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Study: Streamers Now Wasting Record Amounts of Time Finding Something to Watch

⁨281⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨misk@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨moviesandtv@lemmy.film⁩

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/study-streamers-now-wasting-record-amounts-of-time-finding-something-to-watch

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  • NotAPenguin@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Why do they keep giving the word "streamers" new meanings??

    A streamer is someone who streams but for some reason they started using it about the streaming services and now it's also the people using streaming services..?

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    • metaStatic@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Breaking: Streamers renamed Ribbons, totally unrelated streamers are up in arms

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    • Gingerlegs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What’s up, streams. You been streaming today? I stream every day, stream on brother

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    • Fisk400@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Did you know that the word “Run” has hundreds of definitions? Like, more then 600 depending on who you ask.

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      • hitmyspot@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Is it in the running for most useful word, or have we just run out of words?

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    • koreth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s not new, though. For example, here’s a Variety article from 2019 that uses it that way.

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    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s the usage you’re familiar with. But even if it was widely accepted at some point, the meaning can change over time. That’s normal, that’s what languages do. If you complain about shit like that, you sound like my 80 year old father.

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      • millie@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Right, but part of that process is people thinking some of it is stupid and pushing back. Language isn’t immune to the pressures that form it.

        Likewise, just because you know how something works doesn’t divorce you from the causal forces that bring it into being. The language changes because we change it. It’s okay to try to do it actively.

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    • ShroOmeric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Because “streamers” existed before Twitch? 🤷‍♂️

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      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah for paper ribbons

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    • aksdb@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Let’s discriminate the term further by calling the producer the “stream source” and the consumers the “stream sink”.

      We now have “sourcers” and “sinkers”. Thank me later. Or don’t.

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  • MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Please stop calling streaming services, “streamers”. That term already refers to people who livestream. It’s not cute and it’s very confusing and annoying to hear about how the MPAA or SAG-AFTRA rail against “streamers” when the average streamer probably makes below $1k a year (if they’re making anything), has no employees, and is likely doing their best to entertain a small group of viewers for 3+ hours, live, and without a script.

    Oh wait, you’re not talking about that kind of streamer, you’re talking about the one that serves other people’s videos on demand and makes billions a year, all while paying their employees like shit, pledging the bankrupt unions and driving people to piracy.

    As someone who thinks a lot of twitch streamers are funnier and more entertaining that 90% of the trash released today, please don’t dirty the term.

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    • Guntrigger@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I honestly thought the headline was about a new twitch stream trend at first. It definitely seems like watching someone pick out movies on Netflix could be a Just Chatting trend.

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    • koreth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “Streamer” has been a widely-used entertainment-industry term for streaming companies for years. It’s not a new thing people are making up to be cute.

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      • xep@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Why not just 'viewers'?

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      • MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        For how long? First time I heard that term was when Vinesauce started streaming via Livestream around 2010-ish (I didn’t watch them during their Livestream days, wish I had; sounds like they had a neat setup).

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  • Delphia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ha! Jokes on them! I’m middleaged, tired and depressed. I just watch the same shows over and over again.

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    • Guntrigger@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My wife is also like this and I honestly think the algorithm is geared towards this pattern. It constantly offers a ton of stuff you’ve already watched.

      “Hey you liked The Stranger, well i have the perfect movie for you, it’s called The Stranger”

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      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        My wife always goes back to the same things over and over. Sometimes it’s Band of Brothers, and I’m like “Awesome, but there’s only so many times I can watch Toye and Guarnere get their legs blown off.”

        But then she’ll put on New Girl for the 15th time through (I don’t even think I’m exaggerating) and I want to put a gun in my mouth. I want to punch every one of those characters in the face. Except for Winston, he’s cool.

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    • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Time to put The Office on for the 150th time!

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    • Maruki_Hurakami@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Same! What are your shows? I’m always playing Seinfeld, Office, Arrested Development.

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      • Delphia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Mostly car restoration shows.

        Since I had my daughter I dont have whole weekends to spend armpits deep in engine bays swearing at spanners.

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      • metaStatic@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Bojack Horseman is good.

        Sure it's not Ibsen but it's a perfectly serviceable depression re watch.

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      • gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Agatha Christie’s Poirot is pretty great

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    • aceshigh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      i started to watch shows that i was too busy to watch when i was younger… ie: i just finished watching the oc, i watched scrubs and degrassi for the first time during covid. i’m thinking of watching skins (uk) now.

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  • Prootje@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is the same issue i seem to have with Game Pass. All scrolling, no playing.

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    • lud@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Same issue with my Steam library

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    • MashedTech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m starting to just choose something that look good on the cover as quickly as possible and we where that leads me. Because I used to have the same issue. I have to say, this method has been good to me.

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    • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Broke out of this habit by forcing myself to have a handful of games I’m playing concurrently. Some that are right up my alley, others that are gems from outside of my typical interests, a few that are flyers. I try to pick from that group first before going to the libraries…but mainly because my library is out of control and everywhere. One thing that helps is Playnite as a launcher…that keeps all your libraries in one place and makes it really easy to manage.

