Note: This blog post is from my old Blogger site, before I switched over to tadukoo.github.io. As such, there may be references to the old blog rather than this current one.

At the beginning of the day on March 11th, I was subscribed to 69 YouTube channels. That’s not some sort of sick joke, that’s the actual amount, and I didn’t plan it. Now I’m only subscribed to 14. I got rid of 55 subscriptions! So what happened?

I realized how much of my life was being wasted by watching YouTube videos. Admittedly, it’s not entirely bad to watch a video now and then, but I was watching them for the vast majority of my free time. As a Christian especially, that’s bad. From a secular viewpoint, you’re simply wasting your life. But from a Christian viewpoint, you’re spending so much time on pointless videos when you could spend at least part of that time with God.

Back in July (wow, it’s been really long), I decided to do a 1 year limited YouTube fast. It was limited because there were certain reasons I could watch videos. Specifically, there were 10 exceptions. They were:

  1. Video is required by college, work, etc. (of course)
  2. Video is shown in a public place (e.g. church, work, etc.) (again, duh)
  3. Someone wants me to download the video for them (e.g. to show at church) (makes sense)
  4. Someone talks about it or wants me to watch it, unless it's a series, in which case only the 1st episode unless another exception applies (now we're getting complicated)
  5. Video includes information that I can use for what God wants me to do. (Now this one was because I believe God wants me to make YouTube videos for Him and that a bunch of them require research.)
  6. Video is on my channel. (Mainly because watching myself isn't that interesting to me, so it doesn't matter. Also to help with making YouTube videos if I missed a point for a video or something.)
  7. Video is Christian. (Point of a fast is to spend time with God, which can happen through videos)
  8. Video is a song. (Cause I love my music)
  9. Video is a trailer/teaser. (So I'm up to date on all the hip new features of life ... I mean games and movies and stuff I can't actually watch due to the fast)
  10. I can watch one video a day that doesn't fall under the above exceptions as long as it's 30 minutes or less. (So I can still watch some vids, but not too much, ya know? Essentially, I didn't think I could stand not watching any of the videos I normally did, or that I'd need to slowly phase out of them)

I’m not sure how long I actually followed this fast, but I remember within the first month I was breaking exception 10 and watching more than one video per day and sometimes watching videos longer than 30 minutes.

Before long, I was back to watching a ton of videos all the time. The problem wasn’t fixable simply by saying I’d do it and keeping my old setup. This is why I deleted 55 subscriptions over the past 6 days. I needed to get rid of the temptation entirely. I’ve even hit “not interested” on videos from the people and chosen “I’m not interested in this channel - ‘'", so they won't appear in my recommended videos anymore.

I started by removing the main ones I watched, thinking about the jokes they made that aren’t right. Then I went and found channels that had stopped uploading and deleted them. Then I deleted ones I haven’t watched in a long time and couldn’t remember. Pretty soon, I was coming up with any reason to get rid of any that aren’t specifically Christian. Today I narrowed it down to 5 “secular” channels, and I kept the 9 Christian subscriptions I had.

I’ve also been going through my million and one bookmarks and deleting most of those, but that’s another problem. We’ll have to see how it goes with me having less YouTube subscriptions. For those who share in the faith, pray for me that I may not fall back into this temptation. I pray that none of you fall into it as well.

Tags:

Beliefs, Christian, YouTube