Show HN: I Built a Site That Curates Weird YouTube Rabbit Holes Daily

59•bas_sen•7mo ago

I built Yourabbit.com — a site that curates hand-picked YouTube rabbit holes grouped by themes like quirky psychology, obscure tech, weird facts, and binge-worthy oddities.

It’s not driven by the YouTube algorithm — every collection is themed and curated manually (for now), with a backend I’m automating to fetch and organize new rabbit holes daily.

Built as a hybrid Astro + Next.js project, optimized for static generation and speed.

I’m also pairing videos with custom summaries and commentary (using AI), and would love feedback from the HN crowd on:

Content model (too wide? not specific enough?)

Scaling ideas or features worth adding

Whether it's fun enough to keep people coming back

Open to any critique or ideas. Thanks!

Comments

nancyminusone•7mo ago

Don't mean to be rude, but your deep dives could be deeper. I clicked on 'How GPS works' expecting to see a certain Scott Manley video [0] there. Instead, it's 10 shorts I'd put firmly at the 'like n subscribe' end of the scale. Think I'll stick to my own curated list of creators for now.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJ7ZAUjsycY

bas_sen•7mo ago

Totally fair and not rude at all. I appreciate the honest feedback.

Right now, I'm still tuning the backend and experimenting with different types of videos. I definitely want to strike a better balance between fun/short-form content and deeper, high-quality creators like Scott Manley.

Would love to know what you look for in a great rabbit hole — I'm collecting that feedback to improve the next batch.

1bpp•7mo ago

When I think of a 'rabbit hole' it's almost always a series of related, high quality long-form & informative content.

xhkkffbf•7mo ago

I encourage you to keep going. Regular TV seems lame to me. A curated selection of YouTube videos is just the ticket. I often find myself browsing it instead of trying to watch some official streaming service.

bas_sen•7mo ago

That means a lot, thanks! That’s exactly what I hoped for: making YouTube feel less like an endless scroll and more like flipping open a good magazine or playlist. I’ll keep adding new rabbit holes every day and always open to suggestions for themes you’d love to see!

epiccoleman•7mo ago

I really like the idea in principle - the site looks nice too. But overall I can't help but feel like this is something I just wouldn't use.

There is a bit too much pop culture and "fluff" looking content at a first glance. That might be fine as far as "weird YouTube rabbit holes" goes, but I guess what I was hoping to find might be a little more esoteric and not so much "oh, some celebrity I've never heard of did covers on YouTube."

The amount of content here also makes me a bit skeptical, because a proper deep dive into a rabbit hole requires a bit of curation.

Here's a free idea for you: I bet a Substack page where you put together one "weird deep dive" per week could do really well. It would be fun to see "ah, what did he get into this week" and then have an easy way to queue up the videos for an hour or two of chilling on the couch. It would feel a little more deliberate. Like you picked some random topic and started absorbing it, and then return to the community with a few videos that kind of "overview" the thing.

I say Substack for illustrative purposes here - I'm not suggesting you switch to Substack - but rather that maybe your model needs to be a little more curated. Build a reputation that this is a fun place to go for a random Sunday morning Youtube binge, that every "rabbit hole" on the site will be interesting.

Idk, just my thoughts.

bas_sen•7mo ago

Thanks for this, genuinely one of the most helpful comments I've gotten so far.

You totally nailed a few things I’ve been thinking through:

I do want to strike a better balance between fun/pop content and deeper, weirder, more esoteric rabbit holes.

The homepage might be too overwhelming or “shallow” feeling. I’ll experiment with highlighting fewer, deeper themes first.

And I love the Substack-style idea. I’ve actually started writing mini-intros for editor's selected rabbit holes, and I think a “Weekly Deep Dive” feature would be a great way to make the curation feel more personal and deliberate.

Really appreciate the thoughtful feedback, this is exactly the kind of thing that helps me improve.

omoikane•7mo ago

Under "animals being weird"[1] there is a "Cats Playing with WiFi Pet Toys"[2] tag, which contained various videos about toys but no cats[3][4][5].

[1] https://yourabbit.com/categories/weird-animals/page/1

[2] https://yourabbit.com/rabbit-holes/cats-playing-with-wifi-pe...

[3] "7 Craziest 3D Prints I Own" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwPQbuArLRU

[4] "The 2-in-1 Miraculous Hero Switch Ladybug doll is giving superhero vibes—available now at @Walmart!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zKU-v6NHig

[5] "Jack Royal 1:8 Scale RC Car Buggy Remote Control Car Off Road Monster Truck with Realistic Sound 4WD" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDFjHLShs3E

viraptor•7mo ago

There's lots of misclassified stuff... I wonder if it's a bug or the curation was AI going wrong.

kuberwastaken•7mo ago

Most likely the latter

bas_sen•7mo ago

Yikes thank you for catching that, and you're totally right. That rabbit hole + a few others slipped through during a test batch when I was experimenting with video selection rules + titles. I'm working on improving the filters and adding a quality pass before publishing to avoid these misclassifications. Appreciate you pointing it out, fixing it now!

tweetle_beetle•7mo ago

Apparently a deep dive is an AI generated YouTube playlist with an AI generated summary text for each entry and an AI generated conclusion paragraph.There was me expecting some actual curation.

hxorr•7mo ago

It seems ai generated...

And just too much content...

Maybe post one playlist per day of actually curated content? the existing content seems low quality like some others have mentioned

yunwal•7mo ago

All of the physics videos from today seem to have ai generated women in low-cut tops in the thumbnail. It’s not giving me confidence in the quality.

I like the idea for the site but I don’t believe you when you say it’s not algorithm generated.

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Show HN: I Built a Site That Curates Weird YouTube Rabbit Holes Daily

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