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  • regalia@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It begins before you even open the streaming service, since you gotta also decide what the hell service it’s on

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  • anewbeginning@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The quality of shows they are outputting is quite worrying. They think they can get away without writers continuous input and it shows.

    Netflix in particular I’ve gone from following many shows to only a few.

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    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Surprise! It’s always been garbage! The 80s-2000s probably only have a couple dozens shows that were really big standouts. And Reality TV since the 2000s made a lot of content more available, so it drowns out even more quality shows.

      I follow only about 5-8 shows a year anyways. Even less for movies now.

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  • Geek_King@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I joke that I pay 15 dollars a month to watch thumb nails of movie box art scroll by from right to left. I’ve thought a lot about this, why was it easier to find a movie to watch when you drove to a video rental store? I think it’s because there was a shift in how descriptions of movies were being done from Tape/DVD era to streaming. You’d get a few paragraphs and a few pictures on the back of a DVD or Tape, but on streaming you get one MAY BE two sentences. Plenty of times I passed by a movie on netflix called “The Devil’s Rock” the box art look like cinemax T’n’A garbage, and the description made it sound very run of the mill shitty horror relying on tits and shitty monster effects. I ended up watching the movie and I was really impressed on how well it was done and how god damn poor the description was.

    I also think the move toward algorithms deciding every single fucking aspect of what we see across all platforms has had a huge part in this trend. When combined with the shitty non-helpful descriptions, the algorithm just randomly picks a fraction of whats available to show you in weird, always different categories. When you’d go to a video store, they had back stock, which was organized by genre. So you could walk in and just be in the mood for a horror movie, or a sci-fi movie and browse based on that interest. It’s a lot harder to browse based on genres on most streaming apps, Netflix used to let you look at a full list of genres but most streaming services have moved away from that.

    So in summary, shitty descriptions for movies, ever shifting categories where you have little control in what you get presented. This makes the total available list of movies feel amorphous. No way to, or not easy to find genres to help narrow down based on a general mood. It’s ironic, we have more access to just about any movie you want, but it’s harder to actually settle on anything in particular. Also, the move toward streaming has meant that if a movie isn’t carried by any major platforms, it for all intense and purposes, doesn’t exist. For many years, it was very difficult to find Dogma any where to stream, as an example.

    I could make suggestions on how to fix this, but I don’t know, maybe they’d help, maybe they wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter because all tech companies are in fucking love with their algorithms to steer users.

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    • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Don’t really agree. The video rental store forced you to make a decision because you spent time to go there and the social pressure of actually chosing something instead of awkwardly shuffling away huffing something about forgetting to buy milk. For streaming there is no such pressure or urgency. You’d have something to watch every time if the app forced you to make a decision via say a time limit before it refuses to open and/or some rewards for consistently making fast decisions on what to watch.

      I do think the descriptions are very poor, but movie box art and synopsis have always been pretty shit, it’s just more shit now.

      Regarding your algorithm rant it obviously doesn’t fit you but on the whole it helps guide people towards choices they’d enjoy. People tend to lock up when overwhelmed with choices so they try to narrow it down. You on the other hand would prefer to slowly peruse a giant genre based category, but that isn’t the norm. However I do agree that they should provide the option, because we’re all different and it’s good to cater to all types.

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      • Guntrigger@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I think it depends on how much of the content you have already watched. I’ve personally watched a lot of Netflix in the past year and it keeps suggesting stuff to me that I’ve already watched. And I don’t mean the “watch again” category. Literally every category on the main page contains stuff I’ve already watched recently and rated.

        I also rate every title I watch, in hope of feeding the algorithm. It does offer me new releases which fit, but anything older is completely hidden behind recommendations that never really change (no way to hide away content i don’t want to watch).

        I get your point about it being good to guide people towards things they might like, but evidently from the article we are commenting on it’s not really helping on the whole.

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      • Geek_King@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I can appreciate how algorithms might be helpful with seeing what you like and helping you find other stuff similar for you to enjoy. I think the issue comes when you end up getting pigeon holed and only see certain things, despite maybe wanting to see something completely different. I noticed this when I saw what my Dad’s Netflix looks like compared to mine. He had all sorts of movie suggestions I’ve never seen before due to his different watching patterns.

        We’re both in agreeance that they could do a better job with movie descriptions though.

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    • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’ve thought a lot about this, why was it easier to find a movie to watch when you drove to a video rental store

      I don’t remember it being that way. Granted I was a kid back then, but I loved being at the store and just looking at VHS cases in the horror section. Never really got to choose and I remember being there for an hour or so cause my mom and her friend also couldn’t decide what to get.

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  • MargotRobbie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well, yeah, there is just so much junk “originals” on streaming services since the studios think the best way to gain subscribers is quantity over quality.

    Back in the day, random bad movies are FUN to watch, but now, they are just bad in a boring way.

