YouTube and Facebook Are Hotbeds of AI Clickbait. [View all]

We all know that. Sometimes we even post about it here on DU. It's easy to think that there is no use for either website. Some people refuse to even use those common social media sites. That's too bad, really. There is a lot of good stuff on both of them, along with a lot of nonsense, crap, and slop.

I don't avoid such websites. Sometimes, I find them extremely useful. I watch out for AI and politically-motivated clickbait, though, and go for real information that is useful to me. If I did not use YouTube as a resource, I would not have solved a problem that got solved today.

Yesterday, my wife and I stepped out on our balcony deck for a few minutes. It was 0 degrees F out there. We knew that, so we donned our parkas. Living in Minnesota means having a range of cold-weather wear. We had light jackets for cool weather, somewhat heavier ones for chilly days and evenings, and at least two insulated parkas. You have to have those things. With each parka is a pair of gloves, designed to match the weather the parka is suited for.

The below zero parkas are far from cheap. Both of us have the top of the line ones from Lands End. At least $150 each, if I remember.

So, when my wife said, "My zipper is stuck!" I was more than a little concerned, this early in what promises to be a very cold winter. When we came back in the house, I took a close look at that zipper. Sure enough, it was jammed by some fabric, which was wedged deeply under the zipper mechanism. I know better than to mess around with such problems without thinking. I've destroyed a couple of zippers that way. So, I told her that I'd fix it in the morning.

This morning I took a closer look, with better lighting. I pulled and prodded the fabric, and tried to work the zipper, but had no success. I was starting to consider drastic measures. Risky measures that sometimes destroy the zipper altogether. Then I stopped. I went to my PC, fired up YouTube, and searched the phrase "Fix jammed zipper." One of the first videos on the screen suited my situation exactly, so I watched it. The YouTuber, who said he was a luggage repair person, demonstrated where to grab the fabric with a pair of pliers and which way to pull to get the zipper unstuck. I went back to the parka, after grabbing my pliers, and 30-seconds later had freed the zipper. The solution was not obvious at all. My instinct would have been to pull the fabric in a different direction.

So, despite the thousands of shitty political videos on YouTube, and the mindless rambling of more thousands of would-be pundits, I don't condemn YouTube. Instead, I use it to get information that is not intuitive but that solves the problem at hand.

I am responsible for vetting what I watch on YouTube, or on cable TV, or WiFi. That's my job, if I want to access the useful and accurate information that is also available. Thus has it always been, whatever the media.