I've recently used YT more than I ever have in the past... and was surprised at some of the suggested content at first (like, why tf would you think I'm interested in that‽). And it was weird being able to almost "see" the algorithm and what it was trying to decipher about me (to offer more personally-relevant content of course!)

I started getting suggestions for click-bait shit at first, and if it got me for even a moment ('I wanna see what this is about'), the suggestions became even more brain-dead and polarized.

I had to actively choose to cut my curiosity off while mindlessly perusing... because apparently, if I want to watch bull-riding, that immediately means I want to see rage-bait bullshit about power-dynamics and diviciveness. It was a bit much, seeing in real-time how someone might be casually walked into an echo-chamber of self fulfilled crazy.

So I did end up encountering the surface layer of it, but now it's sliding back into my hobby-areas of interests. But it still pops shit up with AI generated images for videos (that never actually occurs in the video) with click-bait titles, and is inherently only used to induce "doom-scrolling" while increasing engagement. It's fucking disgusting, to put it bluntly.

I just wanna see how different drywall anchors work sometimes, I don't need to know how a "Navy Seal pwned a police officer that pulled them over (AI picture of a dude body slamming a cop)". Dumb shit