Your favorite YouTuber is killing pop culture.
Whether it's me, MrBeast, The Game Grumps, Binging with Babish, we are all guilty.
In fact, all of YouTube's guilty.
And it's not just on this platform either.
Netflix, Disney+, yeah, them too.
Max, Prime Video, absolutely.
When it comes right down to it, on-demand viewing of entertainment has slowly eroded away the very fabric of our collective cultural identity.
And whether you realize it or not, that's a key reason why many of you watching right now are suffering from depression.
That's why anxiety levels are on the rise.
It's why America is a political hotbed and why so many people are questioning how they fit into the world right now.
It's all because of this.
Behind me are the most expensive cars in the world.
My ability to stream MrBeast right now.
Or The Office.
Today, smoking is gonna save lives.
Or Avengers.
Or Bewitched.
Ketchup with my oatmeal.
Or Friends.
Or Breaking Bad.
Or Game of Thrones.
Or Game Theory.
Or Film Theory.
*Inaudible noises*
Hello, Internet!
Welcome to Film Theory, where we're part of the problem.
So, have you guys seen MrBeast's latest video?
At this point, that's kind of a legitimate question.
Because despite being the number one channel and all of his videos raking in hundreds of millions of views,
there's a non-zero chance that, no, you haven't seen it.
How about Ryan Trahan?
Airrack?
MrWhosetheBoss?
These guys are consistently some of the most watched creators on the platform right now.
Drawing in millions of views with each upload.
Are they showing up on your homepage?
For a big chunk of you, I'd guess the answer is no.
And I know this because I do actively watch their stuff, and they're not showing up for me.
For some reason, their videos just aren't ones that YouTube's algorithms are recommending to me.
I bet you've noticed this, right?
YouTube is different this year.
Recommendations feel different.
Older videos are cropping up.
There's more Shorts everywhere.
Smaller creators are getting more visibility.
And the things that you're being recommended are more tied to what you've searched for or watched recently.
I mean, I watched the Hot Ones interview with musician Dave Grohl,
and YouTube thinks I'm obsessed with drumming.
I'm getting recommended drummer covers, and drummer reviews, and drummer lore.
Did you even know that there was drummer lore?
Because let me tell you, there is!
Basically, what's going on here is that this year has seen some massive changes on the platform.
Which merits a whole separate conversation unto itself.
But the long and short of it is that my YouTube doesn't look like your YouTube anymore.
You know what really proved this one to me?
Skibidi Toilet.
Seriously.
True story, I was recently talking to a big room of Google's higher-ups,
and I asked them if they'd ever seen a Skibidi Toilet video.
You know, that insanely popular series of viral shorts that's gotten over 35 million subscribers,
and 12 billion views on their platform in the last five months alone?
Not a single person in the room had ever heard of it.
Regardless of whether you think Skibidi is pure gold or should be flushed down the toilet it came from,
that right there, that is telling.
And it's not just here on YouTube either.
TikTok is really the one that started this whole trend.
That's why you always hear people asking,
Hey, what's on your TikTok?
Because in a world where algorithms are selecting what content you see,
there's no guarantee that when I play this,
That's suspicious.
You know what I'm referring to.
The good of this is that you're likely getting served content that's precisely targeted at your unique viewing habits.
The bad is that fewer people are now watching the same things.
And believe it or not, but watching the same things is a critical part of human survival.
In short, if you've been feeling lonely, or anxious, or depressed, or potentially all three,
it's because the world has become increasingly fragmented.
And on-demand streaming entertainment is a perfect representative of why you're feeling that way.
So let's talk about that, and also some ways that we can solve it.
First, let's just get a sense of the scale that we're talking about here.
Think of the biggest shows on television over the last decade.
Two that stick out to me are Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.
Absolute darlings of the internet.
There is no doubt that these were massive deals.
Breaking Bad's finale reached 10.3 million people when it originally aired.
Meanwhile, Game of Thrones captured 13.6 million,
with another 5.7 million watching a rerun or streaming VOD within 24 hours.
