Musings on "Background Content"
Note: This article was originally posted under “Monday Musings” on my Patreon, over a month ago.
There are a lot of lines from Bo Burnham: Inside that have stuck with me since it came out in 2021. Someday I'll have to write something about the generation-defining significance of "Welcome to The Internet" and "That Funny Feeling." This week, though, I was thinking about one song with a series of verses more specific to my experience as a YouTuber:
“Do I have your attention? Yes or no? I bet I'd guess the answer but I don't wanna know Am I on in the background? Are you on your phone? I'd ask you what you're watching but I don't wanna know.”
The rise of "background content" has been something that I've experienced firsthand in the last decade, both as a person who produces it (intentionally or not) and as one who consumes it. I'd be lying if I told you that there aren't loads of things that I "put on" just to have some accompaniment when I'm doing stuff like making lunch or showering on a slow morning; sometimes it's my favorite podcast, The Weekly Planet. Other times it's beloved YouTubers like Not Just Bikes, Jenny Nicholson, my buddy CJ The X, RedLetterMedia, Eddy Burback, or Defunctland.
Most times, I'm genuinely attempting to listen to the video, and often I'll try and glance at the screen when I can manage to look up from whatever task I'm doing.
There are other moments, though, where it truly falls into the "background noise" category; I'll smile faintly hearing James and Mason on The Weekly Planet banter back and forth while being completely unaware of what they're actually talking about. It's just nice to have something to fill the void.
I think we can all agree that there's something a little strange (and overstimulating) about this void-filling mentality, and yet most of us do it. Gen Z has a loneliness crisis, and one of the ways that we fight that loneliness is by filling the silence. This article could easily be about all the ways that filling that silence is ultimately unhelpful to our condition; sometimes it's actually silence (or boredom, or lack of constant stimulation) that finally allows our brains to process the really important stuff and find some sense of who we are outside of our continued urge to consume. Deep down, though, I think everyone reading this knows all of that. It's self-evident. And yet we continue. And I can’t even say it’s all wrong.
Let’s be real here, too: it's not just Gen Z, either. Just ask your parents or grandparents why they turn on the news or daytime TV while they're doing things around the house. I think it's for the same reasons that younger people do it: it makes us all feel a little bit connected to something "going on" in the “real world" outside of our limited existence and reality, no matter how inaccurate we know that perception might be. I think it's probably not good for us. And yet I completely relate to the instinct and the desire, and there's a part of it that's perfectly natural in the face of overwhelming isolation.
I will say this: YouTube is superior to daytime TV, easily. At least with YouTube, there's a possibility that what we're watching will be something genuinely fresh and niche and weird and creative. But if it is something genuinely creative, will we even be paying enough attention to acknowledge it as such?
Sometimes I wonder if the videos that I make might just fall into the "background noise" category, too. It's hard to know whether to lean into it or away from it. There's one school of thought regarding YouTube content that says you need to be doing everything you can to fight for the viewer's attention and make sure the retention rates are high. Keep the viewer from clicking away. Entertain them enough that their eyeballs won't drift to another tab. Include enough stock footage and visual gags and movie footage and memes and fast editing that they won't notice until the video is over and you're plugging the sponsor. For a long time, fighting for the viewer's undivided attention was the entire name of the game if you wanted to be successful on YouTube.
Things are getting more complicated these days, though. In recent years, the YouTube algorithm has started to favor longer content because it keeps the viewers on the site for an extended period, thus more likely to see (or hear) more ads. It's a chicken-and-egg scenario, but around the same time the algorithm started elevating longform media, people also really started embracing "background videos" to put on while they did their homework or drove to work or fell asleep.
Now, the content landscape is totally different. In the earlier days of YouTube, all the most viral videos were less than 5 minutes long. In today's YouTube, Jenny Nicholson can make an incredibly funny essay about an obscure theme park in Utah and easily earn 4.4M views...even though the video is over 4 hours in length.
In many ways, I like this new YouTube more than the old one. Sure, I dearly miss the simplicity of the short comedy sketches of Julian Smith and RocketJump and HISHE. But the fact that today's creators are able to make longform videos that really dive into the details of a specific topic without needing to trim everything down to the bare bones for virality can be a gift—and that ability to go more in-depth is now what differentiates YouTube from more shortform platforms like TikTok.
Of course, it can go too far sometimes; this new landscape is also what allows other YouTubers to make 12-hour-long "GONE WOKE!!!1!!1!!!!" nitpicks of The Last Jedi and get millions of views over and over again. Shouldn't it be depressing and damning that people are actually devoting that much of their time to watching something like that?
But then, are those people actually watching? Or is it just on in the background?
I'm still wrestling with how to approach this dilemma of "background content" in my own art. In some sense, the idea that people might be able to just listen to my voice and hear what I'm saying without requiring me to spend hours of additional time adding footage and other visuals to keep them entertained is a massive relief. It certainly takes a load of work off my shoulders. I mean, if people are going to be watching (or listening) in the background anyway, why bother much with curating the visual component at all? It sure makes the job a little easier. I spent an additional week of my time adding footage and visual gags to my Avatar 2 video to keep people entertained, but most of my friends have said they "watched" the video while doing something else. Maybe I should have just saved my energy and released it without trying so hard to fight for their eyeballs.
But there's another part of my brain that really wants to make things that get people to pay attention. It's the part of my brain that doesn't want to settle for making stuff that will simply "fill the void."
It's downright depressing and demotivating to think that the majority of the art you've poured time into making, the sentences you've carefully constructed to make an argument, might just blur together in the multitasking attention fog...or end up completely ignored because the viewer happened to walk into another room and left the video playing unattended. In some sense, there's a hope in my heart that the videos and podcasts that I make are the type of thing that might jolt someone back to reality, get them to lean in and think about what's being said, make them want to comment and engage with the discussion, and treat them with enough dignity to assume they can handle it. I want to require something from the viewer and give something meaningful to them in return, not just provide another outlet for subconscious background consumption.
That's the ideal that I have in my head. But I also know that there are loads of incredibly perceptive, creative, and brilliant YouTubers whose work I mostly consume while doing other things. And that's not a mark against their integrity. Maybe it's a mark against mine. Or maybe it's just how things are now. Maybe I wouldn't have time to sit down and watch their videos with my full and undivided attention otherwise. Maybe this is the best I can do, and maybe it's the best my viewers can do too. Maybe I shouldn’t expect them to play by my rules.
This might sound a little silly if you don't view YouTube videos as art, but I do. And there's part of me that feels like art should be valuable and sacred enough that I don't merely use it as a solution to the silence. I hope that the videos and podcasts that I make aren't just a solution to the silence, either. Maybe it's okay if they're appreciated while multitasking, but I do hope they're much more than just noise.
Lots of YouTubers, from ASMRtists to Let’s Play channels, are perfectly happy with existing as void-filler. It certainly helps with our retention rates, and it's an honor to know that somebody might want to have our presence around while they're eating lunch.
Maybe it's actually empowering and beautiful to know that we get to be the comforting voice of a friend making someone feel a little less lonely on a solitary night indoors. Maybe I should just learn to be okay with providing that parasocial connection. Maybe "fighting for attention" is a sinful game to play, anyway; maybe it's better to allow the viewer to live their life while they watch my stuff, rather than expecting them to put it all on pause just to stare at my face on a computer screen. I don’t know.
I just haven't fully accepted what it means to be on in the background yet.