    I don’t think anybody wants to attach their name to a bad show, people usually want to be proud of what they worked on. But of course, if the ones insists on pushing out as much “”““content””“”" as possible at the cost of people’s passion, treating people as disposable metrics to pump up the number of shows on your streaming service, then passionless “”““content””“” that nobody wants to watch is what you are going to get.

    Support the strike, so that there is a possibility that after all this, people can refind their passion and make good, sincere, and human things again.

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  • aeternum@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    you know, I've got 2K movies on my jellyfin server, along with about 6K episodes. it takes me FOREVER to find something. Endless entertainment, and i still can't find shit to watch.

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    • Notnotmike@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Plex has a random button for movies and TV so often my friends/family and I will play a game I like to call the random game.

      Everyone gets 1 veto, and any movie can be skipped by majority vote. Just keep hitting the random button until something sticks. Eventually you’ll hit a movie to watch, and it’s never failed to be a good time.

      Bonus game is try to guess the movie first - unfortunately I usually win because I put the movies on there so I know the approximate list of options.

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    • all-knight-party@kbin.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I use a program called The Hat in which you can add text entries to a list and then randomize their order. When I want to play a game, for instance, I'll throw in 3-5 that I'd be okay with playing, and then let fate decide.

      As long as you don't allow yourself to veto the randomization and second guess, I'd say that method works pretty well. If I only have two choices sometimes I flip a coin

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      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I do this, only I allow myself to veto the random result ONLY if it’s to substitute something I’d rather watch. Occasionally, rolling the dice on a list is a pretty good way to force my mind to pick a favorite and settle on actually watching it.

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    • nezrock@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How much storage space do you have??

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      • aeternum@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        20TB. Small by comparison to some people.

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  • Rowsdower@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is why I like star trek. Finished watching TNG? Better watch DS9 again. Finished watching DS9? Well I haven’t seen Voyager in a while. Done with Voyager? Well I haven’t seen TNG in a while

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  • ohlaph@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have spent literal hours looking for something to watch.

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  • mooncabbage@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This seems purposeful. Keep people looking instead of watching stuff so they have to spend more time on the platform and stay subscribed.

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  • ShroOmeric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No I’m not. I have a list of hundreds of movies to watch and I can almost always find what I want.

    Sure, here at sea I don’t need to wait some stupid service to decide what I can watch and when. The open sea welcomes me and provides for me.

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    • Guntrigger@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This makes it sound like you float out a wishlist of movies into the sea and it floats back the DVDs you want like some kind of Poseidon’s Netflix.

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      • AGuyAcrossTheInternet@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Poseidon's Netflix will now enter my daily vocabulary for piracy. Thank you.

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      • ShroOmeric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Ahahah beautiful!!

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      • cre0@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        that’s actually an accurate description of modern media piracy

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  • 1984@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well not anymore. I cancelled most of them, and I suspect more people will do the same eventually.

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  • Rayspekt@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That's why I don't have any subscriptions running atm. I sub one month and watch the thing I want to. After that I'm tone again.

    Just wait and see how streaming services will give special discounts for 24 month subscriptions in the near future. After VPNs and password sharing the monthly subscriptions will be the next thing that falls. Then we'v gone full circe to cable.

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  • scorpious@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    In other news, record amounts of filler & dreck being endlessly firehosed onto streaming services.

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  • dditty@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Does anyone have a tool they recommend for choosing a movie to watch with friends? We usually spend ~30 minutes trying to find something everyone’s interested in watching that none of us have seen before.

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    • misk@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Even though I pay for a handful of streaming services I’m subscribed via RSS to a pirate scene releases log. If something catches my eye, which doesn’t really happen all that often, I add it to Radarr which downloads it to my home server / Plex. Other times me or my girlfriend add movies to Radarr due to word of mouth or some other reason.

      This library is basically stuff we have an interest in watching so when we’re up for watching something it doesn’t take long to choose.

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      • dditty@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Gotcha yeah thnx, Plex + *rr apps are also what we use. We just spend ~30 minutes browsing Plex titles and collections 🤣

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  • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    YouTube TV here - I rarely spend any time scrolling. There’s almost always something on and if there isn’t, I’ve already got something good recorded or I’ll switch over to Pluto Tv.

    Streaming is for normies who clearly can’t make decisions lol

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    • Naatan@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What’s your secret? Youtube just keeps recommending me the same shit. Their algorithm just makes it so that you’re rarely seeing new stuff.

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      • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Well it’s YouTube Tv so its more like cable. Lots of channels happen to show things I like still - I’m still really into adult swim and just started watching Teenage Euthanasia and Royal Crackers.

        I still watch older sitcoms too. Like right now I’m watching Newsradio. I’m also into like some game shows so there’s a lot to choose from there although I tend to go for the weirder stuff. I got hooked on watching Hollywood Squares for like a week lol

        I have regular YouTube but I’ve never really watched anyone who just makes youtube videos except I watched Report of the Week for awhile. Unfortunately as much as I like the guy who does those, Reviewbrah - he’s reviewing fast food and I have a terrible time fighting cravings if I watch his reviews. So I had to stop watching his channel. Fucker got me to gain like 40 lbs probably.

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  • coco@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    True

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