Is Emacs better at YouTube than the official frontend?
Is it too self-righteous in here for you?
No, you’re not trapped here, there’s plenty of open air in the Amyzone back that way.
I found out how to eliminate the need to employ a web browser in order to search and consume content from YouTube by using Emacs for that purpose instead.
Someone I like and respect the intelligence of asked me why I didn’t just use a web browser for that, and what you see before you is the result of the time I probably spent too much of in trying to make sure my answer revealed enough.1
Reader beware; the approaching text is most easily likened to delirious ranting and shrieking.
FREE ME FROM THIS CURSE
Perhaps more important to me personally are the weaknesses or downsides that the other thing does do which I’d like to avoid.
Check out this picture. I captured it myself.
Firefox at 1080p. Somehow, this is normal? Why?
Of course, browsers differ. Chrome and Chromium-based browsers are popular, but don’t think that I forgot about you2, of those who were wondering.
We’re running from top-to-bottom. Firefox has all the vertical space I can give it without having to adjust the zoom on the page, and I have made a search query to find videos related to Emacs.
I quite like the results I see. The two of them on my whole monitor, which isn’t brand new but it certainly doesn’t come from the ancient times.
Notice the evidence of Google’s attempt to ape TikTok and enter the fad of spiritually succeeding Vine. Maybe you’re a fan of that kind of thing – I don’t really care what it is, other than that it’s in the way.
“Can’t you work around it?”
A reasonable assumption, although barely (in that I should not need to ever do this to get a better rendering of search results that fits more than two on my non-ancient screen), might be that shrinking the window will make results smaller.
Shrinking the window does indeed make video search results smaller, but it does nothing whatsoever to the obstruction.
I’m not being more dramatic than my usual amount – I can’t pop a wicked enough mental backflip to think this is okay. Even the esteemed Emerald McS. et al., PhD looks offended.
I’m really not exaggerating my feelings on this. I think this is the worst.
“Why do you care so much, freak?”
That part earlier that mentions my monitor not coming from the ancient times? That was really a red herring. The reality is that it doesn’t matter if my screen were from the ancient times or not, because this didn’t happen in the ancient times.
If we’re talking YouTube, I think it would be fair to consider 2009 as being a year that falls within the ancient times. It’s not as ancient as 2007, but it was still before my age since birth was in the single digits, and YouTube was clearly a big deal in its day. Nothing like it is now, sure, but there was no other YouTube-alike anyone talked abaout.
Let’s do some time travel. Our destination: . No it’s not a weed
number thing, I’m getting there.
How many results fits on your era-appropriate monitor from those days?
Wow. I was running 720p that day.
“Big woop. There’s no way this is your screenshot; I bet you found that date with your imagination.”
So like I said, the date isn’t a weed thing. This screenshot comes from the
20th of April during the year 2009. I don’t know that because this is my
screenshot; I’ve never had the slightest curiosity about Susan Boyle or if any
countries have talent or whatever I’m losing track
The Featured Video shown here was uploaded 6 days before this picture was taken. It has a new title now but I’ve located the same upload; I know it’s the same because the timestamp matches exactly (3:31) where another result of apparently the same video is off the mark (3:32). Well… that and who uploaded which one.
Take a look.
Ooh, what’s this? They let me have THREE, this time? 🫦
If we look at the screenshot from 2009 once again, we can notice that only
three out of a total ten videos that are linked are results that are not
clearly-marked Featured Videos. Those which are featured, by some miracle,
appear to all be related to the search query susan boyle which is certainly
good, but who cares?
Let’s take that in bad faith just for a laugh. YouTube really wasn’t any better back then after all! I should stop complaining so much and be happy with something for once.
Wait, but I’m already happy with something.
“I’d like to see you do better.”
I bet you would. I love it every time I see it. Let’s try to search for emacs
again; this time, I’m gonna use the command yeetube-search, from inside the
same configuration of GNU Emacs that I’m writing this document within.
I haven’t even started to talk about data analytics, JavaScript, advertisements or any of the other million nasty things that are happening without your knowledge or consent while looking for the same videos, and finding less, on a web browser. Right now I want to focus on how bad it sucks, not how evil it is.
Goodness. Surely there’s some mistake? I bet it won’t get far if I negate half of its vertical space…
Oh no. Playing dirty still didn’t win!
“Thanks for nothing.”
Not so fast! There… might be more where that came from. If you read this angry hate letter of mine addressed to one of the great pillars of our community, and found that you were not already newly-aware that it does not, in fact, “just work”, then you could really let me have it with a simple step.
Do any of the following things bother you?
- Being profiled, from the stalking of your digital footsteps
- Advertisements and other psychic hazards
- Campaigns against your freedom to dispel advertisements
- Exploitation of your data for profit
- Using other, sketchy sites to download videos; may feature bonus viruses
- YouTube does officially offer this feature. Too bad it costs money.
If so, or better yet if any gripes in addition to those come to mind, you are not just welcome to ask me to spend a few additional hours on writing a followup.
Footnotes:
Don’t worry. I couldn’t see straight anymore after managing to get even that much out in one go about a search UI that sucks on a website I’m so tired of dealing with.
I am well aware of the absurd number of tabs that remain open in Chromium on my machine. They’re still there, even years from this being written; I know this because I won’t be doing anything with them whatsoever while I refrain from using Chromium, which will continue until my life’s end.