I hate the YouTube algorithm and and myself more for giving into it and saving all the hateful abuse videos I get. I am crying now trying not to alert Ron who is in the next room with the door between us open. I had two open windows. In one I had so many tabs of abuse that the algorithm pushed them to me because I occasionally watch them. I deleted 8 of them before switching to the other open window. What does YouTube think I need to see / hear after all that deleting and not watching all those videos? The two videos below.
Am I the one to blame but if so what does that say about all the vulnerable children who are led down hate rabbit holes? At least the harm happening here is to me done myself aidded by the shit pushed into my feeds and I am so stupid that I click on them and leave the tab open while I try to move onto something else. But eventually I end up coming back to the ones that hurt me so much. Who is to blame? As always in my life, as in my childhood … I am, and I have always been according to those that hurt me. Goodnight. Scottie. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 
When the Children Cry is new to me, but Disturbed’s Sound of Silence is one of those songs that always stops me in my tracks.
Reading what you wrote, I felt the weight of how unsettling it must be to have old wounds stirred up by something as ordinary as clicking a video link. It takes courage to name that openly.
One thing I’ve noticed with YouTube is that it doesn’t understand the difference between “I’m drawn to this because it hurts” and “I’m drawn to this because I enjoy it.” It only sees that a video was opened, and it tries to build a pattern from that. Trauma, curiosity, discomfort — none of that registers for the algorithm.
That’s partly why I keep most of my browsing as anonymous as possible unless I want the system to guide me toward familiar music or topics. Logged in, it feeds me NZ music, autism content, LGBTQ+ issues, and social justice because that’s what I usually watch. Logged out, it can’t build a story about me at all.
When I’m exploring something I don’t want tied to my profile — whether it’s research or something emotionally charged — I switch to anonymous mode and use a VPN so each visit starts fresh. It doesn’t erase the emotional impact of what we stumble across, but it does stop the platform from echoing it back at me.
I don’t know whether any of this changes the experience you described, but I wanted to acknowledge the honesty of your post. Algorithms are blunt instruments. They don’t understand the difference between pain and interest, even when that difference matters a great deal.
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