Those are incredible numbers for a modern show,
and yet they're nothing compared to what TV shows saw pre-streaming.
For example, let's take a look at Star Trek The Next Generation.
When this show finished in 1994, how many people do you think watched the series finale?
More than 31 million.
A show that, at the time, was considered by many to be niche nerd content,
actually tapped into nearly three times the viewers of a modern program.
And the numbers just get more insane as you look across more popular IP.
52.5 million people watched Friends as it ended.
Seinfeld got a whopping 76.3 million viewers.
I kid you not, people were literally gathered at Times Square to watch the finale together.
Cheers was sent off with 80.4 million viewers,
and MASH ended with nearly 106 million people,
making it the single most-watched broadcast in American history
that wasn't a Super Bowl, a president resigning, or a moon landing.
Sure, MrBeast can pull 100 million viewers no sweat,
but that's talking global numbers across the span of a couple days,
with ads that are randomly decided by an algorithm based on your tastes
and randomly placed throughout the video based on how you tend to watch videos.
By contrast, these massive TV moments were people all at the same time,
all in the U.S., all watching an event unfold together in real time.
It was scheduled into their lives.
Streets were empty.
Everyone was fed the same commercials at the exact same time.
And when it ended, everyone was released as one big unit.
So afterwards, when I said,
The tribe has spoken,
or, Wazzup?
or, Eat my shorts,
you got it.
You knew the references I was citing, and you were able to respond back in kind.
It was a shared cultural lingo that you could reasonably assume
most people you talked to had also been exposed to.
But think about what that means in the age of on-demand video,
in the age of YouTube, of TikTok, and Netflix.
What can you rely on people to actually know?
That's just a theory?
Yeah, maybe, but for as big as our channels are, we've always been niche.
Like, comment, and subscribe?
Sure, but it's also too broad.
It's too vague.
That's on everything from a beauty vlog to a locksmithing how-to.
It says nothing about who you are,
who we are as consumers of content.
And of course, this isn't only affecting TV.
Avengers: Endgame was the last big cultural movie moment to happen in theaters.
And now, just four or five years later,
the pop culture encyclopedia has largely run dry.
IP like Marvel and Star Wars were among the last holdouts of shared cultural touchstones.
But because of how they've been strip-mined for content,
their importance and relevance have largely been on the downswing,
with ever-decreasing box office returns.
And what's risen up to replace them? Nothing.
Well, nothing except the Taylor Swift Eras tour streaming in theaters.
But again, why is that such a big cultural touchstone?
Well, because she's one of the only artists to have made it big before this on-demand explosion,
with albums dropping in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012.
All before Spotify came in and solidified music as the on-demand entertainment source it is today.
And as a result of getting a foothold early,
she's been able to maintain relevance through consistent releases ever since,
leading us to today,
where she's one of the few music acts that have been able to achieve such huge critical mass
and cross generational boundaries.
But after TayTay, who's next?
Who rises up?
What musical acts have had the same sort of cultural relevance?
Internationally, I'd say K-pop comes pretty close,
but the audience is now too divided for any one artist to attain that much of your attention.
And so I can't just turn to the person next to me and ask if they stan Kim Taehyung,
or make a casual reference to color-changing soup,
and just expect them to know what I'm talking about.
Now, on one hand, this rise of on-demand viewing is a good thing.
Theoretically, you're being shown things that actually interest you.
Videos, movies, games, and music that are all tailored to your specific individual wants and needs,
instead of what a corporate board of directors in Burbank, California deemed to be the next popular thing.
But because we don't know what anyone else has seen, is listening to, is playing, quoting, or memeing,
we lose the pop in pop culture.
At the end of the day, you don't have popular culture if nothing is actually popular with everyone.
But why does that matter?
Can't we all just live in our happy little bubbles and carry on?
Well, it turns out that at the end of the day, that bubble doesn't end up being very happy.
The reason is that popular culture supplies us with a lot more than hummable tunes
and weird euphoria clips where everyone's crying.
It supplies us with connection.
