What Geronimo Can Teach Us About YouTube

Or why we fall for simulations and what we can do about it

The Tower of Babel. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1563.

“And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.” Genesis 11:3

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It is of interest that one billion hours are spent watching YouTube every single day.¹ If the average American lives to 77, this translates to 1,400 life spans per day.² Over the course of a year, that is 540,000 human lives – from birth to death, twenty-four hours per day – spent doing nothing but sitting in a chair watching YouTube.³ This staggers the mind.

Rarely do I wander into YouTube land because I know what will happen when I do. I might set out to look up, say, the music of the Baka hunter-gatherers after learning of it in a book. But the moment YouTube takes over my screen, I am presented with what the algorithm knows will flood my blood stream with dopamine: movie trailers, grainy clips of hunter-gatherers from seventy years ago, and bits of history from random wars. This is crack to me. My mind merges with the model – sixteen minutes and six random videos later, I regain consciousness and realize I had completely forgotten about the Baka.

What then? What is YouTube? What significant truth can it reveal about us?

Let us begin with a story from Apache lore to set the stage.

Geronimo was an Apache warrior. In 1858, Mexican soldiers massacred his family – his old mother, his young wife, and his three children. To the Mexicans, there was no worse enemy than Geronimo, and to his tribe, there was no better warrior. On one mission, his war-party captured a mule pack train and took wicker baskets full of mescal – a fiery liquor made of agave – as booty. He recalls that, “As soon as we made camp the Indians began to get drunk and fight each other.” He got a buzz and then stopped — he knew what it meant. He ordered everyone to stop guzzling the fermented fruit but they ignored him, drank more, and fought their fellow fighters harder. They did not stop at one eight-ounce serving just like I did not stop at one two-minute video. They were so drunk he could not even set a guard around the camp to warn of enemy troops. So, the old warrior waited in silence, and stood watch alone.  

Once the “Indians were too drunk to walk or even fight,” he made himself useful. He put out all the fires and moved the mules far away from camp to confuse the troops on their trail, and then he cut an arrow head out of one man’s leg and pulled an arrow head out of another man’s shoulder. He then made his most profound call of the night – he poured every bottle of mescal into the dirt.⁴

Geronimo knew that if the warriors could not command the mescal, the mescal would command them.

As the sun rose, a question must have risen in the inflamed brains of the hungover warriors: “What if Geronimo were not here?” I do not think they would look back fondly on how the Mexican soldiers could have shot them in their coma, sawed the scalps from the crown of their skulls, and sold them for one hundred dollars apiece to the Mexican government – a fortune at the time.⁵

What then does any of this have to do with YouTube?

The brain is plastic and what is plastic can be molded. The mind is a computer and a computer can be programmed. Who then do we give permission to mold our brains and program our minds? The indignant voice at the back of our skull answers, “I train the algorithm.” But what is the inflection point at which we stop training the algorithm and the algorithm starts training us?

The YouTube algorithm learns what releases our dopamine and then gives us more of it which is the exact opposite of how reality works. It is designed to capture our attention with carefully curated content as if it were reality with a + sign: more laughter, more fitness, more risk, more entertainment, more life. Actually, it is reality with a – sign: less heart, less mind, less soul, less meaning, less life.

With the algorithm, when I say I want videos of people enduring some savage struggle or crafting epic prose, the algorithm says, “Of course. Why not take a seat? Why not unplug… from reality?” With reality, when I say I want to pen an essay, nature says, “Here are fingers and ink and a brief span of time: get after it while you can.” When I say I want a tight knit community, nature says, “Here are emotions and vocal chords and a bit of breath: get after it while you can.”

Is one billion hours of YouTube all that different from one billion hours of boozing? What is the end result, if not one billion less hours to live? A few gulps of mescal loosens nerves, and laughter can soon be heard around the fire; on the other hand, more than a few gulps leads to getting shot and scalped by a more disciplined enemy. A few videos are wonderful for broadening the mind; on the other hand, one billion hours spent punch-drunk on YouTube may have the same deadening effect as mescal when it comes to the sober scalpers in the hills.

In sum, both give the appearance of engagement and of usefulness. But it is a lie. The significant point is that both are simulations of reality, not reality itself. That simulations are designed to capture our attention says nothing; that we choose to submit to them says everything.

Now why would Apache warriors on a clandestine raid knowingly put themselves into a coma with mescal when they know that the liquor simulation can lead to a real bullet hole, a real fist of hair, and a real sharp blade? Why, too, do so many of us, myself included, willfully intoxicate ourselves with the YouTube simulation when reality lies on the other side of the laptop screen?

At last, we come to the crucial question: why do we want a simulation when we know it is dangerous?

The Apache warriors did not shotgun mescal in a cowardly attempt to evade combat. Far from it. In the same way, I refuse to believe that 540,000 human lives per year vanish in the void of YouTube in a cowardly attempt to evade reality. My feeling is that the Apache’s on that raid and the YouTubers of today want to enhance life, not flee from it; but the moment our pupils and eardrums soak in the sights and sounds of the algorithmically chosen clips that call on our deepest desires and pump dopamine through our veins, we will do anything to believe that the simulation is superior to reality for the most prosaic reason imaginable: it is easier.  

When we gaze into YouTube as if it were a mirror, a truth and a paradox look back at us. The truth: we were not molded by nature to be wary of simulations. The paradox: the simulations we think will make us useful were designed to make us useless.

Geronimo is not here to pour fourteen billion YouTube videos out of our screens and onto the dirt for us. How then did Geronimo stop himself short of blackout and thus save those in need from death-by-simulation?

My hunch is that Geronimo lived according to sacred laws of his own choosing so that when he saw the contrast between simulation and reality, it struck him like a spear to the chest. Laws that centered his mind on his life’s mission and his heart on those who relied on him. Laws worth being fanatical about.

An earlier sect of warriors shared a similar devotion to such laws. The epitaph for the Spartans buried at Thermopylae reads, “Stranger, tell the Spartans that here we lie, obedient to their laws.”⁶ I imagine a thread of kinship stretches from the ancient Spartan martyrs to the old Apache warrior, and that neither would see much value in a long life of ease and a slow death of gazing into a pixelated void.

Reality and tribe were enough.

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1. https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Viewers%20globally%20watch%20more%20than,That's%20a%20lot%20of%20content

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/21/cdc-us-life-expectancy-rises-after-two-year-dip-00148193

3. My math: 77 years = 674,520 hours. 1B hours / 674,520 hours = 1,483 human lifespans. 1,483 * 365 days per year = 541,125 human lifespans per year

4. Geronimo, and S. M Barrett. Geronimo's Story of His Life. New York, Duffield & company, 1906.

5. From Geronimo autobiography: “At this time the Mexican Government offered a reward in gold for Apache scalps — one hundred dollars for warrior’s scalp, fifty dollars for squaw’s scalp, and twenty-five dollars for child’s scalp.”

6. Herodotus 7.228: “Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι”