Yes the color name.

This post draws inspiration from several concepts discussed in Neil Postman’s 1985 classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. While the book is often seen as a critique of entertainment culture, its central message was much broader—it examined how media shapes public discourse and understanding. Using Postman’s framework, this post analyzes how YouTube blurs the line between education and entertainment, confusing learners with misleading videos and a distracting algorithm. If you enjoyed the post, please consider reading the original work for more comprehensive and in depth analysis.

What’s being discussed in this post:

1. Am I learning anything on YouTube?
2. Why are my recommendations such a mess?
3. The appeal of bite-sized and simplified content
4. Education as entertainment
5. Is long-form content the answer?

It’s called binge learning

My YouTube recommendations are chaos. There is no order of priority, no sequence, and no relationship between videos. Each video seems to offer some value to my life, but putting them all together makes it obvious what the platform really wants: Here, at least one of these will keep you busy for 10 minutes, and we’ll take care of the rest.

I click on a BBC documentary about the dangers of sugar consumption, and the next autoplay video is about Donald Trump. Then, I’m directed to CNN’s take on Nikki Haley. Everything seems well-connected once I start to binge. Each choice is tailored to my taste and my preference for serious long-form content “that actually matters,” making me feel like I’m at the center of my own self-education and self-improvement. But am I really? What exactly am I educating myself on? What was my goal in watching all that content?

Regardless of my goals, all I do on the platform curates an even better algorithm. I am working for the platform, to train it to train me.
With each refresh, my recommendations expand just enough to cover my growing interests—like 500-year-old kimchi-making techniques—but never enough to make me realize I’ve been inactive for hours. YouTube never throws anything odd enough to break the cozy illusion. After all, it’s this cozy blanket that keeps me engaged and ensures the platform’s value to advertisers. Ultimately, they’re selling me—my time and attention.

So, what am I really seeing when I look at my front page? Is it my free, customized university? Am I not learning anything when I binge-watch 8-hour FreeCodeCamp videos? Yes, you can absolutely learn the basics of Python from a YouTube tutorial, and it’s great that we have more access to useful information than ever before. A single educational video, assuming it’s fact-checked and objective, should bring positive value. But that’s not how these platforms are designed to work. The front page is what truly matters. Because if you treat YouTube as your primary source of information, the recommendations, or the algorithm as a whole is your curriculum.

Mix it, blend it, overload it

YouTube recommendations section is like a flea market. Even if it’s full of hidden gems, the chaos and disorder make it hard to find what you actually want. It’s designed to keep you sifting through piles of junk, picking up “okay-looking” things along the way. The longer you stay, the more they can sell. By the end, you’re happy with the one thing you were looking for and confused by the five other things you didn’t know you needed. And truthfully, you don’t.

Now imagine an alternative where content is presented in a logical sequence: Introduction to Python (Part I), Introduction to Python (Part II), Quick Summary and Exercises… and so on. Honestly, just typing that example made me bored. If YouTube ever implemented something like this—an organized, goal-based curriculum—it would probably go bankrupt. I would have to pay a lot of money and guilt trap myself into a site like that for it to work.

I hear the defense already: “There are already platforms that do this! Khan Academy, for example, has always been a huge success since its creation, and YouTube is meant for fun and entertainment.” I would agree if that were really the case. But two things I want to mention: a) How many people use Khan Academy as their primary source of online content? Is it even comparable to YouTube? b) Do we really think we’re just having fun while watching tutorials?

YouTube must be doing something right. There are more active users like me, almost glued to the site. I’d much rather watch Maangchi videos on a loop all day than sign up for a Korean cooking class that starts with the history of Japchae. But why is that? What makes this organized, logical sequence so boring?

Because an organized sequence is predictable, it lacks variety, and the big content companies have trained us to hate it. People hate being told they don’t have long attention spans because it feels like being called dumb—it’s personal. But is it? No one woke up one day and decided to refresh their focus every two minutes, especially not children. We are trained by reels, TikToks, TV shows, and commercials, for generations. Neil Postman gives an in-depth discussion on this point. Here, in relation to my argument, we are fed disjointed, unrelated, and unpredictable content with ever-updating stimuli. Content creators are constantly forced, by the magic of capitalism, to add new visuals, sound effects, and memes to the same old content. And the viewers act as free trainers for algorithms that trap them.

