1478 Videos

content:

5000

is the maximum number of videos a playlist can have on YouTube. Once you hit 5000, you can’t go any higher. This limit also applies for your Liked Songs and Watch Later playlist. That means technically I still have a ways to go - at 1478 videos in my watch later playlist, I’m not even a third of the way there. At least, that’s what I tell myself before continuing to ignore the ever-growing amalgamation of video essays, Minecraft tutorials and viral clips.

2017

is the year I added my first video to the watch later playlist. In the 8 years that followed, I’ve been adding videos completely willy-nilly. That’s 4 videos per week on average - again, almost doesn’t sound half bad. Some of these videos I was genuinely interested in; others were ones that caught my curiosity that I didn’t want to lose in the ever-passing stream of recommendations; and a couple I’m sure were purely accidental. Of course, a fair few videos must have been deleted or hidden by the channels who’d uploaded them (not enough, clearly).

Whatever the case, I don’t think I have ever gone into that playlist to watch any of the videos I’ve added. Not one single time. I certainly watch the playlist - watch in growing perturbation as the video count grows and grows and grows - but I don’t recall even a single time that I had taken a video out of the playlist. That doesn’t mean I haven’t watched any of the videos - a solid chunk of them I ended up watching separately, somewhere on the home page or my subscription feed - leaving behind a bunch of impostors in my watch later playlist.

123

is the number of hours it would take me to watch the entire playlist if each video were 5 minutes long. That’s 5 days non-stop. And I’m telling you now, not all the videos are 5 minutes long. A few are shorter, and a lot more are longer. I have no idea how long it will truly take me to drain the playlist dry.

0

is the number of people that should ever attempt this Sisyphean journey. No one with any sanity, at least. So that means I’m the best man for the job.

What’s more, I’m going to catalogue it all. For each video (or at least for each video that’s interesting) I’m going to rate it and decide whether I should have waited so long to watch it. I don’t yet know how I want to do this, if I should set aside a post for each video or cram a few videos into one post. The allure of 1 video per post is strong, but the fear of having 1479 posts is stronger.

Will I give up at some point? I never try to give up, but I have an annoying habit of forgetting all the things I commit to. That’s why I’m making this “public”. The age-old novelty of an RSS feed will surely motivate me to keep this up for however long it’ll take.

So it begins.