I was watching Youtube the other night, as you do, in the comfort of my warm cosy home with a content stomach and cup of tea in hand when I realised something. It was like lightning had struck my head, “I’ve just had an apostrophe.” as Smee would say. Several generations today are simply full of greed.
The video I was watching was a haul of what someone had gotten for Christmas. I wasn’t even that interested in it to be honest with you. It had just popped up on my suggestions. About a few seconds into it I thought, “Why am I watching this? This is so pointless.” It felt like all this stuff was being rubbed in my face, “Look what I have and you don’t.” It may not have been that particular Youtuber’s intention, but it came across that way. It was just utterly worthless, the whole charade.
This is what Youtube is turning into these days. “Look at my perfect life with my big house, busy lifestyle and many friends.” It’s all a pretence to come across as something you’re not to your audience to make money. Now you can’t deny that ‘serious’ Youtubers are simply doing this for the money can you? I’m talking about the big Youtubers who are making money and have turned it into a job. If they did’t upload they wouldn’t get paid. They need to advertise and catch sponsors to keep earning. I’m not dissing people making a living from this, BUT Youtube has now turned into nothing but advertisements and many, many hauls off STUFF people have brought. It’s such a depressing sight to witness.
The Youtuber I was watching had been given multiple duplicates of the same item and just said “I’m all stocked up for a while now” I couldn’t help but think how pointless. Why not donate or gift to friends if you already have more than you need? They will just sit gathering dust. I hate seeing things not being used. It’s wasteful.
So much me me me me, look what I brought or have been given. It’s boring. I struggle to find the pure creativity anymore on Youtube without a sponsor or haul shoved down my throat. I have been guilty myself of putting a few hauls up on my own personal channel but after a while I thought, why? Seriously why? WHY WORLD?
There is so much we take for granted these days. If we lose our wifi connection we think it’s the end of the world! If our local Primark don’t stock the latest Disney crazed item we seriously lose our sh*t! I mean, what the actual fu*k have we all become? Greed. Want. Me. Do any of these superficial things matter? When we are old and grey will we look back and think “I’m so happy I had multiple Chip coin purses in my life” These things will never make us truly happy. Not long-term. You will never be happy in life if you constantly NEED to buy stuff to fill some gaping void in your persona.
I may be stepping on people’s toes with my opinion or come across as a hippy but think about. You think how lucky we are to live in a house, with a roof, clean fresh drinking water and warmth. Now think of people in poorer Countries who are forced to walk miles for water, eat very little and don’t have the luxury of the internet. If we lose our phone for a few minutes we go crazy but some people in the world don’t even have a house to live in. We take sooooooo much for granted these days because we are used to it. We have become accustomed to this lifestyle, so much so that basic needs are taken for granted. We should be helping those that don’t have as much as we do. Like donating to charity, volunteering, and just trying to be a decent human being. I know we can’t help what part of the world we are all born into, it’s literally a luck of the draw. But let’s be a world that is there for each other instead of beating each other down and ignoring the problem. Let’s support and start as we mean to go on, together.
I did an experiment where I didn’t take my phone out of my bag when I went to a cafe. I ordered a coffee and got out my notebook and pen and made a note of how many people were on their phones. Care to know the answer dear reader? Apart from me and the staff, every single patron AND passer-by. I kid you not. People were sitting at tables ignoring each other and being completely engrossed in the world within their phone. As a writer I love nothing but to sit in a cafe and write, ingesting the surroundings around me. It’s very rare I will take my phone with me. I people watch, I watch people interact with each other and take notes of the details. Helps make my writing more realistic and gives me ideas for character traits and such. But as the years have gone by more and more people are just sitting on their phones. This dear reader is nothing but dull dull dull to write about. We have all become so accustomed to it that it has become the norm.
Now I’m not saying there’s something wrong with taking your phone out and checking emails for work or whatever but to spend your whole time on it? It becomes a little worrying.
What’s my point I hear you yelling at me? My point? Well…we should spend more time away from our phones/laptops and more with the people in front of us. We should stop showing off on Youtube about STUFF we received. We should be creative, help each other out and promote nothing but positive vibes. Yes, again I am aware I sound like a hippy but we are human beings. We should not care so much about material stuff that will eventually fall apart. We should be making a difference and making the world we live in a place to actually live in! Not fill up with cr*p and unnecessary junk that will end up on the rubbish heap slowly killing our home.
There is no harm in treating yourself to your favourite candle or bath bomb. I am guilty of this. But don’t go to the extreme and buy 20 when you really don’t need that many at once. Whenever I have a clean out of my clothes, books, the kids room I always donate to charity. As that saying goes, “One person’s junk is another person’s treasure.” Appreciate things more and actually enjoy it.
Since having children I have learned to appreciate the little things in life. For example the weather. When it rains it means we can go puddle jumping or race rain drops on the window. We can spend hours doing it and it doesn’t come with a price tag. It creates memories and laughter. Something to truly treasure and keep close to your heart.
I suppose what I am trying to say is we should all take a moment at points in our day and just remember that we are lucky. We could be having the day from hell but we still have homes to go to and warm beds to sleep in. Think about that the next time you have a meltdown because Primark has sold out of the Harry Potter merch. Just look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself,
“There are so many more important things in the world. I am better than this. I do not need to justify my life with how much stuff I own or buy. It’s the things I do, the changes I make that make the difference in this world. I am happy and don’t need to consume my life with stuff to make it so.”
My own personal Youtube channel is mostly used for making montage videos of my children growing up so we can watch as a family. I am also passionate about film (I studied it at uni) and enjoy making videos. It is an art, yet today it has been turned into a ME ME ME show with cheap lighting and badly rushed editing, There is little passion.
I don’t ever force the camera or make a big deal about bringing it out. It’s just natural. I did try vlogging a while back but gave up as what’s the point. There’s more to life. I am a camera myself and like to capture moments of my life BUT I don’t do it every single day. I don’t upload straight to Instagram if I am out with the family. I do it later as I want to spend time with the people I love and not doing hashtags. Time and place. We should be using the internet and platforms like Youtube more wisely and not squandering it like a spoilt brat by bragging about what we got when we went shopping.
Phew that was quite a rant wasn’t it. Some people will agree and some won’t. That’s the beauty of the human mind, we can all think for ourselves and have our own opinions. Never be scared to voice your opinion, don’t be disrespectful or rude in doing so but don’t pretend to be something you’re not in fear of how someone else will react. Always be yourself. Not everyone will agree with you but you don’t need someone elses permission to speak your own mind.
Hop hop wiggle wiggle.
Bunny’s Pause 