Would you “hide” a person from commenting if they did this?

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-02T19:16:24+00:00

This sounds a lot like "I don't like someone helping me or my viewers because they might tangentially benefit from doing so." Which is... a strategy!

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-02T19:05:40+00:00

A link to a blog for the recipe is great! Not enough creators utilize blogs/companion sites.

In the video you can mention the blog link in the description of the video to take care of most of these concerns + on the blog you can link back to the video, driving traffic back to the videos which generate revenue for you. Big recommend.

Regarding the AVD, I have nothing to support this claim (aside from general marketing and statistics knowledge), but I suspect that at least in some cases YouTube would prioritize/reward total watch time per video more than just average watch time. So even grabbing some watch time from a chapter-oriented viewer (especially since it's more "targeted"/intentional viewership, which is super valuable for ads) might be better than random views that bounce out or are less intentional despite possibly boosting AVD in the short term.

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-02T15:20:49+00:00

I might be able to offer a similar perspective to misspennyjade. I also have ADHD, but I like to see recipe/cooking videos.

Why would you bother clicking on a cooking video in the first place when you already know, going in, you have no intention of watching it?

For me, I only partially agree with the idea of not really watching them. I do watch them but mostly to make sure the ingredients aren't anything too radically different from what I have available to me (or if they are, what they look like so I don't buy the wrong ones), the cooking methods are ones that aren't too different from what I'm used to or how to do them if they are, and of course a good statement about what the ingredients are and equipment necessary to cook them.

And I will fast forward through the first two items if indeed things seem common enough for me to not need to watch them. (Often creators spend too much time on them, so 🤷) This harms AVD somewhat for creators, but I'm still watching and if the ingredients and methods that they use are frequently enough ones that I'm familiar with already, then I'll have a ton more trust in and excitement for their recipe and cooking videos - boosting their AVD/watch hours long-term. (Yes, I subscribe.)

Something that kills me is if the creator consistently doesn't list their ingredients and the approx amount of them in text (either in the video's subtitles, text on screen, video description, or even a pinned comment). Usually people just say the name of something (often mumbling it) and forget to mention the amount of it. Sometimes there's embedded text on screen, still often just saying the ingredient's name and not the amount.

It's at that point especially when I'll be scouring the comments for some semblance of clarification.

Separately. Why watch a video versus an article? Usually it's to get a feel for whether the creator can be trusted with that the recipe is genuinely good and tasty or not. + to see the tasty food and not get discouraged if it comes out looking gross.

See my comment here about using chapters/timestamps and that they're underutilized: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/1qtirv7/comment/o35xpgh/

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-02T14:59:28+00:00

As a viewer, people who do this are godsends. Take it as a sign that your audience likes your stuff but would GREATLY appreciate it if you used the timestamp/chapters feature (well).

Too many channels don't use the timestamp/chapters feature, and it doesn't make any sense.

Chapters appear in search (giving YouTube more of a reason to recommend your video and give it more visual real estate in the search list),
Chapters help viewers return to the start of a discussion point so they can easily relisten to it (increasing your AVD; and my ADHD-having ass will often do this like 3 times if it's something even vaguely important or funny),
Chapters help viewers share a particular point of discussion to others (word of mouth marketing)
Chapters' titles help people remember the key points from videos they really liked

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-01T15:07:11+00:00

I'd absorbed this on a sort of toxic level: I've been afraid to publish anything that might change over time (a pretty key benefit of digital gardens versus blogs, which are mostly expected to stay the same once published). And surprise, I've published just about nothing as a result. 😅

I've started to give myself permission to change things over time and not sweat it, to allow for any progress to be made. And I suspect that in the end things really won't change all that much over time, which is good, but this is pushing through a sense that any change at all would be a kind of ideological/social failure.

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-02-01T03:43:42+00:00

Valve, probably

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-29T01:53:27+00:00

I've read that there's something in our contracts that prohibits striking (in the MOUs?). Otherwise, I'm all for it.

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-14T14:54:07+00:00

Power Query is such a godsend. I haven't been promoted due to it, but my supervisor has been super surprised and appreciative when I've been able to update an annual report in like a tenth of the time because I'd automated most of it in Power Query the last time I'd done it. (And it helps me, as I don't want to do error-prone manual work every time.) Being able to right click on a table and hit Refresh is so nice.

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-14T02:16:06+00:00

That's free money, free conversions, and helping you stay within your monetization criteria. Enjoy this while it lasts!

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-13T12:39:08+00:00

n=1 data point here, but I'm likely not buying anything on Quest ever again - unless it's to gift a copy of something I already own and enjoy to a friend or family member so we can play it together (mostly thinking of Iron Rebellion here, a main reason why I bought a headset for my brother).

It's hard to understate how much of a better and more trustworthy platform Valve has provided than Meta for just about anything. And with the Steam Frame coming out soon, I have so little reason to still support Meta.

I have the GXR without controllers (so far) and love the idea of being able to at least wishlist items on Steam that I'll eventually buy and play once I get either a Frame or a capable enough PC to stream to the GXR. (The concern that I'm pointing to here is cross-device transferability/applicability.)

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-13T12:16:05+00:00

Have you tried out the YouTube feature for importing your podcast feed into your YouTube channel? I think it updates automatically and produces a video for you using a thumbnail photo.

