Cut
I have never really watched clickbait, "cheap" videos on Youtube, I'm sure you know the kind, they tend to have far more views than they ought to, and 75% of the time they are made by Buzzfeed. Today, one ostensibly trashy, low effort video showed up in my suggestions box from the channel "Cut", an interesting name, and for whatever reason, I decided to click on it. I think it was called "Kids tell their parents about losing their virginity", I thought it sounded funny and was presumably in the mood for some light, fairly mindless entertainment. And from there, down the rabbit hole I went...My preconceptions about the channel were very wrong. I really enjoyed, and got out a lot of every video I watched, of which I think there were at least 20. The channel really seems to be a goldmine of insights into genuine human nature, and the reality of different people's life. The basic premise of the channel seems to be to ask various people questions of an awkward, personal, and often taboo nature, and film their answers and reactions. Some of the clips are side-splitting hilarious, I was in tears with laughter at a couple of points, and I have not reacted that way to online video in a very long time. Some of the clips were filled with brutal, raw, real emotion and evoked tears on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I think part of the reason I loved the videos so much is because they demonstrated something I have been feeling about the human experience for a while now: it's so.... absurd. It's up and down in rapid succession, the juxtaposition of feelings makes no fucking sense, so many things that happen are irrational and illogical and just plain dumb, the way we interact with other people and feel emotions is so mind bogglingly complex, that nobody really has any fucking clue. But getting to share in someone's unfiltered, real emotion was incredible.
It made me think how stupid taboos are in general, and how much our society could be improved if we removed them. If we could talk about sex, our insecurities, our hopes and dreams, how we feel about other people and love, mental health, everything and anything, freely, I think we would all be far happier. I hope my generation can be part of making that change in society as it grows up. I also hope that I can start to have these kinds of conversations with people, because on one hand they are the type of questions I am terrified of asking, but they also produce the only kind of answers I am really interested in.