In some ways, having YouTube on my TV has been very bad for me. I’m less inclined to delve into new movies and TV shows and a lot more inclined to just watch the same Gutsick Gibbon video for the eighth time. Where it is handy is that, immediately upon having a moment in my head, I can access it. In my long-ago youth, things would live there for days as I thought about them with no access. Oh, a few of them are YouTube originals, but many of them are not, and there they sit, ready for me.
If someone mentions “prangent” or “luigi board,” there it is. Ready for me to watch. Michael Stipe adoring Mike Mills as he plays the piano part to “Nightswimming” live? I’ve got you. And, okay, Tom Holland being sexy as hell as he lip-synchs to “Umbrella.” I’ve seen that so many times. So many. It helps that I’m home and have the access, but the fact is, I can at this point pretty much play it in my head without worrying about watching that last video at all. I still do, of course, because why wouldn’t I, but this is what lives in my head.
Not everyone has this impulse, but so what? A lot of us do. A thing is mentioned, and we need the thing. That’s it; that’s all it is. At least the videos just live in my head, not in my house, and they don’t cost me money above and beyond our extant power and internet bills. It’s another one of those things where we have things far easier than our ancestors, because you couldn’t exactly have the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet recited for you at a moment’s notice, and if you weren’t literate, you couldn’t even read it.
The idea of things’ getting stuck in people’s heads is not exactly new to the YouTube era, of course. There’s the scene in Wayne’s World wherein Wayne has “Mickey” in his head, and mentioning it has probably gotten it stuck in several of your heads. There’s a certain Disney song I try not to mention that is probably history’s most effective earworm. People have been getting that stuck in their heads since 1964.
For me, at least, watching the thing clears my head. It’s a wonderful trick. I once bought a CD because I had a single song from it stuck in my head for days, and I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s a wonder of the modern age. It makes me exceedingly happy to just be able to enter a few letters onto my TV’s search bar and find what I’m looking for—and, okay, I sometimes do that with whole movies shows, though those I’m more inclined to buy the thing if I can, because I don’t trust them not to vanish from streaming. I may have to download a few of my favourites, just to be safe.
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