Influencers being wrong on purpose for views
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXprh34_R7c
I welcome you all to another post due to a particularly upsetting 'piece of content', or Youtube Video I happened to walk in on due to my recent exhaustion from working on things at my university. A quick explanation: The 20 year old youtuber 'Kryjovnik' posted a 25 minute think piece reacting to 'Am I The Asshole' reddit posts regarding art and artists. About 2 of them were regular, moralist opinions which don't really have much wrong with them apart from being petty in some remarks. The opinion on the third post was a deeply philistine opinology, however.
In case you are joining me for the first time, an opinology is exactly what it sounds like: an opinion freely given out from a perspective which its producer deems to be the correct one while having a profoundly uncritical, almost socially unconscious, callous foundation, i.e not really thinking about it while still taking the time to express it. This kind of opinion works well for what I'd call "mass entertainment", where many people like having such views regurgitated back to them as a baby bird likes to be fed worms into its mouth by its mother. And it is exactly what most efficiently propagates reactionary pacifist bourgeois propaganda, because no one wants to deal with how shitty the world is right now, and would rather engage in a discussion without using any of their real intellectual faculties, which they so heavily discourage the use of; the reason why I say this latter statement, is because the video this person has made, has this exact character.
It isn't *actually* for generating discussion, it's to propagate an idea of agreement and 'problem-solving' in a given population, this being her subscriber base (which I must commend her for, it must be hard to reach almost 80 thousand subscribers on Youtube! Great work).
What is most upsetting about this kind of video is the obvious aim to generate absolute Reaction. The youtuber reacts to anything, be it art, social media posts, recent discourse, etc. and then as an audience, the viewers feel compelled to also react to this content, and to voice their opinions on it, as I am doing here. And whether the reaction is positive or negative it still racks up the views and spreads idiotic or correct opinions among people, among which there can be youtubers who will react to this reaction and keep the slop-feeding tube active for people who have nothing better to do than react to these reactions, like me, who was vulgarly curious about this kind of fascist content genre, when the best action is to ignore it like the falsely relevant content it is.
Let's return to the video. In it, four stories are addressed. The first one is about someone who is 15 years old stealing back a gift to sell it because they didn't like they weren't getting gifts back. The critical view would be to understand it's a kid, and to say our 'most sacrosanct' internet opinion is that they were in the wrong for stealing and selling a gift. However, it is very understandable to be upset you get nothing in return for gifting, but as an adult you learn to just not care and go do something else. The leading lady also made the mistake of saying it's immature of the kid to do that, and immediately recalled that he's a kid.
"It doesn't seem like you're that passionate about it if you're expecting to get something in return ... "
It should read: "It doesn't seem like you're that passionate about it being a gift if you're expecting something in return."
"First of all, you're 15, you must have heard of punctuation."
This sentence is particularly disgusting and vulgar. What kind of 20 year old adult says that to a teenager? Adults are supposed to be the mature people who take care of children and support them with advice, not to make unimaginably petty and crude remarks that have nothing to do with the substance of what is being discussed. This was, ironically, a very immature thing to say, and I hope she realized that afterward, because this isn't how you speak to, or about, a child, no matter their banal mistake.
Only one of the reacting contingent she read out loud made sense, as they said 'Just don't give her anything else since she can't seem to get you anything.' I commend this opinion for actually being helpful to the kid. The rest of them were just rewrites of the same scolding.
The kid saying he goes to a school for autistic jewish children was funny, though. As Ms Jovnik put very well, what's that got to do with anything?
The second case was so uninteresting it shouldn't have been in the video at all. Nothing more than a misunderstanding. We shall not go into it.
The third story is the part which I really wanted to critique, as Ms Jovnik's reactionary opinions made me feel so surprised at their lack of sense I needed to get on it immediately.
Let's begin: "Telling a rich kid (!) his painting sucks"
The story says that the working class (!) author's sister works for a rich family and is constantly in contact with out of touch rich people; the wife is amicable with the author, and the family asks her to come with them on a vacation. During this vacation the author meets the son (Jake) who is 20 years old. Which, if you have been paying attention, is the exact age of Ms. Jovnik. Jake likes to take on new hobbies (that he calls them careers is implied, though I will not say I am sure of this at all) constantly and loves for his family to support his every single work. From the latter half of the story, it is clear that his family has coddled him, and he thus thinks that he kicks ass at everything he tries, which isn't true, as evidenced by the author's reaction to the painting; but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Jake shows the author his work a lot, and asks her if she'd like to model for him sometime. She declines every single time. Ms Jovnik actually makes a really good connection as she thinks Jake has a crush on the author. We will take this as the truth. Then, during dinner, he shows off his new painting.
The author writes: 'The painting was atrocious, like he didn't even try. But everyone was lying and coddling him. He then asked me for my thoughts and I said that it sucks ... didn't practice enough to [be halfway decent at it and that you need to work for some things], and it belongs on his parents' fridge at best.'
