This week, I have dealt with a backlog of emails. By âdealt withâ, I sometimes mean âdeletedâ or âarchivedâ, not âreplied toâ. I didnât use to understand the plight of people who get lots of emails, but now I do. I donât even get that many emails, but, now that the novelty of getting emails has worn off, itâs so easy to let the backlog pile up.
For various reasons, some of the emails are like, âWhat times are the buses on Easter Sunday?â Over the years, Iâve tried to refine the main source of emails to discourage certain kinds of email I usually canât answer satisfactorily, but not enough to discourage some. Now, I donât hold much truck with the idea of a âguilty pleasureâ â stop being guilty about what gives you pleasure! â but realising âoh dear, I didnât reply to this email in timeâ and binning it is some arsehole behaviour Iâm guilty of.
Meanwhile, I have sent some emails to some people, and Iâm slightly agitated that I havenât had a reply yet.
Some people have observed something about YouTubeâs ârecommendationsâ feature: âHow YouTube Built a Radicalization Machine for the Far-Rightâ, âYouTube Is Full of Easy-to-Find Neo-Nazi Propagandaâ, âHowever extreme your views, youâre never hardcore enough for YouTubeâ. I, too, found that after I watched a wholesome and right-on video, something of the ilk of a the constipated lobster guy would auto-play afterwards.
Then I discovered a slightly hidden button labelled âNot interestedâ.
The eagle eyed will notice that the âNot interestedâ button there is attached to a lovely compilation of Bob Mortimerâs appearances on the televised parlour game Would I Lie To You?, in which I am not not interested. I couldnât find any examples of actual Nazis for the screenshot, because one small nudge was all it took for the mighty algorithm to buck its ideas up and stop trying to radicalise me.
Now some of the recommended videos now have titles conforming to an irritating formula, like âDavid Mitchell HATES the Fondue!!â. Still, itâs all very jolly, and I didnât even get to the bit with David Mitchell or the fondue.