You probably know the feeling. It’s 2am-ish, and you can’t sleep. Or you’re just bored, or a little anxious. Maybe watching a quickie video on YouTube would help settle your brain?
Below are my go-to types of YouTube videos in such moments. What are yours?
Cat videos, of course. I’m partial to Jackson Galaxy and #tinykitten.
Geology stuff. USGS videos about earthquakes, GeologyHub, and random videos about Mt. St. Helens and the like are great.
Disaster and exploration-gone-wrong videos. I like Scary Interesting, for example. Tsunami videos work as well.
Late night monologues. Steve Colbert, John Oliver, etc.
Cooking shows! Everything from Emmy Made in Japan to Hillbilly Kitchen stuff (which I like despite knowing the woman who does it is doubtless a bible-thumping Trump supporter - hey, it food can’t bring us together, then nothing can).
With that kind of stuff, late at night, just a soothing voice and a mindless documentary (short or long) is great. Weird History, Plainly Difficult or Top Fives work. Anything from (almost) any of Simon Whistler’s channels. Company Man can be interesting as well as Wendover Productions/Half As Interesting and Free Documentary.
But one of my favorites for just laying down, half asleep is South Main Auto. While I enjoy the subject matter and I like the way he presents it, he’s one of those people that, for whatever reason, I could listen to him talk all day. Same with Dave Grohl.
Most of my youtube bookmarks are in the machinist and woodworking categories. Also antique/vintage stuff restoration. But to be honest, many of the the restoration videos piss me off because they don’t do it the way I would.
Watching people creatively problem-solve engages my own creative problem-solving and quiets the internal nattering on whatever other problem I’ve been stewing about.
Unboxing videos. Something very soothing about watching people take things - usually sneakers, in the ones I watch - out of packaging, examine them, then present them. There’s one in particular, a young guy called Saymonte, that I have watched probably 20 times. Can’t explain why, but this video always puts me to sleep.
Another Taskmaster fan! I’m currently binge watching all the seasons of TM on YouTube. Out of order, although I generally stick with one series at a time. I like the show for introducing me to comedians I’ve never before heard of, like Fern “Oh, nooooo!” Brady and Rose Matafeo. Plus the sheer surreal psychopathy of Sally Phillips and Rhod Gilbert.
This is my all-time favorite YouTube channel for insomnia or anytime, really.
Webcams around the world.
There are several of these channels, but this [Boston and Maine Live] is the best one IMHO. Over 100 locations-- some added, some dropped from time to time. There’s a world map up in the left corner of the screen with a red dot to tell you where you are in the world.
I’ve been watching it for a couple of years so I’m familiar with most of the locations. I’ve watched it at all times of the day and night, both here and there. I’ve seen the snow come and the Christmas decorations go up. Then the snow melts and everything turns green. Rain, fog, big crowds, empty streets, northern/southern hemispheres, north pole, beaches in Thailand, Mt. Fuji, downtown St. Petersburg, an albatross sitting on her nest, Sydney, Venice, Times Square-- it’s mesmerizing. Give it a look and I’m pretty sure you’ll want to save it to watch later, especially on sleepless nights. There’s some innocuous background music, but I usually keep the volume turned way down.
I’ve been living on a steady diet of Taskmaster, Would I Lie To You, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Big Fat Quz and probably a few others for the last year or so.
I do love the whole lateral thinking thing. I mean, even if someone is doing because they’re being a smart ass, it’s still an idea they had to come up with.
Do you have to throw something the furthest distance into a bucket? Why not take the shotgun approach and start lobbing handfuls of gravel at it? Need to get a ball in the hole without touching it? Well, the card didn’t say you’re not allowed to move the hole.
I started with compilations. I can still tell you the two that got me hooked was “Taskmaster contestants that woke up and chose violence” and “contestants that understood the rules”.
If you haven’t seen Would I Lie To You, 8 Out Of 10 Cats or Big Fat Quiz, they’re all worth watching. It’s fun to see how quickly these comedians can come up with jokes when you have them all in a room together.
Man, you are preaching to the choir. Don’t really like 8 Out Of 10 Cats for some reason, but I watch the spinoff 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown all the time. As well as WILTY, Big Fat Quiz, and Mock The Week. That’s why I know so many more British than American comedians - I can only name about five or six American stand-ups, compared to 30 or 40 Brits.
Big Fat Quiz has convinced me that Alex Horne and the Taskmaster producers have got to get Richard Ayoade for a series; can you imagine? Especially if he gets teamed up with some cloudcuckoolander like Bob Mortimer or Mike Wozniak; we’ve already seen how funny it is when he’s matched with Noel Fielding.
Chopped is my favorite show for curing insomnia. Ted Allen’s voice is soothing, and the format of the show is just right for relaxing at bedtime and falling asleep.
I do random searches on [music genre] from [foreign country] . Mostly surf music and rockabilly for me. Something always comes up and I’ve discovered some wonderful stuff like Psychedelic music (Cumbia) in Peru from the 1960s.
I like to watch Black people listen to Rage Against the Machine for the first time. The look on their faces as they start realizing what the lyrics are about - priceless.
I watch the Try Guys. I have to admit, while I don’t really care about Ned Fulmer, both the volume and the quality of the videos on the channel has vastly decreased since The Ned Affair. Perhaps they’re still in a transition period, but it’s been close to 6 months now.
Other than that, looking at my YT subscriptions, I watch a lot of PC gaming. Some of it is games I’m interested in, some of it is games I want to see the gameplay but I don’t necessarily want actually to play the game, but most of it is just content creators that I find entertaining. They play both mainstream and random off-the-wall games and I enjoy watching them play and comment and interact.
That’s what I meant. I don’t think I’ve watched the actual version.
Brad and Lex have done a number of RATM songs. Lex really gets into these reaction videos and I suspect she has a background in music based on the way she talks about songs, even one’s she’s unfamiliar with. I could watch her listening to music all day.
I fall down YouTube rabbit holes for British comedy; I think pretty much every episode of 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown is on there, as well as themed clip collections and 24-hour best-of streams. I also watch a lot of Guy Fieri triple-D (even though I’m an insanely picky eater and likely wouldn’t eat 99% of what gets prepared…it still looks amazing). I’m oten watching that stuff on my iPad as I drift off to sleep, or if I’m up in the wee hours.
Mine are Daily Dose of Internet, Puro Fail, Steve Lehto, Daily Humor, and the Hydraulic Press Channel. I sometimes like to watch live cams especially Gettysburg LiveCam for birds, Jackson Hole live to watch for traffic violators and Santa’s Village in Norway to watch people doing things outside in ridiculously cold weather.
I enjoy Wristwatch Revival, an amateur (but very well equipped!) watchmaker who takes apart and services old, damaged, or neglected watches while explaining how they work, what he’s doing, and what’s wrong that he’s fixing. If you have any sort of mechanical aptitude you’re likely to find these fascinating, but according to the comments, lots of other folks find them engaging, too.
You wouldn’t think that 45-55 minute videos would hold your interest, but they almost always do for me, although I have occasionally dozed off, which may be more to the point of this thread.
