I assume you’ve watched the Dick Proenneke films? The book of his diaries is really nice too.
Do you watch Ben Degros’ other channel about carpentry where he has like 5x as many subscribers?
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Thanks. Gonna get on that.
Talking of weird youtube channels that you fall into but cannot stop watching, there’s this british plasterer that seems to be a top lad and an australian drain unblocker. Almost ashamed to admit enjoying watching them but there’s something so satisfying from the content. Also learnt a thing or two from the plasterer
Ive been watching the Roundcorner channel. Has youtube algorithms created hiveminds?
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I think I know the dude, on the trowel or something? He’s great
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Yeah bang on. Top fella. If you like him you might like that drain unblocking channel haha
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I watch a fair few people on YouTube from urban explorers, stealth camping, house renovation, desert explorers and cabin builders and that guy who bought the silver mine in Cerro Gordo, it really only occurred to me whilst typing this they all seem to involve environment and spaces and how they’re used/ unused, I think skateboarding has always fed the psychogeographer explorer in me.
Kind of makes sense why I was bitten by the geocaching bug a few years ago. We had some unexpected bills come out just before our family holiday in Argyle and Bute and brainstorming cheap and free shit to do I suggested geocaching for a laugh, my eldest overheard and really liked the idea of online treasure hunting after explaining it to her we can’t go anywhere without hunting for caches.
My job takes me all over the northwest and lakes so I’ll occasionally check the map to see if there’s any on the way or nearby. Some are basic whilst others are pretty difficult and require the solving of puzzles to get the coordinates for a cache. One took me a year to complete, it was a cypher that needed to be run through the WW2 enigma machine. The settings were incomplete and in order to get the final settings you had to run two separate cyphers to to gain the final key to unlock the main body of message,
I suppose what I like most is it motivates you to explore certain areas you’d never go out of your way to visit and in doing so you find hidden gems.
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Looking for spots has taken me to pretty pedestrian but weird journeys on the net.
There’s a guy I refer to as ‘NikeTNmaster’ that I have to check in on, on Instagram everynow and then just to make sure he wasn’t some sort of sick fever dream.
I was looking for photos of a spot that I hadn’t visited in real life but had seen on Google maps. Problem is, you can’t get close enough on Google maps cos it’s in the middle of a square, set back from the highstreet. At first I found the firm that redeveloped the square and looked at photos of the spot they posted on their website, but we’re abit of a tease and I needed some better photos to sate the hunger.
The area it’s in is quite a small suburb of London so I searched insta via places, using the name of the area, New Addington, in the chance that someone had uploaded a selfie in the recently redeveloped square.
As I scrolled through the random selfies and gym work out crap I came across NikeTNmaster.
A self described ‘chav shoe fetishit’, who was basically a bloke that’s really into ‘scally’ lads, and gets off on nike TNs and similar sports trainers. He has many insta accounts and they’re constantly being reported because he’s just uploaded photos of his jizz inside a shoe or him with a very obvious boner inside his neon green football trousers as he sits on the train.
I know I shouldn’t kink shame but he fascinates me (because I find it both weird, and hilarious) and at this point is part of my skateboarding hobby. He’s one of my favourite spot hunt wormhole finds
The spot is the kicker at 1:49
Bonus- the guy doing the Ollie on the spot came face to face with NikeTNmaster at the doors of Morrisons and froze in horror, before realising that Nike is blissfully unaware of his existence and that he’s been involuntarily integrated into our extended skateboard crew lore
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I like a bit of Youtube, I’m quite invested in the progress on Kieran’s skate part.
I also enjoy Socks with Sandals, this easy ‘vanlife’ recipe is an absolute masterpiece of Youtube cinema.
Spent a fair few hours on cave/mine exploring videos. I prefer the less click baity ones like this where they’re quite matter of fact, and love the ones where it’s just a long period of walking into darkness through a single tunnel
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Trying to think of non youtube things to share…
My attention addled, daydreaming brain loves keeping an eye on real estate listings… because middle class/age and because passing interest in architecture, design etc
One thing I often check is https://themodernhouse.com/
Probably, again because of an underlying hum of homesickness, but also because I love the design and functionality of the site.
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In the same vein, this is my current favourite Reddit:
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A recent find from there: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpottedonRightmove/comments/1jznddo/margate_70s_sex_dungeon_bungalow_with_swimming/
I hadn’t, I just watehed one yesterday and it was awesome, thanks!
Reading this thread tells me there aren’t many “corners of the internet” left any more. Everything is YouTube or socials.
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yep, it’s kinda depressing.
Miss the days of random blogs and little scene websites.
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Google has actively punished small publishers and rewarded larger ones in its search algorithm updates, which has driven a lot of smaller sites to extinction.
In the past couple of years Reddit saw massive growth in search traffic from Google thanks to a $60 million dollar deal to use Reddit’s data for its AI models.
This is similar to how Musk uses Twitter, or Meta use FB and Insta data.
If Google is channeling search traffic into web properties it can harvest data from it’s always gonna default to social media and logged in sites with user data to share. Google is still the gateway to the non-social web for 90% of users.
Remember when governments didn’t know how to regulate the internet and businesses didn’t know how to monetise it? It was this strange new thing that people were enjoying just for the sake of connecting and sharing. Look at it now? I wonder if people will look back on it as the last era of digital freedom or something similar, we got to experience the internet at its birth and it truly was the Wild West for a few years.
The early days were great.
I remember seeing cable television in the states and thinking how awesome it was that anyone could make a tv show. Pirate radio too.
Now it’s easier than ever, anyone can make a YouTube channel or social media account and we all have the tools to broadcast in our pockets.
I think we’re just a bit over exposed. It’s still cool.
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