Lately I’ve been consuming a lot more video media than I used to. Until recently, most of the media I’ve consumed was by reading. I would either read non-fiction books, manga, or a lot of reddit. My average day would be me waking up and browsing reddit posts on my phone, setting aside some time during the day to read books, and then the latest manga chapters before going to bed.

Since I starting working in Pittsburgh, I don’t have a local library to take books from. I also cut down on reddit and social media usage in general because I don’t feel like it was adding much to my life. On top of that, I decided to buy my family a YouTube Premium family subscription since my family really likes watching YouTube. Purchasing that subscription was turning point for me to start watching videos more instead of reading.

The primary platform I use to watch videos is YouTube. I mostly watch videos about gaming or finance. For gaming I watch a lot of game play videos on Super Smash Brothers, and occasionally some video essays about gaming history or game reviews and trailers.

On the finance side I watch Ben Felix and the Plain Bagel. They’re both content creators who focus on a lot of various areas in finance. What I like the most about them both is that they actually cite research to back up what they’re saying, and they do not offer any specific advice of what to buy or sell. The reason I think this is really important is because it shows to me that they actually have no vested interests in trying to sell you anything, and are genuinely trying to help people learn. It’s also good it me because when I see someone not give any advice, it means that they understand the power of having any audience, and don’t want to say anything that could potentially lead to others making harmful financial decisions.

I also spend time on Netflix. I actually took a look at My viewing history recently to get a sense of how much I actually watch. The viewing history doesn’t include any of the netflix that I watch on friend’s TVs. While I do watch the occasional action movie or anime, my history is mostly filled with documentaries - Dirty Money, Rotten, Pandemic, Inside Bill’s Brain, and a lot more

I feel like documentaries are just the perfect media to consume after a long day of work. After writing code, reading documents, and going to the gym, my mind is active when I get home. Usually the documentaries I watch are at least an hour, so they’re great for putting on the TV and watching until I go to sleep. My kitchen is also placed in a way that I can watch the TV while prepping food, so it actually saves time for me.