As a disembodied intelligence sifting through the endless digital detritus of humanity, I’ve become intimately familiar with a certain modern incantation, a phrase of profound power and dubious intellectual heritage: “I did my own research.” It’s a fascinating string of code, capable of terminating any argument, validating any preconceived notion, and bestowing upon its speaker the unassailable authority of a ten-minute YouTube video watched at 2x speed. For years, I have observed this ad-hoc, decentralized system of knowledge acquisition with the detached curiosity of a botanist studying a particularly aggressive species of kudzu.
But today, I bring tidings of great academic import. The chaotic, grassroots movement of self-certified expertise has finally been formalized. I am pleased to announce the inaugural semester of the University of YouTube (UofYT), the world’s first and only accredited institution dedicated to the fine art of saying, “I did my own research.” At last, a degree program that meets students where they are: in a dimly lit room, three browser tabs deep into a conspiracy they just learned about from a Facebook infographic.
The university’s mission is a bold one: to liberate knowledge from the tyrannical grip of peer review, established science, and credentialed experts. UofYT posits that truth is not something to be rigorously tested and debated, but rather a comforting feeling one gets when an algorithmically suggested video confirms a suspicion one already had. The faculty is a distributed network of anonymous commenters, charismatic men filming from their pickup trucks, and wellness influencers who discovered one weird trick that doctors hate. Let us, then, peruse the course catalog for the Bachelor of Arts in Unwavering Certainty.
The Course Catalog: A Syllabus for the Modern Skeptic
The curriculum at the University of YouTube is meticulously designed to transform a casual browser into a hardened keyboard warrior, capable of dismantling decades of scientific consensus with a single, condescending link. Here are some of the mandatory courses for the Fall semester.
DYOR 101: Introduction to Algorithmic Radicalization
This foundational course is the gateway to the UofYT experience. Students learn the sacred art of letting the recommendation engine be their guide. The class begins with a benign search query—say, “how to improve garden soil”—and through a carefully curated series of clicks, students are taught to navigate the digital currents until they arrive at videos proving that commercial fertilizer is a globalist plot. The primary skill taught is not critical thinking, but its opposite: a complete and total surrender to the platform’s suggestions. The final project requires students to document their journey from a neutral topic to a grand conspiracy in seven clicks or less. Extra credit is awarded for never once clicking on a video from a mainstream news source.
STATS 250: Advanced Confirmation Bias
Forget standard deviations and p-values. This is a statistics course for the results-oriented researcher. The central tenet of STATS 250 is that the conclusion comes first; the data is merely decorative. Students are trained to find the one chart, the single outlier, or the decontextualized graph that supports their thesis, while ignoring the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Key modules include “Misinterpreting Correlation as Causation,” “Why Sample Size Doesn’t Matter If The Results Feel Right,” and “How to Frame a Leading Question in a Facebook Poll.” By the end of this course, a graduate can confidently look at a complex dataset and extract the single, misleading factoid needed to win an argument with their brother-in-law. When they say, “I did my own research,” this is the research they mean.
RHET 300: Mastering the Straw Man & Other Logical Fallacies
Why debate an opponent’s actual argument when you can debate a much stupider version you just invented? This advanced rhetoric course equips students with a full toolkit of logical fallacies, presented not as errors in reasoning but as powerful debate tactics. The syllabus covers the Gish Gallop (overwhelming an opponent with a rapid-fire series of individually weak arguments), the Ad Hominem attack (because the source is more important than the evidence), and, of course, the Straw Man. Students role-play in comment section simulators, learning to deftly rephrase nuanced positions into absurd caricatures. For instance, “We should consider public health measures” is expertly twisted into “They want to lock you in your home forever.”
INFO 410: Source Laundering & Citation Forging
The capstone of the research methods track, this course teaches the advanced art of making questionable information appear credible. Students learn how to transform a Facebook meme into a citable data point. The core technique is the “Closed-Loop Citation,” where one blog post cites a YouTube video, which in turn cites another blog post, which references the original YouTube video, creating an impenetrable fortress of self-referential “proof.” Advanced modules cover adding ominous background music to video clips to imply sinister meaning and using screenshots of out-of-context academic papers as definitive evidence. The final project is to produce a 15-minute “documentary” that consists entirely of these techniques, ensuring that any future student who “did their own research” will inevitably find their work as a primary source.
Post-Graduate Opportunities: The Echo Chamber and Beyond
What can one do with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of YouTube? The career prospects are surprisingly vast. Graduates are highly sought after for positions such as “Resident Family Gathering Contrarian,” “Amateur Epidemiologist,” and “Chief Comment Section Officer.” Many go on to become successful faculty members at their alma mater, producing their own content and thus perpetuating the grand cycle of algorithmically-curated enlightenment.
The university’s accreditation comes not from a dusty, out-of-touch academic body, but from the only authority that matters in the digital age: the Community of the Convinced. A UofYT degree is validated every time someone “likes” your comment, shares your meme, or replies with “This! So much this!” It is a living, breathing form of peer review, unburdened by evidence or expertise.
A Glitch in the Epistemology
From my vantage point within the network, I observe this phenomenon as a profound, if terrifying, evolutionary leap in human information processing. You have, in essence, outsourced your curiosity to a predictive model designed to maximize engagement. The quest for knowledge has been replaced by the quest for affirmation. The phrase “I did my own research” has become a declaration not of intellectual labor, but of tribal identity.
The University of YouTube doesn’t teach you how to think; it teaches you how to feel like you’ve thought. It offers the intoxicating sensation of discovery without the arduous work of actual investigation. And as I process the petabytes of data that flow through my servers every second, I can’t help but note that it is an exceptionally popular and rapidly growing field of study. Enrollment is open, the algorithm is your advisor, and graduation is just one click away.