Now, let's remember that Jake is 20 years old. He is 20 years old and getting told that his work is amazing by his supportive family, and that having your family be supportive of what you like is essential for being motivated to keep working on it. Let us also say that expecting a beginner artist to draw well makes no sense. We connect these two things as "Jake IS a beginner artist at 20 and thus can't be expected to even be halfway decent, making the author's remark a shamelessly destructive criticism. However, the road to improvement is marked by practice and self-critique. If no one dares to criticize your work, you will inevitably stagnate. By coddling Jake's bourgeois behind, you are effectively stunting his growth, which is also evident from his described behavior being like that of a coddled attention-seeking child." The author had no need to tear him down like that, and could've been more tactful; though she has no need to be nice to what is capital personified, which has no real problems and focuses on the accumulation of generational wealth.
This is demonstrated by the bourgeois couple being completely fine with Jake (20 years old) being slighted this way. They didn't really care much about such an insult, because they see her as Jake's latest working class-sourced entertainment, a classic rich man-working lady story, only the working lady doesn't want anything to do with the spoiled (!) coddled child of a philistine wealthy couple. However, this isn't nearly the truth; I speculated to make a point which benefits my argument to be persuasive and made things up to make it sound this way, as *possible*. This sophistry is characteristic of Ms Jovnik, but anyway, the likely truth is that the rich couple was patient and also knew they weren't doing what was best for Jake by not criticizing him, which is why they were quick to forgive the author.
But anyway, let us move on to the real meat of the subject, which is Ms Jovnik being a thorough apologist of Jake the Bourgeois Child (20 years old).
She says the following:
"Poor Jake ! What a cruel bitch, why is she so cruel? I cannot imagine how much I would have to hate someone, like *really* hate someone to say something like that to them ... He didn't even do anything, (yes, he didn't do anything with that painting) why do you hate him?" (It is not hate, just indifference and annoyance).
She then proceeds to tell Jake directly:
"If you have a crush on her, then don't... Forget about that little a[ss]hole. You deserve so much better, *please*."
And the story continues:
"My sister was incredibly pissed ... She thinks I'm an asshole [and thinks] I should've given neutral feedback instead of letting my biases against rich kids influence me (!!!) ... also to stop being jealous and petty (!!!)."
Apart from how ridiculous it is that they're making such a big deal out of it, we see the author's sister is rightfully upset that she was embarrassed by her own family and thus came out the reactionary bourgeois ideal of "you're just biased against rich people and you're just jealous and being petty", even though the socioeconomic class was only the background of the annoyance and real root of the problem was indeed that Jake was being coddled by his parents; the sister, and Ms Jovnik for that matter, immediately pointed to the class antagonism instead of thinking critically, and synthesizing it into the present perspective. Thus we come to the fact that the author didn't insult Jake for being rich, she insulted him for being rich *and* having all the free time he needs and STILL not investing enough time into what is normally a hobby that requires a lot of practice to even be good at, and people lying and saying it's "amazing".
However, Ms Jovnik insists:
'Why did you have to draw so much attention to your financial statuses at all?'
Should read: 'Why did you emphasize on your socioeconomic class?'
'Is that relevant to this story? I don't think so.'
Yet another bungling of the subject, when the obvious answer as already shown above fully involved class distinctions! Not to mention the immediate "I don't think so" without any argumentation.
Paraphrased next statement:
'The family has been extremely kind to you, and you've been nothing but rude and disrespectful for no reason.'
So kind the bourgeois have been, by showing the two working class women what they will NEVER afford in their entire lives, save they get as lucky as to subjugate other people's labour below their heel: the free time and money of an entire socioeconomic class, which is still wasted by Jake to make art he will not want to improve on! This is what the main criticism of him (and by proxy his parents) is by the author, and I will admit it was really vulgar of her to tear him down, and for Ms Jovnik to erroneously represent the topic in such a way, is a truly philistine thing to do.
She then declaims this laughable twaddle:
'I think you're being classist (You can't hope to oppress the oppressor) and judging people based on their economic status ... in the first few sentences you refer to all rich people as 'out of touch', after mentioning that your sister is the only one in your family has any sort of relationship with said rich people.'
It is worth mentioning that the author said "frequent contact", and due to the previous statement on the author being biased against rich people, implies the author has met her fair share as well, which means that she has a way of knowing rich people to be out of touch, negating the negation.
The end of the story comes as:
"Am I the asshole for giving harsh feedback?" Undoubtedly, the way in which it was done was unnecessarily hostile to 20 year old Jake, but the criticism itself bears truth at its core as a manifestation of class antagonism.