This is nothing new. But the point I want to make here is that individuals shouldn’t be held primarily accountable for their short attention spans, and the criticism shouldn’t be directed at individuals either. To quote Naomi Klein in her book Doppelgänger, we are too harsh on individuals and not hard enough on the systems. When big media corporations constantly feed us vibrant colors, flashy animations, and loud noises, how are we supposed to sit down and watch not one but several videos about web design with boring titles in sequence? Naturally, we’ll want our recommendations to be “diverse,” flashy, and filled with bite-sized tutorials featuring people with engaging personalities. Short and sweet.

Simplification of Everything

Simplicity is the key to great writing, so I’ve heard, but it seems I’ll never learn. Both the writer and the reader should always be aware of what’s being simplified. A good text should be profound yet easy to read for its target audience. A responsible writer shouldn’t skip important details just because complex ideas are hard to explain or hard to understand. A responsible reader should adapt to the text and come up with different methods to deal with difficult content. Without this responsibility, real harm is done to the reader. Readers not only miss the chance to grow, but are fed misinformation and useless garbage that slowly distorts their worldview. This is why most reputable publishing houses have fact-checking before printing a book. Because their credibility is on the line. But online content houses don’t need such restraints. In fact, a good reputation works against their business model, which is built on controversy and dislike.

Five years ago, YouTuber Ann Reardon started uploading a wonderful series on misleading and dangerous minute-long life-hack videos and cooking recipes. Clearly, the algorithm hasn’t improved much for the users—if anything, it got worse with the introduction of YouTube Shorts. Of course, Instagram and TikTok are arguably even worse, because the very nature of vertical short videos forces creators to oversimplify the content even if they are genuinely creating something useful. I believe there’s room for short videos, don’t get me wrong, when they are meant to simply notify the users of something or serve purely entertainment purposes. I see them more as news headlines that need further reading or as joke columns in healthcare magazines. But how many people will look into the background of a 15-second political discourse? How am I supposed to form a thoughtful opinion about violence in a foreign country on screen without sufficient context? Won’t that affect my decision-making in the future when it comes to showing support or criticism for these people, who I only know from a bunch of 15-second clips?

Shortening the runtime isn’t the only simplification that happens. There’s a far more sinister type of simplification that affects anyone who spends enough time online. As mentioned earlier, condensing a text isn’t a crime by itself, but leaving out important facts about the subjects is, simply put, lying. And the internet loves liars.

Last year, when I first arrived in Paris, I had a very hard time understanding French. If you don’t already know, it’s almost impossible to survive in Paris without a pretty high level of French proficiency, especially during the first few months of endless bureaucratic procedures. To cope with my frustration, I started to look for French learning tips online. Very quickly, within a few clicks, I was bombarded with a very specific type of language-learning advice: comprehensible input. To put it simply, the input theory asks the language learner to immerse themselves in target language content that is understandable but contains some new words and structures for the learner to “pick up,” just like how children learn their mother tongue. Stephen Krashen is often credited as the face of this approach. I learned about this theory in my Second Language Acquisition courses in university, but I didn’t realize how popular it is within the YouTube polyglot community. Continuous exposure to language will, of course, facilitate language learning, but when a whole community preaches about its magical power and neglects any of its limitations, I see a more sinister side to this.

Why is it popular? Because it barely asks you to do anything. “You, language learner, put down your boring grammar book, delete your Anki flashcards, don’t even consider Duolingo. Stay on YouTube, see me perform 15 languages fluently by the age of 28, and go listen to my podcast in slow French. Better yet, check out this app that is definitely sponsoring me, and I’ll tell you how it changed the game for me in my next video. Remember, I’m not saying grammar isn’t important, and I won’t say you can learn a language like an infant because, well, you can’t—it takes way too long to achieve fluency and accuracy without grammar and vocabulary. I’m also not saying you should avoid frustration while learning, because positive emotions do help. And I won’t mention a word about my socioeconomic background or how much I’ve spent on tutors and years of education, because that’s boring and discouraging. I’m just saying you should have fun learning. My words shouldn’t matter—you’re an adult, make your own decisions.”

The internet loves simplicity because people love quick solutions. But not everything has a simple fix. I’d argue most things have solutions that demand more than a 15-minute video to cover the basics. So where do we draw the line? Language learning isn’t a serious social issue that requires urgent action from platforms. Still, I’m afraid too many people take this community of polyglots too seriously, buying into their basic tactics and wasting their time and money. But what happens when the simplification is done with more serious matters—where life and death are at stake? Deliberately simplifying facts and ignoring important details—isn’t this the recipe for misinformation and conspiracy theories?