One of the easiest ways to connect with someone that you don't know
is to find a piece of IP that you both know something about.
Wait a minute, you also watched the finale of Seinfeld?
Well, hello!
Oh, you saw Infinity War?
Why didn't they just go for the head?
You listened to Taylor Swift too?
That's awesome! What era's your favorite?
But as pop culture becomes more individualized,
the group we feel that we can truly connect with becomes smaller and smaller.
Does that sound like I'm overstating the importance of these connections?
Well, it turns out the fracturing of pop culture platforms
coincides with a huge rise in feelings of loneliness and isolation in our society.
Especially here in the US, where we've already placed a high value on the idea of independence.
A Gallup poll from 1980 showed that 20% of the population felt lonely.
That same poll in 2020 reported that 36% of people,
more than 1 in 3, was grappling with some form of serious loneliness.
But that was 2020, right? That was the pandemic.
You'd think that coming back from the pandemic would have improved the situation.
But polls in 2023, two years after lockdowns have ended in most places,
they show that loneliness continues to climb,
with some studies reporting 60% of respondents feeling isolated, lonely, or struggling to make personal connections.
And these stats aren't just like, oh, that's really sad.
It's an epidemic that disproportionately affects people under the age of 25.
That's not to say older generations haven't dealt with mental health or loneliness.
They do, frequently, but it often goes underdiagnosed in those populations.
That said, the statistics overwhelmingly show that the vast majority of younger people
are dealing with loneliness on a regular basis.
And they're, of course, also the people that have spent their lives in this fractured pop cultural world
with fewer anchor points that connect them to other people.
Instead, the only things that unite us now,
the only things that are truly able to cut through the noise are the tragedies.
In an absence of fun moments like a new Star Wars movie, or an Avengers film, or a new concert,
bad news is the thing that rises to the top of every social media feed.
Natural disasters, shootings, war, political upheaval.
And while it isn't bad that people are more aware of those problems and injustices,
this constant cycle of never-ending bad news with absolutely no levity cutting through
has had a marked effect on the mental health of younger generations.
But okay, I hear you saying that it's not fair to blame all our loneliness and isolation on these platforms.
Like the fact that my TikTok doesn't serve me the same goalie cat clip yours does makes the world a sadder place.
No, of course not. It's not only the platforms.
But pop culture is part of a much bigger splintering that only looks worse the more you dig in.
Pop culture obviously isn't the only way we relate to other people.
There are lots of ways that people share interests and feel like we live in a society.
And these ways are often listed out in various identity theories that have been made across history.
Sports, religion, your job, your ethnic background, maybe your political views.
Any of these things might be enough to bring you together with someone else.
The problem is that we're losing ground in these areas as well.
All of them.
For instance, looking at religious service attendance.
It peaked in 1960 and it's been on the decline for the last 30 years.
In fact, it dropped 10% since 2012 alone.
What about our shared love of the good ol' U.S. of A?
Patriotism in the U.S. has also plummeted across the last 10 years.
Most significantly among younger people.
On top of being the prime demographic to feel lonely and isolated,
young people on platforms like YouTube and TikTok are also more likely to be politically informed.
And they've become cynical about their political identity.
In 2016, almost 40% of people under 29 reported feeling proud to be an American.
And then they hummed that lyric by Lee Greenwood.
Checking back in 2023, that number is just 18%.
So, okay, not really connecting on religion or patriotism, but hey, you can always meet people at your job.
Ho-ho, never mind.
The workplace has been completely upended in the last five years.
Just in time for Gen Z to enter the workforce and look for jobs.
But maybe those jobs are remote jobs.
Maybe they're in person.
Maybe it's Halvesies.
Maybe it's the gig economy.
Maybe they'll strike.
And all the while, there'll be a ton of inflation and Logan Paul is gonna be telling them they should be investing in crypto.
70% of Millennials and Gen Z workers are considering quitting their jobs as I speak.
And high percentages of Gen X workers in fields like tech and healthcare are feeling burned out due to work and finances.
People's identities are no longer associated with the place they work because people don't view those places as reliable or helpful anymore.
