Circle One: Recommended For You
These virtuous time-auditing souls scroll to and fro browsing short SNL clips and the oft-enlightening TED Talk. Be wary, the algorithm here is notoriously volatile. When it takes a malevolent posture, three-hour pseudoscience conspiracy videos with ads boasting of breakthrough supplements to unlock your brain's full potential will rain upon your recommendations like hell-fire.
Circle Two: Cooking Tutorials
The phantasmal dwellers of this circle are doomed to an eternity of yummy cooking tutorials. Homemade Ramen, Risotto, Crispy Parma Ham, and Pixar-Style Ratatouille. Wistfully, the penniless souls here all live in studio apartments where the only cooking appliance is an illicit hotplate. What's worse, souls of the other circles all steal Circle Two's wifi, so the finished recipes can only be viewed in standard-def. Puke.
Circle Three: Pain, Agony, Anguish, and Spice
The fires in the third circle of YouTube hell are a furnace of misery, but they aren't as miserable as the guy in the “Man Eats Six ‘Wailing-and-Gnashing-of-Teeth' Peppers Then Vomits Tears” video. The clips here are all of YouTuber's experiencing self-inflicted pain for internet fame.
Circle Four: Cameron's Claw
The sufferings of these depraved souls are dually abominable. They are forced to scour YouTube for pirated versions of movies - movies all the other souls can't believe you haven't seen yet and won't shut up about. There are grainy versions of Avatar and Her, but both are somehow Russian-dubbed with English subtitles. The soul of James Cameron rules this circle with a rigid fist.
Circle Five: 2008
Listen close: the high-pitched howl of auto-tune is muffling the screams. Circle Five is comprised of YouTube's 2008 video library only. Clips are delivered by way of email attachment from coworkers who were YouTube's late adopters. Anxiety oozes from your pores as you await their eternal references to these clips, interrogating whether or not you viewed till the very end.
Circle Six: Fear and Devastation
Circle six is half VSCO-girls, half Logan Paul.
Circle Seven: The Tube's Trenches
The sad souls in this, the most plentiful but least explored region of the YouTube ether, are forced by eye speculums to view videos with less-than-500 views. Available clips range from “How To Cook Using Only Your Hands and Mouth,” WWII reenactments created by bitter puppeteers, and the truly offensive and reprehensible sketch video you forced your mother to help you upload at some point in 2003. It has 480 views.
Circle Eight: Disassociation
Tormented beings, these souls fell the very furthest from grace. One misclick thrust these stray YouTuber's from the promise of channels like Khan Academy, soft-sounds ASMR for sleeping, and other life-hack-less outlets to the edge of space itself and into a boundless pit of unboxing videos. Time is, time was, but time shall be no more as time stagnates at 3:35 AM in Circle Eight.
Circle Nine: The Comments Section
The comments section.