
YouTube Gives Us Love Without the Messiness - emptybits
https://thewalrus.ca/how-youtube-gives-us-love-without-the-messiness/
======
slx26
really engaging article. a couple comments:

> treat loneliness as a serious health problem that could _even_ lead to early
> death

italics are mine. I've seen this written a lot of times, and I find it
disappointing that we are focusing so much in reduced life expectancy. in my
opinion, the real issue deserving the attention is the reduced life quality.

now adressing the topic of the article: I think we should reflect more deeply
about spaces, and how modern society is losing them. nowadays, practically
every exchange involves money, products, services. if a space doesn't make
sense in an economic sense, it tends to disappear. the only big "free" space
left seems to be the internet, so it's no surprise that people tries to find
everything they feel they are missing there. but it's clearly not enough, not
a good alternative. we have become really good at hacking everything, and now
we can't trust anything. it's not just that we don't want the messiness... to
me, it seems like it's becoming harder every time to find good places to get
messy, unless you are really thinking explicitly about it and going somewhat
out of the road. it's some kind of natural contradiction for humans: we don't
want a messy world, because it hurts us, so we are trying to steer away from
that, but at the same time we need it. how do we reconcile everything?

~~~
dnewms
Great point. The sharing economy destroyed an entire set of spaces like
this... when hosting a couchsurfer, I was told that I could make a ton using
Airbnb instead. That money wasn’t the point was lost on this guest — but
thankfully not the many other world travelers I was able to share my local
area with.

Airbnb or VBRO offers great experiences on their own, but introducing a
transaction turns everyone into a service provider or customer, and brings a
set of expectations to both.

~~~
mhb
Dan Ariely considered this distinction in his discussion of market vs. social
transactions:

Described in: [https://escherman.com/2009/04/09/social-norms-versus-
market-...](https://escherman.com/2009/04/09/social-norms-versus-market-norms-
implications-for-social-media-and-online-pr/)

------
keiferski
A similar phenomenon is the use of pets as pseudo-children or relationship
partners. Babies are expensive and ruin your sleep for years. Significant
others can cheat on you, leave or simply get boring. A cat, however, just like
these YouTube boyfriends, is fairly inexpensive, practically takes care of
itself, will always love you and will never leave. It is a sort of
infantalization of the relationship process.

I think the only solution will be a cultural recognition that the
consumeristic mentality of _easier = better_ isn’t necessarily true, and that
difficulty, struggle and suffering are inherently worthwhile, more authentic
and character-building.

~~~
watwut
Cat does not love you. It never leaves, cause you locked it. If you move away,
cat prefers to stay.

Treating children like pets would be effectively emotional abuse. And while
dog can fill some of yours emotional needs, quite frankly, kids won't.

I have children and had pet and I can tell you that those two are comparable
in any way. Not just in easy vs hard scale, but it is fundamentally different
relationship.

~~~
faitswulff
This is a pretty interesting article about animals and emotions by a
primatologist:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/sunday/emotions-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/sunday/emotions-
animals-humans.html)

It goes through a lot of emotions specifically thought to be human and shows
evidence for them in animals. I couldn't find a paragraph to sum it up, but
this might be the thesis of the article:

> Uniquely human emotions don’t exist. More and more, I believe that we share
> all emotions with other species in the same way that we share virtually
> every organ in our bodies with them. No exceptions.

