For a minute there, I lost myself
I felt that many people knew me, albeit imperfectly, and I began to suspect that they could see all of my flaws; maybe they could only see my flaws. It was creatively paralyzing.
Today, I woke up to a notification from YouTube: my channel is now two years old. Birthdays are a nice time to reflect on where you are and where you’ve been, and especially where you’d like to go, and so I hope you don’t mind me taking the time to do that here.
I’m glad this notification came today, though, and not a month ago, because a month ago, I was feeling pessimistic about YouTube and, in general, being online. I told a good friend of mine that I was thinking about quitting YouTube — not immediately, but in the next year or two. I’d move on to something else.
The reason was, frankly, that I felt I had very little to say. This was true only on YouTube, though; on Substack, I felt I had plenty to write (and I liked our new focus on read-alongs), and with my book in the works I felt that I was saying something worth saying. YouTube, however, is a peculiar platform, and I was no longer sure that it was the right platform for me.
The reasons are simple enough. YouTube rewards digestible content; it is primarily for entertainment; audiences like fast-paced content that only appears information-dense. Was that what I wanted to do? Was that worth doing at all?
On top of that, I’d had some setbacks. I released a few videos that I didn’t really want to release, but I felt I should make them for the sake of keeping some kind of pace. I was repackaging old ideas; it was stale. The audience sensed it, too. Some of them told me it was disappointing. What the hell was I doing?
I had lost my sense of direction. But I think I’ve found it again.
All of us have to deal with the fact that we are known — there are other minds out there that have a sense of who we are, sometimes an intimate familiarity. Some of these people know us better than we know ourselves, at least along some dimension. But at least most of the time, this is a reciprocal relationship.
Sometimes, I’ll ask my wife a question, and she’ll hesitate before answering; she likes to take her time before she speaks. I’ll offer up what I think her answer is going to be, sometimes in detail. “Am I that obvious?” she asks. The answer is no, though also yes. She isn’t transparent; it isn’t like a stranger could predict her responses. To me, though, she is obvious because I know her very well. We joke about it more when I do it, but in truth, she could do the same for me, and in fact, she does: she often predicts my little jokes well in advance. This mutual knowledge is one of the joys of marriage.
When you build any sort of profile, especially on the internet, the reciprocity breaks down. Further, many people begin to assume they know you much better than they do, or than they really ever could. After all, our experience is asymmetric on the internet, but more importantly, all of the internet is a giant performance. I am curating what I put online; we all do it.
I was struggling very much with this in relation to YouTube. I felt that many people knew me, albeit imperfectly, and I began to suspect that they could see all of my flaws; maybe they could only see my flaws. It was creatively paralyzing.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Commonplace Philosophy to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.