Convenient Content
I was recently writing a blog post in a place where the Wi-Fi wasn’t great. I was outdoors by the water so I am not complaining and I used my iPhone’s hotspot to write. After about an hour of writing, I took a break.
I took a sip of my now-cold tea, and opened YouTube on my phone. For each YouTube short I clicked on, there would be about a 5 second delay before the video played and some videos would buffer again partway through. Ugh.
When I was partway through a YouTube short, which had a total length of probably 10 seconds, I realized that I didn’t actually care enough about the content to wait for it to finish buffering again. I closed the app and had my cold tea while looking out at the water.
Distraction is Convenient
When I actually stopped to consider what I was gaining by watching those YouTube videos my answer was *shrug not much. But how many hours a day do I spend watching things like that?
The only reason I questioned the attention I was giving it was because it became more inconvenient to watch than to not watch. Maybe I’ll just pull out my book instead, at least that won’t require any buffering time.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on May 31, 2025)