> Like organs, the emotions evolved over millions of years to serve essential
> functions. Their usefulness has been tested again and again, giving them the
> wisdom of ages. They nudge us to do what is best for us. Some emotions may
> be more developed in humans, or apply to a wider range of circumstances, but
> none is fundamentally new.

~~~
watwut
Sure, but really, cats don't love you. They tolerate you and may like you.

Dog may love you. Snake won't. Cats don't.

------
behindsight
Although the post doesn't mention it, you might also be interested in reading
about parasocial interaction[0]

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction)

------
jffhn
>desperate for a soporific remedy

This is the best channel I found to fall asleep:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLKSolaVsFrN7qTFL7lFkfw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLKSolaVsFrN7qTFL7lFkfw)

The person disassembles hard drives to investigate, in videos that can be
hours long, is very calm and doesn't speak much. It retains attention, due to
some suspense, yet it's extremely boring. I usually get sleepy after a few
minutes.

Beware though: there is one with a long moment of silence, and then he sneezes
suddenly very loudly.

------
mettamage
> The only cure for loneliness is to master the art of solitude.

Most important sentence to take action on in this article, IMO.

> But perhaps we fool ourselves in thinking our desires for love, comfort, and
> belonging can be sated with an inanimate object.

No, not perhaps, I think it can be phrased more strongly (at least, speaking
for myself). I believe this to be true as I have cross-checked these type of
YouTube experiences with real-life experience, looked at the similarities and
differences. It's then easy to see that the YouTube thing is an illusion. The
real thing is much better. With YouTube I feel soothed. With my significant
other, all of my existential crises are gone _and_ I feel soothed. Yes, it
includes fights, but feeling part of a soul-mated team who support each other
is totally worth it (I don't believe in soul mates, but I can still feel that
way).

> The whole point of boyfriend videos—and of ASMR, mukbang, and the rest—is to
> create a one-way interaction from creator to silent consumer.

This is the case with all YouTube shows even that have a personable approach.
I think the problem is much bigger than this article portrays (see also an
earlier comment on it that I made).

------
avip
With all its overly discussed faults, YT is such an invaluable resource. There
is so much free high-quality content: educational, sport, music, spiritual.

YT should get some respect and recognition.

I'm an avid yt music user. There is practically infinite musical content there
never released on any other medium. It's an irreplaceable cultural treasure.

~~~
aabhay
I totally agree with you, but I also notice the slow but steady increase in ad
content before, between, below all YouTube videos, that also seem to call back
to my preferences, feelings, tastes, past interactions, etc.

The question I always ask is: how long until YouTube removes the ability to
skip ads altogether? How long until a painfully nontrivial portion of our
browsing time is spent directly consuming propaganda?

~~~
chrisseaton
If you don't want to pay for it and you don't want to be 'consuming
propaganda' who do you think should be paying to run YouTube for you?

~~~
aabhay
Just like on Facebook, the ads are doing much more than ‘paying to run’ the
platform. And moreover, why would YouTube do anything but continue to increase
the amount of ad content? It directly translates to more cash and profit. Same
goes for paying content creators less.

~~~
chrisseaton
> And moreover, why would YouTube do anything but continue to increase the
> amount of ad content? It directly translates to more cash and profit.

No the relationship isn't direct. As you add more advertising content to
videos people will watch less and the advertising revenue would go down - this
makes it not directly correlated.

> Same goes for paying content creators less.

In the same way, it's not a direct relationship. As you pay creators less
they're less incentivised to create content for you to attach your advertising
to.

To prove by absurdity, if you added an hour of un-skippable advertising to a
two minute video, few people would watch the video.

~~~
tjoff
This got a bit more complicated when they youtube launched their premium ad-
free subscription.

Now the annoyance of ads also serves the direct purpose of advertising their
own service.

------
netcan
_" The medium is the message"_ is one of my favourite cliches. It always
punctuates the same recurring insight.

Socrates' had famous thoughts on the importance of medium choices in his day:
reading, writing and libraries or people in gardens trading questions and
answers and using memory.

The choice of medium isn't neutral. Imagine 5 people in a garden talking about
their feelings, political views, or whatever. Alternatively, imagine them
writing essays, making youtube videos or discussing on a HN thread or creating
a wiki... same topic, same people.

The content would be totally different. The thoughts that people shared (or
even had) would be different. The perspectives, emphasis and everything else
about the content would be different.

The internet is like a queen-medium. It spawns an endless brood of different
mediums, digital and otherwise. Twitter, Tinder, Meetup, Youtube... and
thousands of smaller ones. Not one of them is a good "replacement" for another
type of medium, but they do replace them.

I agree with the jist of this article, I think.

Where internet "mediums" replace important personal ones, we're at risk of
replacing "home-cooking" with "junk food," and the results will be the same.

------
marban
Related and b/c it's mentioned in the article:
[https://www.mashed.com/182485/the-untold-truth-of-
mukbang/](https://www.mashed.com/182485/the-untold-truth-of-mukbang/)

------
zokier
I wonder how long it'll take to get lightly personalized ML generated
variation of such content. And how long it'll take to people notice that it's
generated and not a "real" person

~~~
toxicFork
Wait until the generated content realizes that it is itself generated, then
the real trouble will begin

------
aabhay
From all visible metrics, sex and social activity are plummeting precipitously
across the developed world——lower rates of sex, lower sales of condoms, higher
marriage age, lower birth rate, more suicide, higher rates of antisocial
mental disorders, and on. It’s easy to see that not just YouTube but
communication technology in general is partially, if not greatly responsible.
But what’s even more concerning to me is the idea that all this feels in some
ways inevitable.

I think this has been so plain that even science fiction has grappled with it
extensively from the musings in Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Transmetropolitan,
etc.

The biggest question to me is: as feeble biological beings who are prone to
replacing healthy social interaction with the kind of social hallucinations
provided by technology, what would lead us to a better life? Technology seeks
to mediate all things, and is possibly more successful at this than even
capitalism writ large. What can fallible humans possibly do to combat this
malaise?

