Let me preface this the only way I know how: I’m autistic. I also have ADHD. That means deep dives into rabbit holes aren’t a bug—they’re the feature. Wonderland is practically on my speed dial. But this weekend? This weekend I said hi to the queen, tried on her crown, and accidentally reformatted the entire kingdom.
It started with stress. Work stress, tooth stress, “my-body-is-a-chaotic-inbox” stress. Toss in a long weekend with my wife working (thus removing my final shred of external structure), and the scene was set. No guardrails. No timekeepers. Just me, my nervous system, and an internet connection.
I am a big fan of the rSlash YouTube channel. Dabney’s voice is familiar, comforting chaos. But lately, YouTube’s been flooded with AI-generated “story” channels—clickbait farms disguised as content. Normally I avoid them, but Dabney had been off schedule and my executive function had already booked a one-way ticket to Whimsytown. I clicked.
And then I clicked again.
And then… the algorithm noticed.
My entire recommendation feed became AI story slurry and CPAP gear reviews. (The latter makes sense—I do have a CPAP and I do get weirdly excited about nasal pillows and pressure curves. Blame the dopamine.)
But here’s where the TIFU comes in: I thought, “Easy fix! Just delete my YouTube history from this weekend.”
So I opened the settings, selected the date, and hit delete.
Except I didn’t just delete this weekend. I deleted everything before it. Every view, every search, every single signal I’d ever given YouTube about what I actually liked.
Seventeen years of curating chaos and comfort, gone.
Now my homepage reads like the opening scene of a dystopian reboot:
“Try searching to get started.
Start watching videos to help us build a feed of videos you’ll love.”
Translation: “We know nothing about you. Prove yourself.”
I sat in stunned silence. It felt like deleting a part of my digital soul. The loss of pattern, of preference. A sensory history wiped clean. And yeah—I know it’s “just data,” but for neurodivergent folks like me, it’s also scaffolding. I had trained YouTube to understand me, which sometimes felt easier than getting actual people to.
TL;DR: I tried to delete a weekend’s worth of algorithm pollution. Instead, I yeeted my entire YouTube soul into the void.
Comments
How long do you think it’s going to take for YouTube to figure you out again? A week?
Don’t think of this as a fuck up. Think of this as an opportunity to refine your algorithm to something that more suits your interest now rather than when you made your account.
Just search and like the channels and their videos that you like, it’s a lot easier to fix than you think.
Yawn
gpt crap. Blocked.
Ouch! It is a disorienting feeling when those things happens! On the flip side, Youtube has a rather short memory. Dig up 10-20 channels you enjoyed, let your computer run through some of their longest videos while you shower, and it is sorted out in a day at most.
Yikes…
If you use Youtube from a computer, your browser history might remember some of the videos you saw, going back weeks, months or even years. You might click through those to give Youtube at least some idea of what you like.
(Also, due to some glitch, I go through random resets of Youtube memory, and it seems to me that Youtube never actually forgets. I’d watch topics A, B, and C, then a reset happens, I watch A and B, and Youtube soon starts recommending C as well. I don’t think the topics are connected in any way outside my head, so I suspect Youtube of cheating. Then again, maybe my head is not as unique as I think.)
Open your browser history. Search for YouTube. select all and open in new tabs. Might fry your machine for a while but better than nothing.
Or contact YouTube service about it.
17 years, so you’re running on what? Windows vista? Your entire life right, man this sub..