Jealousy + YouTube: A Response

Jealousy is weird.

People are always bound to be jealous of others. They’ll be jealous of their success and the things that those people have that they don’t, and think how unfair it is because they obviously work so much harder than those people at what they do, even though they both do the same thing.

I’ve never believed much in fate, but sometimes I have moments where I think fate was involved, and for some reason I believe in destiny and what everyone was meant to do with their life. I also believe some things are never meant to be and that you can’t change that, no matter how hard you try and change it. Everyone always preaches about hard work, but I learned about genetic disposition in school and how everyone has a set point for happiness. The set point is something that you are given through genes when you’re born, and is the point at which you will always come back to when your happiness level changes, either positively or negatively. I think that life might be the same way – sometimes, you just get to the point you get to, and that’s it. You ride the wave where you are for the rest of your life because there’s nowhere left for you to go. The point at which you are is the point at which you are destined to be, and no amount of hard work can change that.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe that’s just my laziness speaking, or my pessimism, about how no amount of hard work can bring you all the success that you want in life because eventually life is just done with you and your success and moves onto the next person working hard to achieve their dreams.

I’m more of a person that’s very interested in psychology and why the brain works and does the things that it does. It has always interested me to learn about why people do the things that they do and to figure out the motivation behind everyone’s actions, at least in a scientific manner. I’m always people watching, and sometimes eavesdropping, because I love looking around and seeing everyone living a different life and wondering what their life is like in comparison to mine. As a result, I’ve become very good at analyzing people and figuring out why they do the things they do, and why we as a species act and behave in certain ways.

I’ve learned that the Internet and technology has become a large part of the lives that we lead in our modern day and is something that greatly effects everyone who uses it. People have become so dependent on phones and laptops – including myself – because we don’t remember a time when we didn’t have an automatic way to do almost everything in our pockets or purses or hands. For some people, the Internet has become a job, and like any “regular” job, some people are more successful at it than others. And like any human, some people are more jealous than others. Or at least that’s what I like to call it, anyways. I can’t really think of another word for what they’re feeling.

YouTube is generally the Internet job of choice, although you could also be an Instagram model or Vine star. It seems to me that most of the people that are known as “Internet famous” are from YouTube or migrated to YouTube from their original platform because it’s the easiest way to communicate with their fans and people that follow their lives. It’s the best way, in my opinion, to show people your personality and your life and become “friends” with a whole crowd of people on the Internet.

I’ve definitely fallen into that hole. I’m an avid YouTube watcher, and I fell into the hole in about 2011 when one of my friends at the time showed me a video by Alfie Deyes and Marcus Butler doing the friendship tag that she wanted to replicate for our YouTube channel (that no longer exists because I deleted everything out of shame). It’s been about 5 years since then, and my taste in YouTube has definitely evolved. I’ve found new people to love and found myself not loving some people I used to, and leaving their channels.

I never left because I thought their videos were bad, they just weren’t for me and weren’t what I wanted to spend time watching.

I watched a video by Evan Edinger recently called “I’ve Got Bad News” about how everyone on YouTube is watching bad content. He doesn’t say this in a rude way, but just to explain how everyone seems to be having an identity crisis lately because they all think their content is bad and that they need to evolve and make content that is “better”.

I totally agree with everything Evan said in his video, because I feel the same way. I’ve seen similar videos from other people that I watch and people that are watched by people I watch about how they think their content is bad and don’t know what to make anymore because they feel that their videos aren’t good enough for YouTube anymore.

Here’s the thing: everyone is watching bad content. It’s just not bad for them. This is something Evan said in his video, but his basic point was that videos mean different things to different people. Some people love to watch endless tag videos, and other people want tag videos to burn in hell. The point is simply that everyone has a different opinion about everything, and if you think something is good, then it is. Some Internet stranger can’t tell you that your opinion is wrong because no one said their opinion was right.

Everyone should just watch what they want to watch and leave everyone else alone. There’s that old cliché that goes “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”, and I think more people could stand to live by this cliché.

What matters is what I think, and whether I think the content that I’m watching is good. If I do, I should keep watching it. If not, I should stop, and just leave other people to their business. 

Shadowhunters TV Show Review + Thoughts

I'm a huge fan of books. Always have been, ever since I was little and my parents read me Dr. Seuss and Robert Munsch every night before bed. As I got older, my reading taste changed, and now YA is my genre of choice, although I still get excited when I see a new Robert Munsch book on the shelf at Walmart. I don't remember what my first YA book or book series was, and I wish I did, because now that's all I read. I read The Mortal Instruments one day at the recommendation of a couple of my friends and the Internet, and I loved them a lot. Needless to say, they are one of those staple YA series that you have to read if you're just getting into the YA scene, or have already read and loved if you've been around for a while. Cassandra Clare is also one of the staple authors, she's like a goddess. She's been around forever and everyone who reads has read her books and loves her books, and so there are a lot of people that care very deeply about said books. Enter the tide of the YA book to movie adaptations. City of Bones is one of the first to get picked up, because someone in Hollywood noticed that The Hunger Games was doing exceptionally well and thought that the trend might continue through to other books. So, they made the movie, and it was not great. It was one of those ones that was just.. not great. They never ended up making another one, and that was devastating to many people, although I think many were also relieved that they weren't going to ruin anymore of their favourite books, myself included.

