10hrs!!!
I'm on the fence between "I wish I had 10hrs of free time for youtube" vs "If I'm on YouTube for 10hrs straight, I give you permission to break in and pull me outside"
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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That's not free time. That's decompression time. Free time is time when you are well rested, all your needs are met, obligations fullfilled, AND you have unencumbered time to persue a passion or intellectual persuit. The rich have free time, the rest of us just take breathers from our responsibilities from time to time.
But watching youtube for your decompression doesn't get you to a well rested state. It can do the opposite. So you aren't making any progress toward actually getting free time.
Better decompression. Turn off all networking. Read something for 5 minutes and go for a walk. Successful decompression in 10 minutes, not 10 hours.
Whether intentional or not, or just progressive improvement on algorithms, youtube thrives by providing a need, and then providing it poorly so you keep your watch time going forever. This is a fun feature of machine learning. Non-willfull conspiracies. A system can do something malicious to get ahead that is equivalent to a highly calculated malicious action, while no one, including the model itself or the algorithms that trained it, or the people who trained it, understands what it's doing.
Escapism is often called "Decompression" or "Fun"
Decompression depends on how much stress is accumulated. Sometimes 10 hours of mindless youtube is exactly the thing I need after some of the weeks.
Whether intentional or not, or just progressive improvement on algorithms, youtube thrives by providing a need, and then providing it poorly so you keep your watch time going forever.
It depends. I'm a huge nerd and my YouTube browsing habits are relating to educational videos and long form essays. My news sources on YouTube are also less sensationalist.
On algorithm, I kinda minimise its bs by turning off my watch history. I bookmark my YouTube page to my watch later playlist, so I could chip away at my nearly twenty years of backlog of videos to watch.
Yeah, YouTube is still great if you reject the algorithm and continuous feed junk. I've got my subscriptions categorized in a set order and just run through them every so often.
I'm sure that applies to a lot of people, but even when I have, like, 1 day of stress and a month of chill time, I still spend the whole month laying around doing nothing if I don't force myself to do something productive.
Decompression time is definitely important, but it's also important to know yourself enough to identify when you're fully decompressed and ready to do something healthy for your body and mind, even if you just wanna watch another youtube video.
Yeah, it's also important to get in the habit of lightly pushing yourself towards hobbies and other such things with that time. I didn't do much while unemployed, in part because I lost the distinction between rest and wasting time
Abso-fuckin-lutely thats also why working so much sucks too because you dont have enough time to decompress LET ALONE any free time and its frustrating because it looks and feels like you just do nothing/have bad time management/are a slob when you’re off work and it becomes a maddening cycle
Well said. My weekend turns out to be decompression time.
You can spell "unencumbered" but not pursue or pursuit?
English language is one of the worst languages known to humanity. The way it arbitrarily incorporates some words and makes up pronunciations is diabolical. It took me four tries to spell "pronunciations" correctly.
Be glad that we speak at least somewhat coherently in this bullshit language of yours.
It's just pronounce but then you take away some of the letters for some reason!
And some words, you pronounce the root differently if you add a suffix. There's no rhyme or reason for why, you just do.
10 hours of YouTube is not decompression
2 hours isn't even
That's being so tired the lights are on, but there's nobody home.
That was not free time but time off.
Don't underestimate the impact of revenge bedtime procrastination
There's no such thing as a completely free time. There will always be obligations and duties looming over it and limitations what can be done with this small respite.
Those obligations just like only exist in people's heads, man.
Maybe all time is completely free time, and all of that other stuff are things you've decided to let interfere with your free time.
I am hungry, and I have no food ready. I also have no clean clothes
That's just like your opinion, man
- BillyClark
A true act of freedom is to every once in a while seriously consider saying fuck it and breaking your habits and routines
I dont think its bad to have something to do. There is luxury in not having to do those things urgently or immediately but I personally get kinda in the dumps when I dont have anything I could be doing to progress/enrich myself, my wife, or my friends.
That's just defeatism talking. ;)
Maybe, maybe just realism.
There is no such concept in today's society as a truly free time.
You can absolutely have free time. You don't owe shit to anyone 24/7. Taking a break - and that counts hygiene, cleaning etc. too - for one day is absolutely alright. Drop the phone, do whatever you want, be it watching YT for 16 hours straight, goin the fuck out to hit the pubs or frolicking in the grass.
We, sadly, are not able to live like that day to day. But we absolutely can eke out such time for ourselves. If that's what we want to do.
But we do owe shit to someone, to the people we live with or even if just for our future selves. Keeping on track with standard daily chores to avoid those piling up, taking care of others, taking others into consideration even.
16h of YT, who cooks and cleans and prepares for the next day then?
Going out to the pub, comes with conditions that by tomorrow I'm sober enough, financial limitations not to blow whole budget on booze and time limitations.
Frolicking in the grass, season dependant and having acess to an adequate patch of grass or just accepting odd looks from passerbys when doing it in a public space and like a police check up.
We can keep going, you can give any scenario and i can give conditions that must be met for it and the limitations it has.
But we do owe shit to someone, to the people we live with or even if just for our future selves.
Break the self imposed chains, mate. Kids an partner do limit it, but you absolutely can take a day of - just keep in mind to keep it consensual with your partner and be ready to return the favor in the future. Hell, I see in most advice given by parents to other parents to do exactly that to avoid going crazy.
But all in all, I am going to be blunt. You sound like someone who is constantly on the lookout for reasons not to live your life. You are not a cog in the machine, you are not essential to the world turning, one day off won't make the whole fall apart. Live your life. Be human.
Yeah the the wider world won't fall apart or even notice if I'm missing and yes there are constantly lots of reasons or conditions to look out for and take into consideration when making decisions.
But my world will. I am the lynchpin, the stable backbone, that holds it together and makes it function, I'm not good at it, i suck at it, but that's the best i can do. I can't spontaneously take a day off, because then I'd have to do more the next day. If i don't keep up with even the most basic daily task, then no one else will complete those for me.
Though don't get me wrong, it's not that grim. Despite all the limitations and constrictions, i have managed to eke out some quality hobby time and with some preplanning i can sometimes take a day off, with reasonable limitations.
And i do appreciate the bluntness, thank you for that.
But my world will. I am the lynchpin, the stable backbone, that holds it together and makes it function, I’m not good at it, i suck at it, but that’s the best i can do.
Though don’t get me wrong, it’s not that grim.
It does sound like it. You ok, friend?
Oddly yeah and been getting better over the years. I've just always had a slightly darker outlook on everything. Surprisingly beneficial when things do actually get worse.
Untrue. You can remove all obligations and duties, besides laundry and dishes.
Sure, kiddo
But those exclusion already mean that some obligations still remain.
But even excluding those, feeding oneself, maintaining basic hygiene and physical /mental health and whatever method is used to achieve those are all obligations.
Oh please, sleep and taking a shower doesn’t count as obligation. If you want to be pedantic, breathing is also pretty inconvenient. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄💋
Why don't those count? I'm not sleeping because i want to, I'm sleeping because im forced to.
That does sound like an obligation.
Basic showering, yeah sure it doesn't feel good to be covered in dried sweat, but shaving on the other can be rather annoying with no benefit.
Grow a beard. Or, if it’s your legs—stop.
Already growing it, kinda odd patchy thing that's supposed to be beard, but there's no point in shaving it either. Only shaving it when i have to attend some polite events.
Only shaving it when i have to attend some polite events
Fuck even that. If you want a beard, grow one (and take care of it!!) and let 'polite events' sit and spin if they don't like it.
You can be polite and have a beard.
Not really, it doesn't grow well. It's patchy, sparse and never grows long. So I can't pull off a decent beard that could be worn on polite events.
Though luckily those are rare enough, maybe a handful of times a hear on busier years.
Well, if you think shaving is annoying with sparse facial hair, imagine how much it sucks when you have to shave twice per day or your face can sand wood. ;)
Yeah, you're right about that.
You see, the watch later playlist won't watch itself.
I wish it was youtube. Instead it's places like this.
~~Man I wish I had some free time….~~
Man I wish I could get shit done….