I’m sure a lot of people get to this point … it’s a form of procrastination, clicking on the tempting little Watch Later mini-clock-face.
“Of course I’ll watch you”, I say to the little thumbnail.
Fast-forward a few years later, and there are now about five hundred of these. Surprise.
Given that the average length is about half an hour (if it’s five minutes, I either watch now or watch never), this is several months of dedicated watching time. Not going to happen.
I could painfully prioritize these, figure out what I really meant to watch, and what I was just lying to myself about.
I don’t need to do that. I know I was lying to myself most of the time I clicked that little button.
So the next best option: start over.
Unfortunately, Youtube hasn’t allowed for this possibility.
I found a hack on StackExchange. It involved moving some playlists around. Painful, but doable.
Doubly unfortunately, this doesn’t work anymore. The Watch Later playlist is an append-log now. Your pile of misery cannot be allowed to shrink.
There seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel: by some suitably obscure Javascript, you too can wipe your slate of false optimism clean. It was an innocuous looking short one-liner.
I tried it, didn’t work for me.
I tried reverse-engineering it, but couldn’t hack and cut my way through the mass of div s that characterize modern web pages. Javascript is the new assembly language of the web, deal with it.
I got more desperate, tried out other, more unwieldy snippets.
I did find some kindred souls.
Anyway I’ve been on-and-off this quest, with no success. Still looking for that “magical snippet” that will work for me.
(@Youtube, Y U No Let Me Delete My Watch History ?!)
Originally published at http://abacusnoir.blog on January 12, 2021.