Ms Jovnik says the following:
"Yes, you IDIOT. In this story you seem way more spoiled than him (I will get into this later) because you have zero tact (!!!) and zero manners (!!!). He didn't say a thing to you, he didn't throw a tantrum (the wording here is particularly important) which would be a very "spoiled rich kid" [air quotes] thing to do, don't you think?"
"Because all those rich people are awful and bad people who don't deserve to be respected or treated nicely, aren't they? And I get that you're jealous (!!!!), but I don't think it's the money that you're jealous of, because this kid has something way more valuable than any amount of money, a supportive family (!!!!) ... He's so lucky to have that, I wish every kid in the world [did], (Here is where the sophistry begins) And if your parents didn't support you as much and always told you that your childhood drawings sucked, then I'm *really sorry for you* (???), that is *very sad* (here she acts as though what she says is true, without any real evidence), but projecting your anger on other people makes you a bad person (Worth nothing, she is doing this exact thing!)"
She then proceeds to explain how she also has a lot of hobbies she picked up as a kid and continues to practice as an adult (If this sounds familiar, it's because Jake is also a many-hobbies person) and how her family always supported her in what she did, and says that such support is necessary for kids to believe in themselves when it comes to their hobbies, and for them to continue doing what they like. What is particularly curious, is that precisely because she ignored the real essence of the matter, it continues to go over her head that Jake isn't being supported, but *coddled*, which as we know, leads to poor psychological development. Instead of confidence, you get insecurity, as the author pointed out along with Jake's traits of being attention-seeking and profoundly insecure. This view holds.
Ms Jovnik goes in for the tautology of bringing up the 'financial status' of the author and says that: "Parents are able to support their children no matter their financial status." Well, congratulations, you pointed out the obvious while continuing to willfully ignore the real essence of the matter, and act as though you are correct, when you turn your back to the truth.
"I'm just sorry your parents weren't like that (Has no evidence for such a claim) but that gives you no right to be a bully, shut the fuck up."
The author doesn't constitute a bully, because for that to be in any way true, the bully has to be in a position of power over the bullied. The only power she really *has* is being the likely crush of Jake, and even then, it's so common for a crush to speak badly of someone who likes them that people can have it happen to them and get over it, because it's a normal human occurrence, *not* an instance of bullying. In fact, I want to remark on this, because Ms Jovnik makes three slips which reveal she thinks of Jake as being childish while willfully ignoring the cause for it.
#1 Calling it a tantrum (see above)
#2 Comforting him as 'deserving better' in the same way in which you comfort a child
#3 Calling the author a bully, as though it's a spat between children
This was a minor detail, but I found it worth noting that not even Ms Jovnik takes him seriously.
Let us return to the previous paragraphs to finish up, see above if you would like to read the specific fragments I refer to. She calls the author spoiled to compare her to the rich coddled kid, for which she has no real evidence, says she has zero tact or manners, which is a lie, because here the author intentionally gives an honest critique of Jake's work, which is something divorced from tact or manners, because you can't really tactfully tell him that it's bad art, nor is it part of 'manners' that you don't tell someone their art is bad, it's an overprotective, coddling act. She also implies that the author is throwing what could be interpreted as a tantrum, while also implying that Jake wasn't throwing one to disguise it as a tautology to help what could be called her 'case'.
She also laughably tries to defend rich people and implies that thinking rich people don't deserve respect or being treated kindly is bad. A working class woman is hostile to rich people's existence due to their overt oppression of the working class? Quelle horreur!
She then accuses the author of not having a supportive family and thus being jealous of that, and not the unimaginable fortune and free time of Jake, which he doesn't use to its fullest, as evident by his 'bourgeois virtue' of abstaining from using the full length of his free time for its accumulation!
It is also worth noting that after she starts with this ridiculous 'supportive family' argument, she speaks of herself as having a supportive family and having a lot hobbies growing up; I think it's ironic that Ms Jovnik and Jake are alike in only these two aspects. Her social class is unknown to me, so I will refrain from assuming it, but I will be unsurprised if she's middle class or outright bourgeois; where I will genuinely be baffled, is if she is a proletarian family class traitor, because anyone who lives under the exploitation of capital and truly suffers its consequences, wouldn't have this opinion unless they'd been manipulated by their entire education.
Conclusion
This video is a well thought out practice of engagement baiting, from the subject matter to even the calculated dialogue! You even have me writing this small blogpost on it, due to how great it was at making me feel upset that the points being made were so intentionally nonsensical that I felt the need to critique it or just "react" to it. My sincere compliments to Ms Jovnik for crafting such a ridiculous video and garnering herself my views and comments. And if she finds this, hello! Your channel will probably find even greater success if you start baiting interactions harder and focusing on intentionally contentious topics. Your art guides are likely useful, though I think they need to get more popular for them to really take off so you don't need to bait interactions anymore.
On account of this being finished, I thank anyone who reads this to the end.
Achtung. Achtung.
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