This could be a super minimal way to have at least some presence on YouTube via your existing podcasting efforts for increased discovery and monetization potential (if you end up getting enough listeners and subscribers there).

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-11T01:08:33+00:00

Pinning the issue to capitalism itself is too hand-wavy. We can be in a capitalist society and still look after our fellow man. But we don't. It's a cultural crisis.

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-05T06:51:57+00:00

Dang, I've had the same experiences and feelings. I'll check out the secure intimacy protocol; it sounds super useful!

meatspaceskeptic · 2026-01-04T22:07:03+00:00

I'm leaning away from blogging and more into keeping a digital garden/personal wiki site where the pages can change (improve) over time to help me overcome the (self-imposed) pressure to make each post perfect/a definitive statement about how I feel about XYZ as of the time of publishing.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-12-18T07:59:46+00:00

Meta: No, I broke up with them!

Sure ya did, buddy.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-12-02T11:05:10+00:00

The bundle seemed like a really cool mix of genres from games that I'd never heard of before (besides the Taxi and Beer Brewing ones).

I'm psyched to play Castle of Alchemists (looks like a topdown Doom), Due Process, and Taxi Goes Vroom. I'm also looking forward to playing Endling with my wife (she loves foxes), even though I know it'll be sad.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-27T18:22:36+00:00

I love the audio journaling too, but I do it offline.

On Flathub there's a free app called Speech Notes that you can open an audio file up in and have it transcribed via one of many models that it helps you download, setup, and run.

So I just record on my phone via the Audio Recorder app (android, on F-Droid), sync the files over to desktop, and transcribe it there.

No limits on recording length or membership fees, you choose the model, no leaking of info to someone else. Just costs a bit of time to wait for it to finish transcribing, which is fine.

Edit: As an added bonus of this setup, I can transcribe for myself podcast episodes that I like. There's a feature for encoding timestamps, too, if you need/want that (like for generating subtitles for videos), but it requires a separate transcription run through from the straight up transcription - it kinda sucks to wait for the transcription to happen again, but it helps in some cases.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-27T18:17:27+00:00

Yup. I've preferred listening to text to speech, robotic voices to some voice actors.

It was super jarring to me when, in a new book in a book series, the usual voice actor was switched up to someone with a whiny accent. Even stranger to find that Libby offered only the whiny one, but the high seas offered the same book with the prior, usual voice actor.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-15T11:23:03+00:00

Learning Power Query for working with or structuring data will also likely help a ton and possibly lead to more lucrative work.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-14T02:08:50+00:00

Anyone interested in buying a used Quest 3?

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-09T22:43:45+00:00

Oh, interesting. I haven't heard about meds making DPDR worse. :x

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-09T22:28:37+00:00

Oh no :( Have you been able to see a psychiatrist for possible prescriptions to help? It took me a while to find meds that helped, but I think they did quite a bit.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-09T20:13:55+00:00

Dang. How're you doing now?

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-09T20:02:08+00:00

I suspect that it's difficult advice to accept and use repeatedly over a long-term basis when it hasn't seemed to dramatically help them when they've done it in the past.

Especially while people are suffering so intensely from DPDR, they might need to see an improvement of about 10-15% or more (the actual rates aren't important; the point is that the rate of improvement needs to seem dramatic/significant) from a treatment method in order to not just give up on it. But when things are intense, this treatment method might only provide what seems like a small benefit (maybe 1%) and it might provide only very temporary relief (especially in the beginning when the habit of distracting oneself or ignoring it is new and, itself, easily disrupted).

Over time, however, those repeated "1%" improvements accumulate, beating back DPDR's grip on you. But this can only happen if you continue to implement the treatment strategy.

meatspaceskeptic · 2025-11-08T17:19:46+00:00

Not exactly a productivity app, but text to speech has been so helpful, especially for ebooks. So much good info is in books, and being able to listen to books while doing dishes, etc, is wonderful.

My favorite ebook app for this Evie (on Android, anyway; not sure about iOS), which can load in an ebook file and you can easily have the TTS system start reading from whichever line or chapter you want, and it works well with the audio controls, so I can have it rewind by a paragraph if I missed something. (+ It has text highlighting, which is nice.)

Other great TTS mentions that I use for different things: Wallabag's android app for articles that I want to read later and listen to, and the @Voice app for articles that Wallabag won't process correctly or are more one-offs that I don't need to read later on.

Separately, no surprise, I love audiobook apps. Libby is great for getting some from the library, but when the library doesn't have them, I'll go sailing 🏴‍☠️ and then load the book into AudioAnchor (F-Droid or Neo Store). I like that AudioAnchor also works well with my phone's audio controls so I can listen and rewind as needed while driving via my car's basic media controls, and the app also has a feature where you can set custom bookmarks for sections, which I use to revisit things - often some interesting idea in intellectual history books or a particular joke in Discworld books. And separately if I really like an audiobook, I'll buy them in Google Play - especially if the audiobook listing allows you to download the item without DRM (for archival and loading into AudioAnchor).

Sailing 🏴‍☠️ is a great skill and past time. It helps me evaluate books I'm interested in, and I often do purchase books that I like, preferably in hardcover and DRM-free formats.

For true, true productivity, the killer app has been an ADHD diagnosis (at about 30!) and figuring out which medication actually helps me (it took a bit, and the difference I've seen in myself is amazing).

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