Half a million people watch me study on TikTok
bbc.com
bbc.com
There’s lots of guff in the media and lots of speculation in the discussion section of papers about what they might be important for in broad hand-wavy terms, but really we don’t have a good understanding of them.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mir...
Do those symptoms match with ADHD? Or is it simply the mundanity of solitude around 40, when one has a few extremely bad experienced that tend to not get forgotten easily? I avoid alcohol, but do normal people’s use of alcohol helps with deleting those memories? Do normal people have a nagging girlfriend that plays the role of keeping the mind busy with something else? Or would anyone suggest another diagnosis that I should investigate?
I find myself in quite unhealthy mental health because of that. I’ve always thought it’s just solitude turning me crazy, but it would be sad to not be aware that it’s a specific condition.
> I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. > I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. classic, pretty normal
What's weird is the underspecified > develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked)
I mean, If people have no distraction at night, it's not uncommon for many to be too mentally excited to fall asleep. But your other symptoms means you have something else going on. It doesn't need to be catalogued as a mental disorder, it could just be you have e.g. bad/cringe memories of the past or minor emotional traumas. You should attempt to reconciliate those memories, relativize their importance or plain forget them. You should attempt to have a meaningful lifestyle routine by doing meaningful activities/virtues. e.g. I encourage you to maintain a hapiness scale journal, where you note and rank what makes you the most happy when you experience it. Note relevant metadata such as how much is this specific activity reconsummable (recyclable pleasure) this accounts for sports, arts in all mediums, etc Loneliness in excess can be like a disease and must be fighted as a priority. It's not that hard to socialize, humans are generally quite welcoming in the right contexts. But like a muscle it needs practice. You could e.g easily contact again an old friend and see him while doing a cool activity (e.g. laser tag or karaoke) or you could start a new passion like being taught dancing, and meet new people there like a highschool 2.0
as for pharmacological "solutions" to pathological excessive anger, I don't know if specifics exist for this emotion but I assume e.g an NMDA antagonist could help during a crisis (magnesium lthreonate) or more potently memantine, memantine induce brain fog though at least at first. This reduce a neural excitatory overload. You could also calm yourself with l-theanine, ashwaganda and/or glycine (very underatted, help to sleep too). I would also recommend taking an antioxidant like ALCAR for general health. While what I suggested is benign and can be combined, that is not the case for memantine. it is a potent medication with side effects and tradeoffs, although trying doesn't cost anything. But it is essential to understand that generally pharmacology is not a proper solutions and is generally a slippery slope with side effects and tolerance mechanisms (except for the benign things I mentionned) and you will get much more in life through meaningful lifestyle changes than with pharmacology. And while durable lifestyle changes are hard to instill, again body doubling comes to the rescue, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ Alcohol should be strongly avoided, it can destroy lifes. Alternative to podcasts at night and glycine for sleep would be calm ambient music, meditation and ASMR. You might also wanna check your blood pressure (unlikely). Indeed you might benefit from therapy/paid coaching.
also.. any youtube podcasts to recommend?
> Missing part
Yeah, the missing part is the dark mundanities of living. I’ve been late in dating (started at 23), I have weak negociating stance (I don’t like supermanly men who step upon others, so I don’t do it), so, many people profit from it and step onto me, especially girls unfortunately, so I became misogynistic. But you know what they say at kindergarten, if you didn’t kiss at girl at 8 that means you are gay, and my psychiatrists keep fixating on the gay part, and I don’t mind being gay (but I’m not sure I am, really) I’ve had the gay life and dated men and did my coming out, but that’s not the problem, the problem is being misogynistic. Living at a period where women have priority for everything “for fairness” doesn’t help - which it isn’t, if you work more you should be the one promoted - So I took my revenge, slammed the door at every company that only promoted women, founded my own and became millionaire in ~7 years - I’m not ungifted, it’s just people who are assholes with me, because I leave room for others and they take it as an opportunity to step upon me. So now I’m the cliché of a white misogynistic male CEO 39 years old with a big house and a big car who eats meat, and it’s sad both for me and for my opponents, because the loop has reproduced itself, and I, like my opponents, wish it hadn’t. I’d have been perfectly happy with a 2BR flat with a loving girl with whom I’d share the housework equally, but every time I dated, the girl played games, and the world helped her win.
