YouTube Discoveries: Quarantine Edition

Lockdown has "blessed" most of us with a lot of extra time at home. Like many others, I spend a substantial amount of this time on YouTube. Now, after seven months of quarantine, my subscriptions are full of channels that I would never have subscribed to before. If you're looking for some "healthy" escapism from the dystopian times we find ourselves in, maybe try these out.

Cracking the Cryptic

If you love logic puzzles, this channel will keep you engaged for hours on end. Two friends, Mark and Simon, brilliantly walk viewers through the logical steps they use to solve incredibly complicated puzzles, in videos of varying lengths. Funnily enough, the ones that I got hooked on were the nearly one-hour long videos that I most certainly would find too time consuming were it not for quarantine.

A week into watching this channel, you'll find yourself casually using terms such as Anti-Knight or Thermo Sudoku, and if that doesn't excite you, I guess you're normal, and that's actually kind of sad.

Classic Tetris

The channel has full videos of all official NES Tetris World Championship games, and requires no prior knowledge of Tetris to get completely addicted to. The matches get nail-bitingly intense, always keeping me on the edge of my seat. The finale actually had me cheering out loud for a person who I had no clue even existed ten minutes prior. One of the best things about the channel is that they add an extra black screen recording at the end of their videos in order to obscure how many sets it took for a match to be settled, and I think that kind of consideration for an online audience is really cool.

ChooChoo's Story

Did you know that chipmunks can easily store twenty peanuts in their "cheek-pouches", which essentially doubles the size of their heads? That is an amazing feat, the true brilliance of which you will only know when you visit this YouTube channel. Or do some research on chipmunks, I guess. I'm not the boss of you.

This silly-sounding channel is run by a woman who lives in an idyllic Canadian forest. The channel chronicles her meeting adorable chipmunks and befriending them over many years. The videos are calming, and the progress is slow. But that, perhaps, is exactly why every little achievement feels so rewarding. The process of seeing these generally anxious animals slowly coming to trust these kind humans is infinitely comforting. This channel has basically become the eye in the middle of a seemingly endless storm for me, and I think, given the current situation, we could all use a little slice of the peace it offers.

Rabita Saleh is a perfectionist/workaholic. Email feedback to this generally boring person at rabitasaleh13@gmail.com