~~~
thrwaway69
Embrace it. Focusing on what is inevitable isn't healthy. What we can do is
develop tools that will evolve us to combat tech. Fight the tech with tech.
Biotech may solve current problems forever. Gene therapy and modification is
the future, probably. So you need not worry, give in your fate to the tech
overlords.

Or wait until you can live with AR that is good enough to replace your actual
social interaction without you developing health problems. All we need to do
is create good enough replacement for humans. That is the problem with current
social platforms. They are too static. They fail and result in uncanny
communication. They aren't able to convey body language, emotions and many
other details that actual humans give off.

 _plays black mirror episode_

I am waiting for my robot partner because everyone else in my life just sucks
and I can't relate to any of them. Internet provides you power to embrace
different culture and world than the one you live in, and sometimes it creates
in inevitable environmental and cultural dissonance where you are nothing like
anyone else you know. Well, that explains my internet addiction at least.

Where else do you think am I going to find buddies to talk about free
software, anime, startups and odd bizarre stuff?

Post is meant to be satirical.

------
zabana
This is a fascinating topic, thanks for sharing.

If anyone reading knows of any other such article or youtube video / podcast
segment on this topic, please share them under this comment.

Thanks in advance.

------
est31
Don't date robots: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrADTN-
dvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrADTN-dvg)

~~~
alexis_fr
...because dating is the motivation for young men to accomplish awesome
things, according to this video. It’s a fun thought experiment, though:

\- On one side, women provide half the work (a recent article on HN said they
were now the majority of US workers),

\- On the other, if access to family life was a motivator in the 50ies, what
is the motivator in the 2020ies, now that dating isn’t... vetted by
parents/society/social status? Will we keep accomplishing awesome things? How
much motivation will one put into it given the rewards are now rather
inversely correlated with work? (Working out, travelling the world, doing NGO
work is opposite to having a career, and it’s not even enough to grant one
hopes in relationships).

~~~
Kye
My motivation is the growing list of friends' Patreons/Ko-fis/fundraisers/etc
that I don't have the means to support.

 _Yet._

------
mettamage
Edit: I read the article. My comment that I made (before I read the article)
is still valid IMO. She scopes the issue too narrow. The issue is much bigger.
Even when I watch something like funfunfunction (where the point is education)
or Joe Rogan (i.e. podcasters) this point also exists.

My original comment:

I watch YouTube a lot. About 2 hours daily at the moment and have subscribed
to 300 channels. I see one huge issue with it.

It's a one-way interaction.

You give all your attention to them, but they don't give anything back.

This is not an issue if you use YouTube every once in a while, but I've
noticed that for me it's becoming problematic. There are many great reasons
for watching YouTube, but with this title (love without the messiness) this
issue becomes a big thing quite quick.

Consider this: if I'd talk to a friend 2 hours per day versus watching YouTube
2 hours per day. What would be healthier? Well, if it's a good friendship,
talking to a friend would be way healthier actually. And I actually know this,
because I do tend to have a few friends that I talk a lot to. Both my
friendships and my need for watching YouTube stem from similar/the same
desires even.

But one gives you attention back, the other doesn't.

This problem was stated in the article, but it doesn't only pertain to ASMR or
boyfriend hairdressers. It pertains to any video that has a personable
approach.

That doesn't mean that a personable approach is bad. IMO, it's simply a strong
reason as to why one shouldn't watch too many videos in general.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Yeah you should definitely read the article. (I know it's against the rules to
imply someone hasn't read the article, but since you outright said you didn't,
I feel like this is in bounds.) It is about the simulated giving back of
attention that certain YouTube videos do.

~~~
mettamage
Thanks, so that means the title is clickbait, in my opinion.

------
LocalH
YouTube’s debacle regarding COPPA is becoming a train wreck, however.
Thousands of animated videos that are very clearly _not_ for kids (violent or
other adult content) are nonetheless being marked as such. They really just
need to split YouTube into three platforms - YouTube, YouTube Kids, and
YouTube Mature.