But psychologists fixate on me being gay, that’s the only explanation they have for me being misogynistic. It’s tiring, and I’m clearly not getting the mental health response I need. For mental health, one needs to live in an intelligible world. I’ve tried living the gay life recommended by the various psychiatrists, and it didn’t solve my misogyny (obviously). My problem is I’d like to live an equal life with women, and society keeps giving women priority for everything, the discrepancy between society’s wording and society’s actions is unreconciliable for me, and the degree we have to battle to obtain the normal things is exhausting. I’ve tried to move from programmer to a more talkative job because I knew I’d get bitter if i didn’t, and companies kept promoting women only, and moving to a talkative job is something my mental health required. But they kept promoting the women. That’s unfair to me. I didn’t get the basic things I needed in life, and really, being a CEO is an unhealthy revenge.
(On the plus side, I’ve increased all my employees 30% this year, I’ve donated a dozen thousands along the years, I was the one accompanying the friend who got cancer in the group, I’ve helped in many charities in my life until I discovered that people would never help the white male back, I’ve done my share in this world).
I have many ADHD symptoms and I personally cannot concentrate on anything unless I have absolute silence and no distractions. Any background videos playing would ruin my ability to focus. Even being able to hear someone in the next room is too distracting for me.
Developing stories in your mind that make you angry sounds like some other issue. I have never experienced that. I would genuinely recommend talking to some sort of mental health professional because that is not healthy.
Having the window open and listening to nature/neighbor noise and birds works sometimes.
https://behavioralscientist.org/how-to-channel-your-minds-in...
Wish you all the best
Conversely, switching into an office where everybody is chatting away will hurt focus for the same reasons.
This is why it’s important to have good working context whether you’re in the office or at home.
Overall, I find I usually get better non-interactive work done when not in such close proximity that social behaviors are activating. (Interactive real-time collaboration is a different matter, and that has its moments.)
Someone sitting across right across from me, or right next to me, when we're not collaborating, for example? I'll be lucky if I can mindlessly tweak UI visual details, or spit out design or code that I've thought about only superficially. There's no way I could fairly rigorous thinking-through and creative connection-making, in that context, like I can in some other contexts.
Working from home has posted its own distraction challenges, but I do not miss that "nonfunctionally distracted" feeling I often got in the office.
But, being around people does not help me focus at all, I have an anxiety about them interrupting me, maybe I need to pay attention to something going on in the environment because there are people.
Open offices are a nightmare, and I talk about it openly.
Strangely, this issue does not exist in coffee shops. I think it’s something to do with the fact that people are extremely unlikely to interact with me in a coffee shop. So, take that for whatever it’s worth. Body doubling certainly isn’t universal among people with ADHD markers.
Maybe it's different for people with a "primarily hyperactive" diagnosis, where the doubling is more an aspect of keeping them in their seat than anything.
I don't have any evidence to back up the claim that they are faking views, but I know for a fact that the hundreds of followers I have gained making almost no content are not real. And it seems extremely suspicious that they've engineered their whole "creator fund" around trying to not pay creators based just on views/likes and subs, if they where real that would be the most accurate measure to target. But feels like they've decided to completely ignore them and to "sort" creators, likely because they know there's some creators with majorly fake followers that they don't want to pay, but still want to keep on the platform so they keep their fake engagement metrics high, and then there's the "real" popular names that they know they need to pay, but still underpay compared to other platforms. But creators still stick to tiktok because "they have a much larger following". It smells.
For others, I’m kind of mystified. Maybe it also works to separate one’s eyes from the feed. But some of the quotes mention people checking in because they wanted to study with another person. How lonely we must be as a society if that’s true in aggregate? In uni, we all would show up in conference rooms even if we weren’t actively talking through concepts or problems. That gave us a sense of collective struggle through finals week. This seems to me like another example of social media induced detachment.
