Welcome to pure delusion.
It’s been some time since I conceived this newsletter. Apologies for the delay – following up on my last email, I’ve been caught up being, er, caught up. Call it OOO – Overwhelmed, Online and Observant. (Alright, I’ll stop with the painful corporate speak, which shows you where my brain has been). In that interim, I:
Woke up every morning and fervently convinced myself I was moving from Los Angeles to New York City. Very original of me, I know. As it turns out, concentrating every cell in my body toward displacement is exhausting, and selling my beloved Kia Soul was heartbreaking. Now, I’m happy to report I’ve been in NYC just shy of two months and feel more settled in my one-window bedroom facing a brick wall. I’m writing this on the first day of fall, and I’m just around the corner from glimpsing my first orange leaf in full Christian Girl Autumn fashion. A Subway rat has crawled over my foot, though. (Overwhelmed)
Have been voraciously consuming content. For years, I’ve labeled myself a “social media expert,” whatever that really means, and I spend a good deal of time immersing myself in critical conversations surrounding Internet culture. Now that it’s my paid profession and not just a weird, adolescent bedroom hobby, I’ve taken my efforts up a notch. My strange media addiction feeding this habit? Newsletters. (I’ve listed my recs at the end of this edition). I can be found at my local Upper East Side cafe reading my little subscriptions for upwards of an hour or two each day. (Online)
Have enjoyed traversing concrete instead of chaparral. Naturally, everyone loves to ask me, “Why’d you move to New York?” or another variation, “Do you think you’ll move back to California?” My long-winded answer, condensed: I appreciate being able to experience a different set of visual stimuli compared to five years of Groundhog Day-like sunshine. Today I watched it rain sideways. The Florida in me is relieved by the humidity, but the California in me does miss golden hour routinely shining through my big Echo Park windows. I’m only 23 and have solo-moved across the country twice. Simply, I’m just here. (Observant)
Now that we’re reacquainted, I feel comfortable sharing exactly how much time I spend chewing over society’s content consumption habits (re: second bullet point, see above), which will be the focus of today’s newsletter. Let’s begin with a confession: I both identify with and hate the term “chronically online” – which is slightly embarrassing since I love thinking, talking and writing about the digital space. “Chronically online” generally denotes being plainly addicted to your phone and/or connotes a concerning lack of separation between online and offline living, which is a recipe for the wrong kind of delusion. However, I view my chronically online habits not as a filter to reality, but as a study of how we convey reality, which brings me to today’s discussion: Preserving the art of the vlog.
It’s no shock to anyone not under a rock that the way we ingest, process and share content has undergone a drastic, rapid evolution in the past few years – most notably with the shift toward short-form video. Turns out, Mark Zuckerberg was on to something with the “pivot to video” craze of 2016, even if the movement was initially a flop.
Now, TikTok users are consuming on average 200 million hours of content a day, and every brand is desperate to hire social media managers who are experts in TikTok virality and larger cross-platform content strategy (news flash: those are two different roles, but I digress). A third of TikTok’s U.S. adult userbase sources their news from the platform, even if 1 in 5 TikTok search results contains misinformation. For consumers and creators alike, the dominance of short-form social video has become quite the behemoth, proving simultaneously daunting and exciting.
However, there’s a legacy video platform that walked so TikTok could run: YouTube. Social media savants aren’t new to the “YouTube is dead” conversation, but is YouTube objectively dead? In the same way that Facebook still holds the leaderboard with nearly 3 billion monthly active users, no, YouTube and its 2.5 billion MAUs are not dead. (Meanwhile, TikTok is predicted to reach the 2 billion MAUs threshold by the end of 2022). That said, shiny usership metrics mean little when your engagement is consistently declining. Further, neither Meta nor YouTube has been the hub of youth culture for quite some time. Instagram Reels sees a dismal 18 million hours of daily consumption compared to TikTok’s 200 million hours. YouTube cemented its irrelevance last year when it permanently canceled its annual Rewind video, which had previously captured the top trends and creators of the past year. Don’t even get me started on Shorts. (Note: Yes, YouTube videos still receive millions of views, but my emphasis here is on the creator economy’s home base).
