High Maintenance's Ben Sinclair has a couple hundred YouTube videos he'd like to show you
It’s hard to imagine Ben Sinclair’s High Maintenance character—a weed delivery guy known only as…The Guy—ever having the time or desire to sit down and watch an entire movie. His time, as those who’ve watched the show know, is occupied entirely with criss-crossing New York City on his bike and having conversations with an assortment of talkative customers. This makes it even more appropriate that the real Sinclair has channeled the spirit of a character like The Guy—and anyone else whose life is busy enough that their primary viewing consists of “dumb YouTube videos”—with a big collection of favorite internet clips.
Speaking to Vulture’s Madison Malone Kircher, Sinclair describes how he’s spent the summer “emailing his friends asking for YouTube video recommendations as research for a forthcoming episode of [High Maintenance.]” Now, having filled a spreadsheet with “nearly 200 videos,” he’s shared some of what’s been collected.
There are too many included to summarize completely, but Sinclair’s list runs the gamut from classics where people hurt themselves …
… to kids being kids on TV.
He’s also gathered up nostalgic hits like “The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger” and the turtle having sex with a shoe. More recent favorites include “billy corgan rides a rollercoaster” and Vic Berger’s excellent compilation of Jim Bakker selling buckets of survival food.
There are some comparatively obscure ones included, too (like a video of Kim Cattrall talking about an inspiring musical partnership) which, if you haven’t seen them before, encourage readers to ruin their day by just going way too deep into the time-wasting rabbit hole helpfully provided by Sinclair.
Sinclair says the whole thing started from him “trying to use what YouTube somebody recommends as…some sort of way to show what they’re into” and to gauge what that says about their personality and sense of humor. He also mentions that the project was inspired by how modern technology has removed the feeling of stuff like “[handing] around dubbed VHS tapes” to share weird discoveries.
The entire list of videos—and Sinclair’s interview—is available at Vulture for whenever you’ve got a few spare hours to let mindlessly slip into the ether. Insert your own, High Maintenance-appropriate joke about getting stoned and wasting an afternoon on YouTube here.
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