Guild wars 2. I do not regret any of it. Had lots of fun and even met my wife in gw2.

You only lose time when you do things you do not enjoy.

Realizing you are not really enjoying something is a whole other discussion ofc.

I am interested in how to get this data cause I want to see how bad I have been.

How much of this was music and podcasts?

If it makes you feel any better, I have approximately 14000 hours in eve online, between 2006 and 2014.

That is 30% of my waking hours. Every day. For 8 years.

I think you are too harsh, it is common to play videos in the background while doing other tasks, I do it while cleaning, while doing laundry and other chores, I also watch YT on the bus to and from work.

I don't believe that should be counted toward time only spent consuming YT videos.

I would only count that time at 20-30% if I had to.

I don't say this to downplay your experience, but as a more positive way to look at it. Maybe you couldn't have come to this realization without having gone through this. Maybe you didn't waste your time, and you didn't miss out on anything, because you were doing what seemed right at the time and now you've learned from it. You wouldn't have this new clarity without having gone through the darkness.

I mean I think it’s easy to get sucked into a passive entertainment experience. I grew up with regular old television and it’s kind of the same deal. And lort knows I’m guilty of YouTubing quite a bit - but for the most part I just kinda have it on the back ground while I’m doing other unproductive things - like playing chess or my phone or doomscrolling lol. Anyways good on you for realizing and sounds like you’re gonna get on a more productive path!

In the last two years of watching stuff on Youtube, I've learned about mechanical calculators, refrigeration, analog video formats, primitive video games, car restoration, historical cuisine, modern cooking, nightmare-fuel sea creatures... that's not even counting the philosophical, gender-related, or purely comedic videos. Or all the music I find, mmmostly while drunk. (Sober me sticks with a big dumb pile of MP3s.)

Ooh, Primitive Technology just posted.

To be fair, human memory works that way.

I don’t remember most of the conversations I’ve had with people, like, what they said, what I said etc. All of that gets compressed, summarized and distorted in my brain. Usually that summary includes the general vibe of the person, and maybe one embarrassing thing I said.

Time flies because you had something to occupy your mind with. Had you been bored out of your mind, counting minutes, and watching the paint peel off the walls, time would have felt very slow.

However, none of this changes the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time on YT. I’m glad you came to realize that. This is the first step towards changing things.

Just wait until you hear about sleeping

It's not unreasonable to assume that I spend around 15 minutes on each video on average,

This is completely unreasonable lmao. I would bet the average is more likely to be 1 or 5 minutes, even if you watch a second of a video it is keep on the history and that's is going to weight down the average a lot.

The trick with YouTube is what they show you is based on the videos you've watched in the past year. So you have to delete stuff from your watched videos history, and curate it down to what you want to be influenced by.

I actively delete everything from my watched list but art videos, lots happier.

God damn dude

Bet my number is high as fuck too, but I'm almost never actually WATCHING the content, so it's not time specifically wasted by YouTube thank god

I was able to download a list of every video I’ve ever watched since mid-2020

That right there should worry you just as much as the number of videos you watched.

That's dystopian to the max.

Thanks! I'm turning off lemmy now.

YouTube hosts a lot of stuff that I find really useful. I mean, there's dreck on there, sure, but that's true of the Web as a whole.

Like, okay. I have read several books on the Battle of Midway. If you really want detail, then that's where you're going to need to go. However, books -- and a lot of video -- don't constantly show maps, to provide an understanding of what's going on from a geography standpoint.

Montemayor, who has a small number of military history videos up, has the best capsule summary I've seen if you want a high-level to come up to speed quickly. It is vastly better than the material that I've seen on television. There is definitely material with higher production values, but in terms of what you're going to learn from spending about two hours, highlighting the critical factors in the battle. I think that it's pretty hard to beat this. Consistently shows what's going on on a map, and reflects current understanding.

• The Battle of Midway 1942: Told from the Japanese Perspective (1/3)

• The Battle of Midway: Hiryu's Counterstrike (2/3)

• The Battle of Midway: The American Perspective and The Strategic Consequences of the Battle (3/3)

I mostly find and listen to music I would otherwise never have been exposed to.

or tutorials on things I'm actually learning.

it's easy to fall down a brain rot rabbit hole if you're using it for entertainment instead of education.

The remaining 99.9% of them were just noise.

any recommendations? j/k I know what you mean.

If you want to do new things but feel a lack of motivation maybe you need to just start. Sometimes motivation comes after action. Take a few baby steps. After a few you will want to see the activity or project though and even polished. Provided you don't have depression or something like it.

Similarly if you really are not enjoying a new hobby you are trying don't be afraid to drop it either.

i love youtube and watch a ton of it. but i think a ton of my hours would be hours that i fell asleep to it. i’m not sure how accurate it would be for me to