Alright, enough with the numbers because numbers tire me, and numbers ≠ culture. Look, I love TikTok and regularly bypass my screen time limit for the app. But… sometimes I can’t help but be nostalgic for the golden age of YouTube (circa 2011-2016) that raised me. While TikTok’s discovery features serve me a wealth of information and creativity, I’m not as attached to any creator that crosses my FYP because my consumption is, by design, more passive than deliberate. TikTok seeks to grab your attention immediately and doesn’t permit room for luxuriating in a longer-form narrative. Trends exist in an endless plurality with endless options, but when everyone’s super, no one’s super. Maybe my jaded attitude is age-related and no longer needing to seek identity through media as much. Or, it’s just increasingly impossible to keep up with everything all the time, and I find myself experiencing information fatigue more frequently than in previous Internet eras.
As reprieve, I still intentionally keep up with a few select YouTube vloggers and their irregularly uploaded 10-15 minute videos. In middle and high school, YouTube was my guilty pleasure, my comfort zone that set me up for my present career in social, and I love continuing to pay homage to this part of my identity. I admire Halle Burns and her depiction of the slow, gentle life in Alabama, where she barely speaks louder than a whisper and makes me feel like I’m sharing comfortable silence with a best friend. (She also has a popular vegan cooking TikTok account). I adore Margot Lee – who I’ve followed since high school – and her attention to detail, lack of flashiness and ability to infuse care into every clip and editing choice. And, of course, there’s the Internet’s darling, Emma Chamberlain, whose recent vlog resurgence follows her flâneusing about Europe while doing nothing more than drinking coffee, indulging in the sights with her dad and shopping at high-end vintage stores. At no point are any of these creators’ videos attention-grabby – arguably, there’s no climax at all. They’re just here for the vibes.
Halle’s YouTube vlog views pale in comparison to her TikTok views, and Margot’s videos don’t garner more than an average of 60k views each. A few other long-time vloggers I loosely follow encounter the same phenomenon, and they aren’t huge on TikTok, either. (Miss Chamberlain is an outlier, as she has become more of a traditional celebrity who still maintains a cult-like fan base on YouTube, receives a 12% engagement rate on Instagram and withdrew from TikTok). So why bother with outdated YouTube vlogs at all? If numbers ≠ culture, then the answer is simple: It’s still quality content, and they enjoy making it. It’s art for the sake of art. Watching a YouTube vlog almost feels akin to picking up a newspaper instead of just opening Twitter, because why not hold the product in your hands for the sake of the sensation? Since the content rat race has shifted to TikTok, YouTube creators are afforded more space to enjoy the ride by their own rules. For their audiences, it’s an intimate parasocial relationship only afforded by long-form online video, which grows rarer by the day.
I recognize YouTube as a creator-centric platform is fading in time, so I’ll preserve the simple joy and comfort it brings me while I have it. The creativity I derive from my favorite YouTubers can even get me out of bed in the morning. It centers me with little Rowan who would watch her little YouTube videos in hopes of being big Rowan in the big city. That dream has since become my reality, and that reminder is worth every second of screen time I devote to my silly hobby.
Listening:
The 1975’s new releases
My high school self never dies! I’m attending their D.C. show in November
My WIP fall playlist
on repeat: “Takin’ It Back” by Trella
Watching:
The Newsroom
I’m (very) late to this show, but this one just made the journalism kid in me giddy
Greenberg (2010)
teaser: Ben Stiller’s character moves back to LA after having a nervous breakdown in New York and continues to brood about while experimenting in doing nothing. I love Ben Stiller but give it a 5.5/10.
Reading: (digital culture-focused newsletter selection)
Morning Brew’s “Future Social” by Jack Appleby
side note: Morning Brew is currently publishing a profile series of social media professionals that’s worth checking out
The Goods (internet culture edition) by Vox’s Rachel Jennings
Thanks for indulging my delusions!
<3 Rowan