YouTube and the Kafka Connection.

There’s a section in my ‘Recommendations’ on YouTube entitled Based on things you’ve watched. If logic serves me right, I think it would be reasonable to assume that the videos they are offering for my approval should have some relevance to things I’ve watched. That’s what it says on the can so that’s what I should get, right? It isn’t too far-fetched is it, even for a weirdo like me? So why does the very first offering show a picture of a supine, half naked woman clutching her breasts and screwing her eyes up, while the title of the video writ in big letters reads: 10 Weird Facts About Orgasms?

Let me say this: If I still had an aged aunt (which I don’t, unfortunately, because they’ve all gone now and left me entirely deficient in the aged aunt department, but if I did…) I would be perfectly happy for her to drop in unexpectedly and peruse my YouTube history going back to the year dot and have not the remotest fear of being discovered in the slightest impropriety vis-à-vis my watching habits. That’s a fact. I’m clean, man.

Only she wouldn’t, would she? She would only get as far as page one (recommendations based on things I’ve supposedly watched) and erupt into exclamations of great disgust and severity.

‘Jeffrey! What have you been up to late at night, you grubby little rapscallion? What would your dear mother think of such behaviour? If she weren’t already with the angels, this would send her to them as surely as you are guaranteed to join the Devil’s brood. Take thyself hence immediately and scrub every offensive little part of you with carbolic soap and a very strong scrubbing brush, or there’ll be no peace for you, my lad, not as long as I am here to forge your moral fortitude. Make sure the water is well bleached and has ice crystals in it. And if I receive intelligence ever again of such sordid, delinquent mischief, my tongue will be sharp and my scissors sharper.’

‘But Aunt Alice, I haven’t…’

‘No lies, you reprobate! The truth is there for all to see. Away with you, and do not presume to sully my presence further until your skin is glowing crimson with wholesomeness.’

But it isn’t the truth, is it? I’m innocent of the charges. And if I wrote to Google and asked ‘Where the hell do you get the idea that I watch this sort of stuff?’ they wouldn’t answer, would they? They never do.