We've Become Obsessed With Sourdough Vids During Lockdown

During the coronavirus lockdown, have you become obsessed with watching sourdough-related content on YouTube? This may sound oddly specific, but if you fall under that umbrella, you're definitely not the only one. CNET reports that between mid-March and the end of May, the average number of daily views of videos related to all things sourdough rose more than 400%, compared with those during the earlier part of 2020. Also popular: "workout at home" videos, with that average daily number of views increasing 200% since mid-March, and cooking-themed videos, which jumped 45% compared with last year. Engadget notes this is all part of a "dramatic shift in viewing patterns" brought on by people being stuck at home during the pandemic.

Google, which owns YouTube, has been trying for a while to get people to watch that platform's videos on larger screens instead of just on their phones, and events of late have helped drive that. Watch time on TVs has grown 80% since last year, and live content watch time went up 250% in March, compared with 2019. Meanwhile, Pamela Hutchinson writes for the Guardian that she's found a different kind of "sunny blessing" during lockdown: the "David Lynch Theater" YouTube channel, which offers daily weather forecasts from Los Angeles. In the clips, the quirky director "can be seen seated at his desk, with curls of steam rising from his coffee cup, delivering a weather forecast (in Fahrenheit and Celsius), pausing only to turn his head and gaze out of the window, as he assesses the stage of the morning cloud formation." (More YouTube stories.)