Cultured, Creative, Tech-Savvy, That's me! - YouTube Recaps My Year

In case you didn't know, YouTube just jumped on the Annual Review bandwagon with something called Recap. And you might not know, at that, because for some reason they chose to launch it in America and then roll it out across the rest of the world over a couple of weeks. I think everyone is supposed to have had theirs by now but there may still be a few Recap-deprived pockets here and there.

Or perhaps yours just isn't showing up for... reasons. I'm not one hundred per cent sure how it's supposed to work, even though I've had a look at the official YouTube blog about it and watched a couple of "How It Works" videos (On YouTube, of course.)

They aren't exactly going out of their way to publicize it. In theory you're supposed to get a banner across the top of your YouTube Home Page to tell you your personal Recap is available but I have two YouTube channels under the same account and it's only showing up on one of them. And it's not the main one, either.

If yours isn't showing and you'd like to see it, you can go to www.youtube.com/recap and providing you're also logged in to YouTube at the time, the very act of visiting the web page should force your shy Recap to reveal itself on your YT home page. I've tried it and it works. Well, it works for one of my channels...

Until this year, I only had the one YouTube channel, under the name Bhagpuss, which is what my original Google account was registered as a couple of decades ago. When I started making AI versions of my songs back in the Spring, I decided I needed to keep them separate, so I made a new channel under the same account. (Until then, I didn't even know that was a thing you could do.) 

The second channel's called That Darn Cat, which is also what I go by on Suno and, for that matter, a few other places. And since I do most of the music-making on my laptop in bed, TDC has turned into my de facto laptop identity. 

I don't usually bother swapping to the Bhagpuss channel to do other things on the laptop, either on YouTube or anywhere else, unless I absolutely have to, which probably explains some of the weirdnesses that occasionally crop up when I comment on other people's blogs, late at night. (And also when I reply to comments here occasionally, although I can edit those so you'd probably never notice...)

Of course, all I really do on the laptop, other than the music, is surf the web, watch streaming video on Prime and Netflix and BBC iPlayer and search for new music on YouTube. If I'm going to do anything more complicated, I'm probably going to wait until I'm back at my desk.

Anyway, I opened YouTube last night and there was this Recap banner at the top. Obviously, I clicked on it to see what it was. I mean, I could guess but I wanted to see for myself...

So I watched it. Didn't take long. And I'll be honest. It wasn't very good. 

If you're used to the level of detail and professionalism in Steam's Replay, for example, you are not going to be impressed by this. Perfunctory would be one word for it. Half-assed would be another.

Trying to be generous, I'll give them a pass because it is the first year YouTube has done one of these. Maybe they're learning on the job. Then again, YouTube has been around for nearly two decades now. Why is this the first year they've thought to give users a summary of their activity? I'll have that pass back, please.

That was my first reaction. My second was "Hey, hang on a  minute! Where are they even getting all this stuff from? I thought I had my YouTube History switched off!" 

Yes. Well. I did. I turned it off years ago. I never look at it and it heavily affects what suggestions and recommendations you get, which is the opposite of what I want. I want to see new things that aren't like the things I've already seen, or I do when I'm searching for new music. Having my own prior search history influence the algorithm is counter-productive.

That ought, presumably, to mean YouTube doesn't have the information stored to compile a statistical analysis and pick out the trends and highlights. At least, you'd hope so or what's the point of being able to toggle the history off?

Before we get into all kinds of conspiracy theories about the evil megacorp lying about what data it keeps, though, I ought to make it clear that when I checked, I found I did not, in fact, have my search history switched off after all. Not on the new account, anyway. Maybe the setting is per channel, not per account. I probably ought to look into that.

It might also explain something I've been wondering about, which is why my recommends on the laptop are so much more consistent than they are on the desktop. It's insidiously comforting, having almost everything that comes be something similar to the things you've already seen. I can see how you could find yourself walled up in a velvet castle of your own making, that way.

It probably also explains why I'm not getting a Recap at all on the Bhagpuss channel, even after i prompt it using the method above. I guess that one does really have the history switched off. I can't say for certain. I haven't been able to find the setting for it yet. 

Then again, I do have an Add-On running in Firefox on the desktop that I don't use on the laptop, which forces YouTube only to show videos from my subscriptions on my home page. That means I get a completely different home page on the two machines anyway, so who knows what's going on?

Whatever it is, I do have a Recap for That Darn Cat and I don't have one for Bhagpuss. The one I've got is extremely limited but also very flattering. Verging on the sycophantic, in fact. It's either been drafted by an AI (Extremely likely.) or by someone trying to sound like one (Worrying, if true.)

I can see why they'd do it, though. I mean, who doesn't want to be told they're a cultured, tech-savvy music lover? All it takes is watching a few music videos and movie trailers (Superhero movies, at that...) and a couple of videos about AI!

It even manages to collate those traits into what would, in an RPG, be called a Class. I'm a Creative Spirit, apparently. Not, you understand, because YouTube knows I've created anything. The Recap doesn't cover anything you've uploaded to your channel. Only what you've watched on other people's. That counts as a creative act to these people.

Speaking of which, I've visited 262 different channels this year. Is that a lot?It doesn't sound like it. I'm surprised it's that few, really. I flip through a couple of dozen most nights. I'd have thought it'd be twice that, at least. I guess there must be a lot of repetition I'm not noticing.

The Recap also tells you which channel you spent most time watching. I'd have liked a Top Ten but no, you just get the one. 

Any guesses what mine was? I certainly wouldn't have got it. In fact, I doubt I would have put it in the top twenty. It was R. Missing. I've watched 31 of her videos and I'm in the top 3% of her audience. Blimey.

All I can say is she does post quite often and I am subbed to her channel so I suppose it shouldn't be that much of a shock. Plus I watch them again when I pick them for posts here and I have posted most things she's done this year. There'll be two of hers in my yearly round-up (Because of course I'm doing one of those, too...)

The only other card that mentions specific channels is a lot harder to explain. Recap attempts, very unconvincingly, to establish some trends in viewing through the year. It pretends I discovered new bands in the Spring, looked for tech tips in the Summer and moved on to watching movie trailers in the Autumn. Which is tripe. I did all of those all year with no particular seasonal emphasis on any of them.

The really odd part, though, is which three "New Bands" Recap chose to highlight: Polly Scattergood, TripleJ and Miami Horror. 

Geez. The only reason I was looking at Polly Scattergood's channel at all was that she hasn't posted anything in four years. I was wondering if she was still alive! As for TripleJ, it's a station, not a band. Granted, it's a music station and I watch bands there but most of them aren't new, even to me. 

Miami Horror, though, really confused me. I had to think for a bit to remember what it was and even then I wasn't sure. They did something with Telenovela that I posted here but it was Telenovela I was mostly interested in, not Miami Horror. I don't recall looking at anything else they've done other than that, so why they get chosen out of the hundreds of acts I must have seen more of this year beats me. What about Witch Post? Or Sunday (1994)? Or Blondshell ffs?

And that's about it for Recap. I'd say I hope YouTube makes a better job of it next year but what I actually hope is that I manage to keep my History switched off and I don't get another one at all. 

It's not like I'll be missing much. 

Or should that be R. Missing much?