Can Your Teeth Tell Others What You Watch?
This morning I had the dreaded dental cleaning. While I hate dentists (sorry… it’s not personal) and the whole process, I have a new dentist and his office is completely state of the art. The facility is geothermal and solar powered, the office looks like a page out of a home designers BEST OF book, and patients have the luxury of listening to satellite radio, watching movies, or using AppleTV to watch TV shows or even better surf on YouTube. On my first visit 3 months ago, I clearly opted for my favorite, AppleTV and immediately signed into my YouTube account so I could watch some of my favorite clips I had saved, most of them being videos from ‘Chelsea Lately.’
Upon my return today, I was instantly handed the AppleTV remote when I sat down. What I didn’t expect was that I was STILL SIGNED IN! For three months, anyone who watched YouTube was watching through my personal account! I am glad to say there was nothing embarrassing where I would feel the need to switch dentists and never show my face there again, but what I DID find interesting was clicking on the viewing history tab. While I saw all the videos I had watched over the last while, it was filled with 3 months of dental patients viewing records. Music videos from Michael Jackson to Miley Cyrus, Hunting, Skateboarding clips and many more random random videos I definitely did not watch. While I felt completely cyber-violated, I thought it was a very very interesting little spyglass into the online habits of people I don’t even know. There were videos I would never have known existed in MY recently viewed videos. This explains why the “Eating Pig Heads?!” video was populating my Recommended Videos section on a daily basis.
On top of this, though I am happy to spread the word of my favorite videos, playlists, and even my own productions from my YouTube Channel, I realized that I have no idea how many people decided to experience the videos that they saw viewed or created by me. This also made me realize that this is really what social media is all about. Granted this wasn’t QUITE the way I would like to share, and I made sure to clear my history so the Miley Cyrus fan did not taint my YouTube persona, this was a crazy way to explore how people are actually exploring social media sites like YouTube.
4 Comments
Yikes! I would have felt so violated…and disgusted. At least you took it in stride.
What the AppleTV told the world actually was that deep down, you are a huge Miley Cyrus fan. Don’t blame your video viewings on others! That was all you!
That is some of the most awesome accidental research I’ve ever encountered.
That’s kind of freaky. Granted, it didn’t really do any harm and you probably learned more about how weird people’s viewing habits are, but I wouldn’t be amused if that happened to me.