> YouTube, which for any adult briefly glancing at the screen seems to feature an array of thumbnailed gawping imbeciles

I've basically given up on humanity. YouTube is a cesspit of stupidity - a race to the bottom and right through the other side of how utterly devoid of dignity human beings can be. I feel a physical rage at the mere sight of all the thumbnails of people pulling the stupidest face they can to try to get the stupidest people on the planet to click on their stupid video.

Unfortunately YouTube captures the full set of extremes and everything in between, so I don't think it's fair to label the entire thing a cesspit of stupidity.

For every MrBeast there's a 3Blue1Brown. For every recycled clip from a well-known TV series uploaded purely to drive ad revenue for a bot-controlled channel there's a fine art restoration video showing a very niche process with a real, skilled human behind it.

And so on.