Then the news came that it was being picked up by a TV network - ABC Family, Freeform, whatever it's called - and people got excited again. Maybe this one would be good. The casting came out, and the physical appearance of the actors and actresses - on point, at least in my opinion. I think everyone looks decently like their character, enough that I can look at them and tell who they are without knowing who they play. So that, I approve of. I must say before I continue though, that this book series is close to my heart, but in no means is it something that I would kill someone over if they ruined it. I also recognize the importance of changing things and leaving things out because that makes the plot flow better on screen with budgeting and such. I had high hopes but low expectations, like everyone else, that this show was going to be good. I was pleasantly surprised, as it was better than I thought it was going to be, and I think that it has real potential to be a good show. 

However, I also think that we might need some new script writers, because although they used book lines, which is the biggest deal, like, ever, they also wrote some lines that made me think "Really. Really? That just came out of their mouth?", lines like the one that Isabelle says when Clary wakes up. She says, and I quote, "I've never seen Jace so curious about a mundane, or distracted, like you saw earlier distractions are dangerous in our line of work". What. The sentence fluency is just terrible and it doesn't actually make any sense. Everything that Isabelle is saying in that sentence is fine, it's just that the way she said it does not flow nicely at all and sounds a little bit ridiculous. I don't know if they wrote the line like that for her or if she said it like that based on what they did write, but they should not have used that take since it does not make any sense. If she had said something like "I've never seen Jace so curious or distracted by a mundane, and like you saw earlier, distractions are dangerous in our line of work.". See? Just change around and add a few words and everything makes sense again. I feel like it makes the actors look like they aren't as good as they actually are or could be because they have to say these cheesy lines that aren't that great. Specifically, I feel like Dom and Kat, who play Jace and Clary, respectively, get a lot of these lines, and I know that they're both wonderful actors who can play wonderful characters, but when you give them shit lines, well, that leaves a lot to be desired. This is quite unfortunate, considering Clary is the main character and Jace is her love interest, making him also something of a main character. I also don't really know how I feel about their chemistry yet, but I feel like there's something there. Granted, they only had one actual conversation that lasted two minutes, so I can't say much about it yet.

I also really don't like how the Institute has a lot of people in it and how high-tech they made it look and seem. The tech kind of makes sense considering the day and age that we live in, I just wish it wasn't so prominent and that there were more dusty old tomes of knowledge lying around. I also wish that there wasn't a boxing ring in the middle of the room. I understand that they have to save money and create as few sets as possible, so cramming it all in one giant room makes the most sense, but I wish that they had taken the time to at least make it look like they were a couple separate rooms instead of one giant room full of stuff. 

I do, however, think that everyone's acting is really good for a first episode, especially based on how the lines are. One thing that will make me laugh forever is the slowness at which Dom delivers his lines. There's that one part where Jace bumps into Clary and she turns to him and says "Hey, watch where you're going" and he turns around, walks back to her, stares at her for a few seconds before he responds with "You can see me?" and she says "Yeah, that's kinda the point, but clearly you didn't see me" and he says in the most aggressive way ever, "You have the Sight?" to which she is obviously endlessly confused because she has no idea what that means. That's the thing - I get that the point is to be confusing to intrigue everyone as to what the hell he's actually talking about and want to stay to find out more, but there is literally no context to that statement whatsoever. By that point, people will have figured out "Hey, they're mysterious and there's something weird about them" but the Sight is such a specific term that no one would really know what it means.

My favourite relationship by far is Isabelle and Alec's sibling relationship. That one part where she said she loved him and he returned the sentiment was the cutest thing I've ever seen, seriously. I think all the relationships are actually pretty amazing and make me freak out, like, a lot because they make me so happy. Like I said before, Jace and Clary could definitely use some work, but there hasn't really been much time for them to have chemistry and stuff like that. On the other hand, there's this one three second clip out there of Alec and Magnus meeting for the first time, and seriously, the stupid smile Alec gets on his face when he sees Magnus for the first time makes me jump up and down and squeal in excitement every single time, and the stupid thing is only three seconds. So when I see that scene for real, I'm going to flip out so bad. That episode entitled "Malec" better just star the two of them being their cute selves together for the entire thing or I am going to be very upset.

A short summary of the other things I like: Simon, and the way Alberto plays him, that one shot of Magnus and his crew at Pandemonium, the style of art that Clary draws on Simon and Maureen's van, and the mechanics of the seraph blades - the way they look, the way they sound and the golden sparks that shoot out when they kill demons, because I think those look really cute. And, yes, it does bother me that Maureen is not the crazy psycho vampire chick she's supposed to be, but maybe someone will change her and she'll lose all her inhibitions towards Simon? Anything can happen, people.

I'm way too excited for next week to see where the show leads, and I hope that everything turns out well and it's a good show. Fingers crossed.