By: Magdalena Mihaylova
The writer in her pre-teen years, when she started watching lifestyle YouTubers.
The girl is my age, but taller and blonder, pretty in her off-duty outfit and lightly-done makeup. I watch as she makes her morning coffee, the soft pour of the grounds and the tight screw of the Moka pot casual and familiar, but somehow cooler than when I do it. She sits by a massive window overlooking the city, perching on an antique chair—a journal balanced on one leg and her coffee on another—with an air so effortless I feel my body relax. And maybe that’s precisely why I watch her: in her aesthetic uniformity, predictability, and simpleness, I find peace and disconnection.
Reading that passage back through, you may think I’m either a) a stalker, b) writing the start to an erotic novel, or c) describing what many teenagers and young adults like myself enjoy watching: lifestyle influencers. When I became an adolescent and began to explore YouTube beyond the canonic “Charlie Bit My Finger” or “Double-Rainbow'” videos, I found myself mainly watching lifestyle vloggers—girls around my age who went shopping and tried on clothes, talked to the camera about how they were feeling while putting on makeup, and drank coffee while going on errands. At that point in my life I had virtually nothing in common with them—I knew nothing about makeup and fashion, my room, clothes, and family looked completely different from theirs, and instead of being in online school while I built my brand, I was playing soccer and struggling through math worksheets. But strangely enough, I kept watching, drawn to something in these strangers whom I had nothing in common with.
Now, almost a decade later, I still watch some of the same YouTubers I did back when I was 12 or 13. Just as I have changed since my teenage years, their style has shifted as well, although the content hasn’t. The majority of these channels still do try-on hauls, Q&As or advice videos, and “day-in-my-life”s, they just use more minimalistic editing, add reflective monologues, and focus on the notion of personal growth and mental health. Whereas before the girls were energetic and bubbly, now the aesthetic focuses on being soothing, vulnerable, and immersive. In a way, it makes the content more real: instead of blasting low-fi music in the background, they let the natural sounds—a scoop of matcha, falling rain, or the ‘unlock’ sound of their car—dominate the videos. And yet, they still don’t do much in the videos; they are really only capturing moments from their day, moments that have no meaningful existence beyond their own sensual pleasure and that of the viewer.
All is well and good—there is no crime in creating relaxing, pleasurable content that lets the viewer turn off their brain for 15 minutes or so. The problem is that lifestyle vloggers are clueless that the type of life they are promoting is only possible under the privilege they possess; this means the advice they give is inapplicable to the majority of their viewers. No average person can spend their whole day journaling under a mango tree and browsing around Target, and it’s a bit tone-deaf when they celebrate getting over a rough patch by “taking some time for myself and my personal growth”, encouraging viewers to slow down and reflect on the simple pleasures. Obviously, everyone can experience mental health struggles regardless of social class, and the advice to slow down and reflect is not necessarily a bad one, but it’s a bit of a slap-in-the-face when a girl who just spent $80 on a table centerpiece tells you it while doing her makeup to go out to a New York Fashion Week party. Aside from being cringingly ironic, this demi-god complex is dangerous considering their massive amount of followers, who are mostly teenage and early-20s girls. Nowadays, it seems that having a large following serves as a replacement for a psychology degree and justifies the mental health advice that many share in their videos. It’s a pattern we see in middle school with the cool kids, or even on the scale of movie stars and other celebrities: popularity somehow implies that they know more than we do, that they should share that knowledge, and, most importantly, that we should listen to them.
In consuming lifestyle content, we operate under the idea that the influencers are relatable and real. Although most of us are aware that social media masks realities, the whole concept of a lifestyle YouTuber is that they are accessible, and that they are “taking you along” to whatever menial activity they are doing that day. Most of these videos start with them “waking up”—you see them in their bed, brushing their teeth, kissing their boyfriend good morning—and it’s very common to ride along with them in their car while they say something along the lines of it’s been a while since I talked to you guys, I’ve missed catching up. They aren’t famous in the traditional sense—we don’t see them in awards shows or on the New York Times—and they don’t have a talent that makes them seem any different from us. All of this makes us feel like they really could be our friend, or more importantly, that we could be them.
But most successful influencers are far removed from real life; their partnerships with brands and general viewership means they don’t need to participate in the traditional labor force, they can travel whenever and to wherever they want, and they have the luxury to create the type of life that is slower-paced, reflective, and healthy. When we juxtapose this context with the core of what their videos mean to display—their lifestyle, and how we should to live our own—there befalls a dissonance between their (potentially well-intentioned) prophesying on mental health and what is actually constructive, realistic, or even just true.
Maybe the question here isn’t the authenticity of these influencers, but rather the tension between “media for the masses”, like YouTube, and more formal channels of information. One of the best aspects of social media is that anyone can make or follow an account, so there is greater diversity of information and more exposure to viewpoints that perhaps don’t follow the norm. It’s valid to argue that one doesn’t need a degree in psychology to share advice on mental health or life (think: most of our moms or best friends), and perhaps hearing the personal experience of some girl on YouTube helps you more than an expensive session with a therapist (there’s a reason self-help books are so popular, after-all). But most of these influencers don’t have the same background or struggles as we do, and their solutions to their anxieties are often subtly linked to their sponsorship deals or strategies that imply spending money—for example, buying vitamins, making your room aesthetically-pleasing, taking yourself shopping or to the spa, and disconnecting from your phone for a week. Not only does this usually come with having to purchase a product, it also shifts the heart of bettering yourself away from social or community engagement to introverted, often materialistic solutions.
Perhaps simply trying to live like them—in having a slow morning with journaling and coffee (lots of coffee) or spending the day browsing in thrift shops and journaling in cafés (lots of journaling)—is a superficial way of filling the void of our naturally-existential existence in this world. Instead of encouraging finding meaning in volunteer work, or relationships with others, or in learning something, lifestyle influencers guide us to self-reflection and the consumerist end of spirituality as a way of living an aesthetic life rather than a meaningful one.
I used to look forward to sitting down with my laptop and a good meal to watch a “Week in My Life in College!” video—they relaxed me. But now, when I scroll through my YouTube recommendations and see hundreds of videos of the same style pixelated back at me, I get an unsettling feeling deep in my gut. Why is it that we commodify everything, even examples on how to live our lives, which should actually be the most free and random process? And how are we, the viewers, so weak and mindless in following them? On a bare-bones level, these are just people who like hearing themselves talk and think they’re pretty (there’s a reason vloggers are always looking into the viewfinder and not into the lens). And while that may seem harmless, similar to watching a soap opera or listening to pop music, we need to be critical of the systems that subject us to spend money, conform more, and question less.
Comments