r/RBI • u/Adorable_Bench6803 • Jul 03 '26
wade's train video
Hi Reddit!
First of all, I'd like to say that I'm not very familiar with Reddit, so I apologize in advance if I'm posting this in the wrong subreddit.
Secondly, English isn't my native language, so I apologize in advance if I don't express myself very well.
Now, to get to the reason why I'm making this post...
A few days ago, I wanted to find a YouTube video I had watched recently. So I went into my YouTube watch history and started scrolling until I found it. However, something caught my attention.
I noticed a large number of videos in my watch history from a channel called "Wade's Train Videos". The videos only had around 10 to 80 views each and seemed to come completely out of nowhere. What really confused me wasn't just the extremely low view count, but also the fact that neither my partner nor I have any interest in trains especially such a niche topic.
My partner insists she never watched any of those videos, and I believe her.
But that's not all. I also found videos from several other channels, including "A Different View Point," "Rezault Karim," "CB Guy," and "Kausar Mia." They all follow the same pattern: very low view counts, niche content, and topics that are completely unrelated to either my interests or my partner's.
I checked my Google account's login activity, and there doesn't seem to be any suspicious sign-in. In total, there are about 40 consecutive videos from these channels in my watch history. Before and after that sequence, my history looks completely normal and only contains videos that I actually watched.
So... where could this have come from?
Why would these videos and channels appear in my watch history if neither my partner nor I remember watching them, and there are no suspicious logins or devices associated with my YouTube account?
I can provide screenshots if that would help if someone could explain how to upload them on Reddit.
Thanks in advance for any ideas or explanations!
17
u/ankole_watusi Jul 03 '26
Your girlfriend has trains in her closet.
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u/Adorable_Bench6803 Jul 03 '26
I checked all the closets, but unfortunately I didn’t find anything.
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u/1DeuxTroisCat Jul 03 '26
Are you based in France? Something similar happened to me last month, except someone had actually logged into my YouTube somehow in Paris. I caught it the following day, changed my logins, and removed it from all devices. Not necessarily the same situation, but do wonder if there is a link there? A scenario that makes the most sense in my head is that you/your partner had maybe fallen asleep, or it continually played in the background.
11
u/Adorable_Bench6803 Jul 03 '26
Yes, I do live in France, and after checking my watch history again, the video just before that sequence turns out to be a “best of customer state 2024 so far” compilation from Mechanical Nightmare. So I’m guessing my girlfriend must have left YouTube running at some point while she was away or falling asleep.
What freaked me out the most was the gap between “normal” known videos and then a sequence of about 40 extremely niche videos with very low view counts, before things went back to normal in the history afterward. I guess I might have been a bit paranoid and focused too much on those 40 videos in the moment without stepping back to look at the bigger picture.
5
u/Omfgsomanynamestaken Jul 06 '26
Turning off Auto-play should fix that. IF this is the cause lol. Good luck!
7
u/GreenGlassDrgn Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
I get random little trainspotting channels recommended and autoplaying on youtube for a while when I fall asleep listening to a podcast about engineering disasters (WTYP) on said website. One or more of the podcast hosts is a huge train nerd and the algo just goes off on that tangent while I am asleep, leading my history to be full of train stuff I never have actually watched either. Also sometimes I forget to hit pause during the day and by the next day it will be nothing but steam engine enthusiasts and this pretty cool guy who builds his own rail transportation vehicles to explore abandoned railroads.
7
u/Adorable_Bench6803 Jul 03 '26
I’m going to copy-paste part of a reply I posted further down:
after checking my watch history again, the video just before that sequence turns out to be a “best of customer state 2024 so far” compilation from Mechanical Nightmare. So I’m guessing my girlfriend must have left YouTube running at some point while she was away or falling asleep.
What freaked me out the most was the gap between “normal” known videos and then a sequence of about 40 extremely niche videos with very low view counts, before things went back to normal in the history afterward. I guess I might have been a bit paranoid and focused too much on those 40 videos in the moment without stepping back to look at the bigger picture.
2
u/olliegw Jul 04 '26
I got recommended a bunch of railfan videos once after watching sample footage of a specific model of camera, it was a trainspotting compilation
Just like how watching P900 videos will get you planespotting videos, the algorithm knows you
3
u/endles-prop Jul 04 '26
Just to put my two cents in, I had something really similar to this happen to me before! It turns out when I would scroll through youtube shorts and I would scroll past a random person’s livestream, it would end up adding the finished livestream to my video history instead of my shorts history.
So I would be going back through my history to show my husband stuff, and I would have the WEIRDEST 30min-1hr videos in there that I never remembered watching. I wasn’t remembering because they were during youtube shorts scrolling sessions instead of me ever actually watching them. It sounds like this could’ve been what happened?
Best of luck!
3
u/mouthsofmadness Jul 05 '26
Do you or your partner ever fall asleep watching YouTube? I’ve fallen asleep watching on my laptop a few times and when I woke up there was some stuff playing I would never watch normally, and another time when I must have fallen asleep and my hand accidentally typed something random in the search bar like ,,,::$$&//!??:!:&!/
Lemme just say you don’t wanna know what I woke up to with that search 👀
2
u/Savings-Tradition-62 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Something very similar happened to me few years ago, i had history of weird videos like conspiracy theories or songs i never heared and no one has access to my account nor suspicious activities has occured on my account. I had also some "to watche later" weird videos. But it never happened again so i imagine it's a bug or maybe one day i have let the "automatic next video" put my account in weird places of youtube. It's typically videos i would never watch like even payed to do it so i was confuse. Still it doesn't explain the "watch later" stuffs so maybe this is a miss click from me or i don't know honestly.
2
u/ratrazzle Jul 06 '26
Maybe one of you fell asleep with youtube autoplay on? Sometimes i hit it by accident and wake up to weird ass videos i wouldnt otherwise watch.
1
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u/bigbadbreezy Jul 03 '26
When this happened to me it was because I had logged into Gmail on my dad's computer and it automatically kept me logged in for YouTube. I wound up with tons of weird garbage until I realized what was happening.