At the universities here you have to get up early to grab a good seat on one of the better floors (higher/better view and smaller/less noisy) around the end of semester.
The public libraries are usually full of university and non-university students on Saturday mornings. Charging points are highly prized.
Would you say people at bars and cafes and libraries and churches are lonely? Only as much as people at a restaurant are hungry.
Well, high likelihood anyway:
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-number-of-views-in-TikTok-video...
Personally, any app that serves people what to watch; is going to be subject to a lot of bias counts anyway.
A part of me wants to view it without any judgement but another part, the old man part, feels there’s something deeply wrong with this. The problem is that I cannot think of a substantive reason it’s wrong other than “half a million people don’t have something better to do than watch someone study?” Or “do kids have such a weak will that they cannot study by themselves?” Or, “are we so lonely/needy that we have to broadcast ourselves/watch others doing mundane things rather than something more important?”
Neither of these are really true and in fact it’s a positive that others are accomplishing they study goals by watching him.
I’m just in my 40’s but it feels like the old Simpsons joke “old man yells at cloud”. This is a bit unsettling.
Every time I studied "with" a classmate at e.g. the university library I would end up still just studying by myself, though just knowing there are others around doing the same/similar thing had a positive effect on me.
When I study with someone there’s a real life component. We take breaks together, chat, ask each other questions.
Also, studying in common places can remove environmental distractions. For some reason during finals time I had the urge to clean the apartment.
I can relate to the physical in-person-ness of the experience. I cannot relate to the non-interactive, passive watching of it.
In the article they mention he studies with a pomodoro timer, so I guess he interacts with the "stream chat" during the off time and such.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Definitely not for everyone! But I can see the appeal.
For what it's worth, people have been heading to libraries and coffee shops for the communal-work environment for ages, this is just the parasocial analogue to that practice.
Set and setting, not just for drugs!
It actually seems a lot more wholesome that people are wanting a virtual "study pal" as motivation. That's pretty normal and healthy. We're a social species. If this helps people not feel alone and it helps them get started, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. I'm sure some people also watch this guy because they think he's attractive, but at least he's giving them a positive stereotype, attractive because he's doing something good for his own development vs attention grabbing and attractive because skimpy outfit.
Greenlit. 12 episodes. Where do I send the check? Do we see them being stung or is that CGI?
But I bet a latex catsuit would prevent stingers, show all the curves, and fall right inline with this concept.
If anyone wants to seriously pursue this, I have the perfect Quebec actress for this role.
Bam, take it up a notch! Sexy french, latex clad, beekeeping.
"Zee bees, zey are my passion mon cheri"
This could seriously work.
The only downside, societially speaking, would be those which fetishize the bees + sex. That's just not going to end well.
maybe just use tiktok for a while, its time. it took a while for my feed to not be cringy but just follow people you hear about (like this article) or that get reshared on other social media sites (all videos have a watermark with the username), and your tiktok feed will warp to stuff like that very quickly
I'm guessing most of this guy's viewers aren't actively just watching him study, but rather have his stream open on their phone or a second screen while studying "with" the guy. Sounds like a great idea and something like this may have helped me back in the day.
This[1] other comment mentions "body doubling" which sounds about right.
It's not much different from old-fashioned celebrity worship, though. At least it's more productive.
I remember fondly during my college years the times I was studying in silence with my friends. We were bonding over the shared experience of working towards our goals together. And I felt motivated by being with them.
There’s nothing weak-willed about benefiting from accountability devices. But I do wonder if the unidirectional nature of it (his followers know him and not vice versa) actually fulfills a social need for his followers rather than just feeling like it does.
Too my shock, the guy asked if I could stream my work. No one even wants to watch me play games. I tried to explain that it was probably going to be slow and boring, but he insisted.
That said, watching something for the sake of it, without purpose or end goal feels odd4
Think of echo chambers/bubbles in politics. People think one thing, then find other people online who think the same. Finding other people saying the same things then reinforces their beliefs. So someone wanting to spend a few hours studying finds someone online doing the same, reinforcing their choice to study.
