Down the rabbit hole
The algorithm led me to Gettysburg. I never left.
Good morning. I'm J.R. Ball, and I am a YouTube addict. No clue how this happened, but I spend most of my waking couch-potato hours hoping the algorithm has discovered something to inebriate my mind. My fix isn't reels or shorts. It's longer-form video.
I've gone down extended rabbit holes on the Tudor dynasty, World War II and myriad videos on little-known facts and blooper reels from TV shows I once loved, plus a never-ending fascination for whatever Pablo Torre has found out. But all of that has been a gateway to my most severe addiction: the Civil War. Every nuance about Gettysburg, the fall of Vicksburg and Sherman's glorious march through Atlanta and the South.
Back in the youthful, heady days of cable television, my brain-cell-killing idols were Michael Scott, Ron Swanson, Jack Donaghy, Kramer and Jack McCoy. Binging classics like Trading Spaces, American Chopper or Deadliest Catch could destroy a non-sports Saturday—but nothing, and I mean nothing, could hollow out a weekend like a marathon run of Law & Order, seasons 1-9.
Today—older, hoping to be wiser and more conscious of how much money I'm burning in pursuit of vegetative-state entertainment—I've traded the 900-channel cable cord for YouTube Premium. It's there I've made my new digital friends: Stud Pack, the American Battlefield Trust, anything about On30 model trains, the late-great Shelby Foote, Dan Snow's History Hit, the woman with the fabulous Boston accent who hosts All Revolutionary War, All The Time, and the best of the bunch—Civil War historian and UVa professor Gary Gallagher.
I have no clue how this happened. But, dammit, it makes me happy. At least I feel smarter while my mind turns to mush.
—J.R. Ball
