82. one month without YouTube

Have you tried to avoid YouTube? It's fiendishly difficult. The pack I run with spends a lot of time online, and they're often firing out links and uploading vids. So I was a little asocial with my YouTube fast. Beyond that, on the world wide web every third strand has some YouTube clip embedded on the page with commentary about this thing you've supposedly watched now. It was like walking in half way through the conversation, but this is happening online where you're supposed to be able to hunt down what you missed. For a month I was generally uninformed.

Technically I didn't make it. I listened to the audio of one clip because I was looking for the line "You are not like sand and that is why I love you." The most hilarious pick up line in the history of film making, right? I was hunting for it and wondering why it was nowhere, and this clip hinted that it had the goods. (The line doesn't exist, incidentally. Poor Padme. I thought there was this one reason for her to like Anakin, but as it happens I was mistaken. Her affection for him was in fact groundless.)

Also there was that movie I watched through YouTube. It was easier than waiting for it to download as a torrent. (Pitiful excuse, but I'm just so happy to have found one that I'm trotting it out with confidence. It cuts all kinds of mustard.)

And finally a friend required introduction to Brian Regan, funny man extraordinaire. So a crowd of us ran through a big string of clips. Group setting. They were on YouTube, not me. I don't regret it at all, and I'm not going to call my explanation an excuse because I have nothing to excuse.

That was my month. I don't know if I liked it. Here I thought I'd buy myself a bundle of extra time, because I'm not checking out Britain's Got Talent for hours at a time anymore. As it turns out, when I'm not vegging on YouTube I'm stagnating in some novel instead. No measurable benefit gleaned. Ah, well, call it a mostly successful exercise in self restraint, if you will. Even if that was the only upside to the fast I'd do it again. Except not. Next exercise in self restraint: item number 83. I am the Early Bird.