Auspicious algorithms

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/11/2023 (1035 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s much to loathe about social media.

So much so that there are those who have no social-media footprint whatsoever: no Facebook profile, no LinkedIn page summarizing career triumphs — and let’s not get started on how much messier Twitter has become since Elon Musk took over and renamed it X.

However, almost everyone who owns a cellphone is part of the YouTube collective hive mind, and with every click on a cat video, a recorded moment from a concert or 10-minute rant from one of thousands of “influencers,” people let the Google-owned video-sharing platform learn what they like to watch.

It costs nothing, unless you choose an ad-free premium version. Treat it like a television channel, using a Google sign-on, and with every smash of the Like button or subscription to a channel you feed a personal algorithm.

Then wait for YouTube to surprise you with content you’d never thought you’d enjoy.

So for this edition of Don’t Sleep on This, here are some highlights from my Al-gorithm; if you like them, they’ll be part of your Your-gorithm too.

What movies and music do famous people enjoy?

There are thousands of people who have set up YouTube channels listing the music they like, in every genre imaginable.

No one should need someone else to tell them the music they listen to is cool. What is welcome is the opportunity to find out what your favourite artists listen to, what inspired them to pick up the guitar or play the first notes on a piano.

One good example is What’s in My Bag?, a show made by Amoeba (youtube.com/@amoeba), the huge Hollywood record store, which follows stars as they visit and talk about the records they like.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters digs obscure punk, for instance. Folk-fest favourites Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile pick records for each other, and Steve Earle likes Nirvana and Eminem as much as he does Waylon Jennings.

There are hundreds of other artists, famous and obscure, on the channel. Definitely worth a look.

The movie version of this comes from the Criterion Collection, the home-video company, which welcomes celebrities for its Closet Picks (youtube.com/@criterioncollection). It’s low-tech — one camera and a microphone — letting actors such as Michael Shannon gush over John Hurt’s performance in 1980’s The Elephant Man, Cate Blanchett ecstatically grab My Winnipeg by Guy Maddin and the Winnipeg filmmaker himself geek out on Criterion’s many obscurities.

You are what you watch

Keep plugging into YouTube and it will get to know what you like, sometimes before you even know it.

Sure, it sounds scary, but the app has steered me toward fascinating channels on a variety of subjects that get return visits for new episodes.

Among them are CityNerd (youtube.com/@CityNerd), an American urbanist’s take on the problems and promise in the cities we live in. Among the topics he’s introduced are stroads — Winnipeg has a bunch of them — and how drive-thrus make the places we live in worse, not better.

CinemaCities (youtube.com/@CinemaCities1978) is devoted to film noir and stars such as Sterling Hayden, Norma Desmond and Robert Ryan, among others. It includes an array of classic scenes of film history that are great reminders of how good movies can be.

Jomboy Media (youtube.com/@JomboyMedia) went from a podcast called Talkin’ Yanks to 1.81 million subscribers in five years, focusing on sports of all kinds. Networks wouldn’t dream of airing these foul-mouthed deep dives into sporting events, such as lip-reads of baseball managers screaming at umpires or crazy moments in events from around the world that might not necessarily be on your radar.

Finally, TimeGhost History (youtube.com/@TimeGhost) is in the midst of its World War Two series, a week-by-week documentation of the global conflict. On June 6 it launched a 24-hour retelling of D-Day in one-hour episodes that looked at the longest day in microscopic detail, including Canada’s soldiers landing on Juno Beach.

Its War Against Humanity side project is difficult, important viewing that focuses on unrelenting day-by-day details of the Holocaust, describing the systematic murder of six million Jews, one awful event at a time.

It’s one of YouTube’s most worthy documentary series, though the platform occasionally attempts to censor the channel’s use of horrifying archival images.

Never-ending lives

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of YouTube is that your favourite celebrity lives forever, owing to the seemingly bottomless selection of videos that have been uploaded since it began in 1995.

Friends star Matthew Perry’s recent death (far too young at age 54) undoubtedly sent fans to YouTube to rekindle old memories with favourite scenes, even though the 1990s sitcom seems to be available on every channel and streaming service.

When character actor Philip Baker Hall died in June 2022, he left behind a dazzling list of movie accomplishments, but the character most turned to was his rapid-fire portrayal of Mr. Bookman, a library detective from the sitcom Seinfeld, grilling Jerry Seinfeld about a book he’d failed to return years earlier.

Sure, you can enjoy full episodes of Seinfeld and other classics on TV and streaming services, but channels such as Seinfeld Scenes (youtube.com/@TheSeinfeldScenes) distil the show into its funniest sequences and dispense with the dross.

The golden age of television talk shows ended when David Letterman, Craig Ferguson and Conan O’Brien left network TV. Want proof? Type the name Don Giller into YouTube and you’ll find the No. 1 collector of Letterman’s television appearances; his archives are so expansive, Letterman’s production company sought him out for videos it didn’t have.

When someone famous dies, Giller sometimes collects all that person’s appearances on Letterman’s shows as a tribute. He released more than an hour’s worth of Norm MacDonald’s appearances on NBC’s Late Night and CBS’s The Late Show after the comedian’s death in 2021, from his first-ever television appearance, May 9, 1990, on Late Night to being the final standup comedian to perform on The Late Show, exactly 25 years later.

It’s not just TV superstars who live forever on YouTube, though.

Ordinary people have uploaded thousands of videos of other ordinary people on YouTube that have become lasting memories.

One such out-of-the-blue moment happened the other day when a history of the Burton Cummings Theatre popped up while I was surfing YouTube.

It was produced by Danny Schur, the producer of Winnipeg General Strike movie musical Stand!, for Doors Open Winnipeg in 2022.

The 41/2-minute look back at the beloved concert venue (wfp.to/dannyschur) also brought back fond memories of one of Winnipeg’s biggest supporters, whose enthusiasm has been sorely missed since he died of brain cancer in April at age 56.

Footage like this proves YouTube is more than just a home for feline hijinks.

alan.small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall

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