Caution: first world problems ahead.

For what it’s worth I am aware that YouTube has a slew of problems far more severe than what I go into here. I exaggerate my annoyance anyhow. That’s kind of what you do on a blog, though, right?

 

So, as it happens, a lot of people play, or at least have played through one time, The Adventures of Square. It’s really cool to see new videos and reviews continuing to go up on the youtubes even if it’s more of a person playing through just the first level. It’s enjoyable for the most part, or at the very least interesting to watch different people’s commentary and play styles.

I have to keep up with this sort of thing, so naturally I’m typing “adventures of square” into YouTube virtually once a fortnight.

So pray tell, YouTube…

…why in God’s name are you so insistent on me watching this video?

1dIt shows up at the end of just about every single video I watch, and has done for maybe a month or even two now. It is “Recommended for me”.

Yeah, sure – YouTube thinks it’s relevant because it has “adventures” in the title. But does it have any other words I used? Maybe “the” and “of”, at a pinch – but I thought those were excluded from searches anyhow. Seriously, this could not be any less relevant or tangentially linked. I don’t have any interest in knowing which Onederboy that is or why he’s seemingly naked. Whatever zayny hijinks “One Direction” get up to, I’m pretty positive they are inferior to Square’s. Sorry, Mark Parsons, but I am simply not your target audience.

So surely YouTube has a way I can remove this video from my daily life (and it is that frequent by this point)?

Hmm. Well.

The YouTube homepage has that “recommended” section where it shows me stuff I might be interested in, and also gives me the option to state that I’m not interested. Fair enough. But that dreaded 1D toon doesn’t seem to appear in the ten shown there. I can click “Show more”, but that only brings up another… 14 (okay…?) videos, and then the button reverts to “Show fewer”. And the 1D video still doesn’t show up here – the problem being that I want it to so I can click “Not Interested”, and hopefully erase it from my Recommended bar forever. But apparently it just doesn’t want to show up.
recommended

Clicking onto the Recommended tab at the top is nowhere near helpful, either – in fact less so, somehow. Because not only does the “Not interested” button not even appear as an option under this tab, but the list just seems to be showing me a bunch of videos I’ve already watched. Why is this site recommending me stuff I’ve already watched of my own accord? Oh, look, it says it’s “Based on your Watch History”. Well, of course. It is my Watch History, essentially.

recommended2

And here’s another problem. I know that I can’t make the 1D vid recommendation go away by watching it (I wouldn’t anyway, the video is 30 sod-buggering minutes long). See, there’s a video right here which also is appearing with the same frequency on my sidebar, again as a recommended watch – one actually relevant to my interests, as it would happen – a nice review of Adventures of Square’s first episode release, by IcarusLives.

square

But, as YouTube seems to be incapable of comprehending, it doesn’t need to recommend the video to me because I’ve already watched it. In fact, I watched it months ago shortly after its upload, and did so again recently – all the way through, in fact, with the hope that I could make it begone. Sadly, no, there it is, perpetually beneath the gawking naked plonker, who constantly reminds me of the ineffable user-unfriendliness of YouTube’s desperately flawed systems.

1dbig

THE VOID ENCOMPASSES US ALL

Bah, at least Square is there. He’s an okay guy. Not like that bare-bodied “One Dimension” square gazing pathetically at me.

So is this 1D video just a part of my life now, or what? Simply because I had the temerity to type in the word “adventures” into the search bar? And when I think about it, a lot of people are going to be searching for that term because “The Adventures of” is about as common a prefix for upbeat video games or TV shows as can be imagined. Is this a bizarre viral marketing strategy? It certainly is behaving like a goddamn virus. Is this video a problem for anyone else?

Anyway, to end on a higher note, I might as well link to the Square video because it’s a damn good review by Mr. Icarus. I really should be posting about my game more often. If the game interests you, the website link is on the sidebar to the right of this post – and there’s no slack-jawed naked ignoramii on this sidebar, I can assure you.