The Joy of Finiteness

I’ve been thinking a lot about the joy of finiteness. I made this connection between joy and finiteness in the most peculiar way. I’ve been a YouTube enjoyer since the late 2000s. Back then, YouTube was simple. Search for videos. Click on one. Watch. Liked the video? Check out the channel that posted it. Like the channel? Subscribe to keep up with the channel’s new videos. Easy. I fondly remember coming home from school — excited to check out what my subscriptions feed had in store for me that day. Over the years, YouTube’s focus shifted from being a video-sharing platform to an ad-revenue maximising platform. Subscriptions got replaced with an algorithmic home feed. The video interface became cluttered and crowded by recommended videos. The video player received an autoplaying feature that plays the next video just as you finish the current one. More recently, YouTube Shorts were added and plastered all over the website. All things to make you watch more and more and more. An…