They feel financially insecure and underpaid.
Enough so that basically half of all Zoomers, Millennials, and Gen Xers all have themselves a side hustle.
My parents, by contrast, have worked in the same job for over 40 years.
So for them, their job is a core part of their identity.
But for young people now, they're disillusioned with corporate culture and mostly just want to get out.
So, your job's not making you any positive connections these days.
What then does that leave us with?
Well, according to identity theory, it leaves us with things like extreme political views.
Or extreme viewpoints on topics like gender.
Or extreme stances on race.
All these areas where we've historically worked to break down barriers, improve communication, and at least attempt to work together.
Instead, walls are now getting built back up as we attempt to define ourselves by how we're different from the other side.
The scope of all of those things goes well beyond this little old theory on the internet.
But suffice it to say, these are areas where a large percent of the population also feels divided, or isolated, or scared.
And doesn't feel able to connect with those on the other side of the issue.
So the TL;DR is that if you feel like it's a really lonely time out there, and it's bizarrely hard to make connections with your fellow humans on any basic level, you're right.
We are more fractured and divided than ever everywhere we turn.
And it's because the institutions around us that used to give us connection and identity are crumbling.
So what then do we do?
In a time when we really want to feel connected with something, what's the thing that'll help make us feel connected?
How do you possibly beat a series of systems that keep us siloed?
Well, ironically, it's in the place where we started this episode, stories.
Whether that's in YouTube videos, movies, TV, video games, wherever, hearing other people's genuine stories about what they're going through makes us feel connected to them.
It helps us understand that other people are going through what we're going through.
It helps us to feel like we're not alone.
They help us feel seen.
One of the most popular movies of the last year has been Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
Hugely, inexplicably popular.
Except what's it about?
Well, the theme is identity.
It's about being lonely.
It's about finding your place in your relationship with someone else when the identity you thought you had crumbles away.
Huh, go figure.
Kind of matches what we're talking about.
Or how about the biggest movie of the year, Barbie?
You know, the story about a person, a doll thing in a world where their role used to be clear-cut, but now she doesn't know what her place is anymore?
What her identity is?
Which has left her feeling, say it with me now, lonely and isolated.
And she finds herself in the end by being a woman.
And there's that big speech in there about how hard it is to be a mother and a woman and how there's so many expectations.
Oh my gosh, it's almost like this whole movie is relatable.
The stories that now cut through the noise don't shy away from this splintered feeling.
Instead, they face those feelings head-on.
Authenticity and honesty about the one universal that we all feel, loneliness, is actually what's helping to unite us.
YouTube, which has been the world's most frantic viewing experience for the last three years, is just now fully finding itself swinging in the opposite direction.
Simple conversations with Moist Critical about current events.
Human experiences like eating with Eddie Burback and Ted Nivison at Margaritaville,
the lonely man's cuisine.
Investing in human stories is feeling refreshing again.
Even MrBeast has openly talked about pulling back from his ADHD-inducing editing style to a narrative format where he sounds more human.
And allows an actual story to unfold in his videos because that's what's keeping people engaged.
Rather than just more and more suitcases of money opening up every ten seconds.
Will this instantly solve all our problems?
The root cause that makes us feel so divided?
Have us feeling great and making lots of friends and have hair braiding sleepovers soon?
No, definitely not.
But there's a recognition out there that talking to real people, telling real stories, and being honest about where we are, it pays off.
While we're in this phase of splintered existence, seek out the real great stories that feel honest to where you are right now.
Don't be afraid to talk about what it's like to be lonely.
And do it in increments that are longer than three seconds.
You could even go out on a limb and not set it to a trending sound.
It's not guaranteed that everyone else you know will see the same things you will.
Watch the same movies you will, play the same games, or have the same experiences.
But the important thing is that by watching and sharing stories that are real and relatable,
will start a new pop cultural trend built on what it means to be human.
With all the ups and downs that that entails.
You know what? It's not a bad place to start.
But hey, that's just a theory.
A FILM THEORY!
Aaaaaaaand cut!