The Clownery of All

Neil Postman spends three chapters on how television has changed politics, education, and religion. It’s fascinating to see the origin of a very modern issue: the gamification of everything and the clownery of all. Since the TV generation, our taste for entertainment has shifted drastically. To give you an example, it’s hard for me to imagine a world where Bryan Magee could host a TV show interviewing Isaiah Berlin about philosophy. Let alone the subject of the show—Bryan Magee’s TV presence was slightly more interesting than watching someone do algebra. Was this even entertaining for people back in the 70s? I don’t know, but the show was a success in 1978, and it got a sequel almost a decade later. I’m sure we still have public intellectuals going on TV to talk about Plato, and YouTube has Contrapoints, period. But is that what’s being pushed to the general public?

Let’s talk about the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. If you’re unfamiliar with BA, their YouTube channel was a massive success in the late 2010s with chefs like Claire Saffitz, Carla Music, Brad Leone, and Sohla El-Waylly going viral for their cooking series. It was, on the surface, a charming group of people, and the interaction between the “personalities” made the channel the ultimate food channel on YouTube. For a while, almost all of their new videos were guaranteed to trend. I have a bit of a personal attachment to the channel because I wrote my bachelor’s graduation thesis on analyzing multimodal humor in one of their videos. When my professor asked me why a cooking show, not a traditional comedy, it struck me that I didn’t really see BA as a food channel anymore, and in fact, most of their content hasn’t been about recipes since the channel went viral.

You see, in the video I analyzed, Brad Leone attempts to make ginger beer and ultimately fails. The whole 26-minute video is just a compilation of him being funny and charming without providing a repeatable recipe that guarantees success because he fails right in front of you. The product at the end—the video—is not a recipe, it’s a 26-minute comedy special featuring Brad Leone. At the time, I thought of it as just a cute little video put out by a respected culinary magazine with a long history. But now I think there’s more to it, because I see this format in almost every corner of content platforms.

Not that it’s a big issue, but it’s hard to find a new cooking show without a charming person playing a character, smiling at you the whole time and cracking a joke and an egg. As long as the recipe works, I’ll watch it, rolling my eyes. I quite enjoy watching John Oliver when he’s not forcing laughs from the audience when they’re uncalled for. And I think we’ve gone too far watching someone crack jokes while explaining the opioid crisis in a nutshell. Again, where do we draw the line? At what point do these products cross the line between education and entertainment? And can we really learn anything useful from infotainment?

Is long-from content the answer?

Of course, there isn’t a simple solution to any of the questions I’ve raised above. Interestingly, I find that concerns about the future of content consumption often lead to accusations of conservatism, knowing who this simplification and clowning will benefit the most. I will not preach the importance of reading print media since even Neil Postman argues in his book that those days are long gone. There’s no need to shame the average person for not reading a serious book after a long day of work and endless chores at home. People need entertainment. But it is the responsibility of the creator and the platform to inform viewers: this content is meant only for entertainment or is simplified to control runtime—please look for long-form content to have a better understanding of the issue discussed. But let’s be real…

So what am I arguing here? Why am I even writing this post if I don’t believe big tech will course-correct itself in the foreseeable future? Well, this is more of an aftermath of my wake-up call. In my previous blog about approaching harder books, I expressed my intention to consume more serious content after getting exhausted by my current content pool. I think I’ve found my working method to navigate my media consumption without feeling dull. Here are a couple of principles I’m following:

• Mentally separate entertainment from education; draw a clear line.
• Watch what I need, and the content I’m consuming should mostly come as a search result instead of being shoved into my face.
• Don’t rely on YouTube for news—even Twitter trending is better than binge-watching news content.
• Replace watching with listening; it’s harder to binge-listen than binge-watch for hours.
• Slowly sneak in more book pages each day, and patiently build tolerance for boredom.

I want to state something very important. One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Liz Phair, said even moderation itself should be done in moderation. Don’t try cutting off entertainment from your life—it won’t just make you dull, it will also isolate you from your peers, and that’s a risk you shouldn’t take. But you should be very much aware of what’s being played right in front of you. As long as you don’t confuse short and sweet with something profound and meaningful, it should all be good. And who knows? Maybe someday we’ll work out a better system, a better algorithm that isn’t evil by design.