I absolutely love YouTube. I think it is one of the most influential platforms of our generation. It has probably the world’s largest base of knowledge ranging from adding two numbers to a detailed tutorial on how to assemble an AK-47 in under a minute. I love it for the simple reason: It provides value to me. It adds value in my life by presenting the creativity of the best of the best artists called YouTubers.

But, as you can guess from the title, I am done with it, or at least, one part of it: Shorts. Launched as a competitor to TikTok’s endless scrolling bonanza, Shorts is an absolute time-kill. I find myself opening Shorts out of the blue, almost subconsciously, and I do not like that. Today, I spent almost two hours scrolling through the one-minute long videos on Shorts. That means, I watched at least 120 videos. And what did I learn from it? Nothing, really. It added absolutely zero value to my life, except for the fact that people will ask you to wait till the end of the video for the big reveal. Why? Why do we need to ask people to wait until the end for the video which itself is merely a minute long? What is it about our brains that is changing because of the consumption of the short-form content?

I don’t have a scientifically proven answer to this, but I know that I do not like doing something mindlessly for long. It makes me feel hollow, and weak. It makes me feel like there’s nothing left to do in life. Hence, here’s a GIF of me deleting the YouTube app from my phone…

You may be thinking, “Hey, he still has Instagram! Why is he being so preachy about deleting YouTube?” Look, I know that Instagram is exactly like, if not worse than, YouTube. I have turned off all notifications on Instagram, including DMs. I only open it once a day to check if I have any messages from my friends and family. If not, I simply close it and continue on with my day. I want to uninstall it, but unlike YouTube, it has social features which force me to keep the app on my phone. I tried using the web app, but the UX of it is borderline terrible. Hence, the app. Don’t worry though, there will come a time when every one of my friends would have jumped ship from Instagram, and I would have deleted my account from it. Until then, I guess I am keeping one more annoying thing on my phone.

Thanks for reading! Have a great one.

[UPDATE] So, I did delete my Instagram account and I am free of all vices in the world! Just kidding. Got a long way to go, but off to a good start.