This is not a new phenomenon in the slightest. Bullying and teasing have been around forever. The only thing that changes are what people will be bullied and teased about, but ultimately it doesn’t impact whether the bullying happens.
Kids will always find a way to identify themselves by what they are not, or single out someone for not conforming, even if it’s completely innocuous or out of their control. Hell adults do it too. Kids just don’t have the ability to couch it in dog whistles or cover it with some window dressing. They will pick on a kid for being different until an adult teaches them to respect differences. That has always been the case.
You could turn it around and criticize people for being anti-social in their independence and disrepst for other people's needs and wisdom.
In aggregate culture is a back and forth of people pushing in new directions or independently discovering existing ones and others following their lead, but it’s the followers who determine what’s normal more than the pioneers.
Put another way the first person to ever make pizza didn’t suddenly transform it into a cultural phenomenon. It was enough people copying the idea that transformed the initial concept into one of the most popular types of food.
That group plus pioneers are most important to entering the mass market of followers.
But even if you add a new group of early followers it also works in the other direction. Stuff most people do also stops being popular because of what the largest groups of follower’s decides to stop doing.
Anyway, my wife explained that the videos encouraged her to focus, no more and no less. She is always comparing herself to others, so I guess this is why it helps her. I think zoom calls are different though. Very strange. I cannot study without silence, and can never study with people around. Horses for courses.
They’re not watching him study, he’s modeling studying behavior and his audience is leveraging that to trigger their own studying. (Mirror neurons are a thing.)
When I was in college (early internet, pre social media) I found it MUCH easier to study in the library. I went from getting Cs in non-CS classes to getting As and Bs and my confidence shot up. Why? Because the library is for studying and I'm surrounded by other people doing the same. Absolutely nothing wrong with a virtual version of that.
I’m more focused with work at Starbucks surrounded by other people than on my couch alone.
Yes, but this isn't new. Half of the job of a teacher is precisely this. They're there to make you do the work. After all everything the teacher teaches you is already there in the textbook. All you have to do to learn it is pick up the book and read it. But very few will actually do it without being prompted.
I think I'm just way too old to understand the specific allure of streaming random people talking about random, mundane things. My daughter watches a few streamers, and in my view, watching over her shoulder, they are all just bland, boring nobodies[1], talking about nothing in particular. They just talk about their day, talk about video games sometimes while playing, talk about other videos they're simultaneously watching (yes, streaming someone talking while the streamer himself streams another video!). It just seems such a pointless waste, but I think back to the stupid things I liked as a kid and I guess it's no different. I just hope she grows out of it and (with my parental guidance) starts getting motivated to do actual things rather than sit there watching other people do things.
1: I know some streamers have particular interesting or extraordinary talents, but I'm not talking about those shows.
If I had to choose between the two, I'd much rather my kid waste his time playing games than watching someone else play games. At least do something.
I managed to even make Twitch a daily habit for a year in my 20s, so I understand the allure of it just like I understand the allure of passively consuming anything else. I was never proud of it.
The real utility for something like this is where you are working and leave a Zoom room with camera running so folks can drop in and ask you questions then leave. Sort of like in a non-remote setting at an office. Quite effective.
Unlike in The Truman Show, you can make a fortune being “show monkeys” here, so hardly surprising.
I guess a loot of the views of those kind of videos are as ambient videos.
E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkgIWGM60z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuX8Ew3OyJk
There are plenty. The bridge in the 2nd one is my favorite.
I don't think I could keep doing such things with a clear conscience if I had even the slightest concern about my livestreams being a time waster for so many people: and knowing social media mechanics it's not just a slight concern but a certainty.
No, I don't think he has any responsibility to protect his viewers from themselves.
I’ll admit it’s more fun to judge others than look in the mirror though.
The guy's a certified legend. Sadly he 'quit' streaming but the hundreds of hours in the archive should suffice.
But I do enjoy filming myself on a webcam and seeing the emotional ride I go through on a routinely basis in my attempts to solve problems.