What a fucking week. 

Also fyi - this is a long one! And no recs at the bottom, in case that's what you're scrolling for. They're interspersed throughout.

Anyway, I recommended eons ago a Youtube Channel called HoneyJubu, a Korean stay at home mom who does a lot of cooking and cleaning and shows you what she likes. Honestly - I still love her channel! It's very comforting, she has really cool tips and tricks I've picked up for myself, and she's very much a lovely person (or seems so. But like, you know what I mean).

And then YouTube was like "Hey? You like that? Don't worry, what if we showed you ONE BAJILLION other influencers who doing something similar?" And I'm not going to lie, I've been totally sucked in, but it fascinates me. 

The majority of the videos I watch are Korean or Japanese young professionals who are just going about their day. I have no idea what they look like from the neck up and I rarely know what they sound like as their "dialogue" with the camera is on screen text (closed captions on in your language ^^;), but their homes are clean and aesthetic, their cooking quick and delicious, and they always have a complicated but beautiful cup of tea before bed. 

I'm not going to argue that "these videos are bad actually" or that you should be watching these videos for advice. I mean, I'll recommend a few of my favorites here, but I also don't think they work for me if I didn't *👀* and I like seeing suggestions of how to cook/ideas of what to buy/maybe how to repurpose something/what life is in another country.

Here are a few interesting examples:

• I really like Nao - she's a Japanese Youtuber who is around my age (I think?), and she has a really cool design and interesting reading habits.
• This youtuber fascinates me: She and Nao show her face a little more than others, but also she draws in her downtime and makes wallpapers! That's relaxing. I could do that-- wait I don't draw though? But I feel like I could!
• Niko Lifestyle is also super interesting because she straight up started a company alongside her YouTube career and it's super cute but also again - similar age to me, similar vibe as above.

It's also fascinating as there are English versions of this as well that are trying to do something similar, and it works but idk, maybe it's not the chance to stare into another culture, so i'm not super interested. These usually have smaller reaches or are much newer accounts trying to jump on the trend.

(Here's an example: I only have one because I don't find them interesting but also it's fascinating for comparison. Actually I lied, here's another for comparison - larger reach!)

If you look further out in the YouTube sphere, there's a whole other vibe of "here is my home and here is my day to day" - it's productivity youtube (you thought you were free from productivity, didn't you?). This vein is just SO WEIRD when they overlap with "here's my daily routine."

They both have a million camera cuts, but the productivity ones feel louder (possibly because there's an actually voiced-"voice over" telling you what's going on). They all want you to have the best day you can also have, as though I'm going to pop up in their home and they're going to greet me and we're going to sit around and read on your porch with 800 camera cuts. They're also not true "vlog style" either - that would be much more chaotic and have, probably, significantly LESS camera cuts. These are weirdly polished and like "oh man I just woke up but here's my day to day as I go about my life as though there were cameras at every angle."

Some examples of this:

• The video that started it all - Homegirl does her morning routine and I started to get a headache at the amount of cuts she had in the video. Watch at 2x speed for the lolz
• I love this youtuber, who includes cute little side bar things when she talks like "I will conqueror the day!" but also like girl I would too with that awesome apartment.

Hilariously, both of these types of videos have the genre of people who wake up around 5am, which is actually disgusting for both parties, but for one, I'm like "Oh cool, she wakes up at 5am to make her husband lunch," while the other is like *30 camera cuts* "Here's why I wake up at 5am to have the most productive day". One feels calming, and one is just rude!!!

I'm not even sure what the point of this was, except for you to explore a side of YouTube that you've never seen (and if you click all the links, you will ruin your recommendations, lmao). But it has also been really... fun? eye opening? To see what is similar and what is different around the world. When HoneyJubu goes to Costco to get sushi grade salmon, my brain spins at like 360 degrees. So South Korean has Costco! Cool! ...I would never buy Fresh Salmon from Costco! (I also don't shop at Costco in the US so who even knows!!)

Seeing the differences between Ikea Japan and Ikea Brooklyn are also super cool (there aren't many; in fact, I've been influenced by some of the Japanese influencers, but a few small things are different!). 

There's an entire separate conversation that is very different that you've probably seen on TikTok or Instagram titled like "What I do from my 5-9" and that's either people waking up early and showing off their morning routines OR what they do after work until bed. It's FASCINATING as well because they fall more in the productivity vein with the added bonus of making you feel kind of bad. Like, you didn't wake up at 5am to workout? Lazy. Or you didn't leave work at 5pm so you could workout? Lazy. 

This newsletter is SO long and I'm going to end it soon, but it does make me wonder why we like watching people "perform" humanness. Are we watching to see the products they use (and if we are, is it because we want that life?)? Or are we just watching people live their lives to stave off the absolute crushing loneliness that comes with being alive? 

I have no idea. And I'm probably not gonna think about it as I continue to doom-scroll on the internet. 

Have a good weekend!