What the hell is going on in Youtube Live Chats?
If you’re like me, music is a necessity in any study session. There is absolutely no way I would be able to tolerate 2 hours of reading Gilgamesh and scientific papers about Neanderthals without the soft, comforting blanket of my Apple Music Library. If you’re also like me though, you will probably pay more attention to the music than the actual studying itself, and the 2 hours you just spent registered a cumulative of five words in your brain. Well, this isn’t just some theory — the part of your brain that is helping you to read the words on this screen right now, Wernicke’s Area, is the same part of your brain that helps you comprehend the words being played into your ears when you listen to music. These two stimuli interfere with each other, and cause you to have trouble multitasking. For the sake of my ego, I hold onto this fact dearly. For this very reason, it is recommended that if you need to have some music playing then it is better off listening to something without lyrics, that way this part of your brain that is dedicated to understanding speech and reading won’t be interfered with.
Sounds good then! I can keep listening to my music, and now also be able to retain the information that I am studying. Well now, what do I listen to? All the music that I love contains lyrics, and Beethoven unfortunately isn’t my cup of tea.
Luckily for me, I am not the only one in this predicament, and a whole genre of music — Lo-fi, was created for this very purpose. Lo-fi uses hip-hop esque beats with tranquil electronic rhythms creating a sound that is nothing short of blissful. In fact, while I am writing this right now, I have a lo-fi soundtrack playing in the background.
Over time though, the resources of chill lo-fi beats started to dry up, and I was feigning for more. I turned to the depths of society for my fix — youtube.com. My journey brought me to bootleg boy. A channel that streams lo-fi music intended for studying, sleeping and chilling, the three things I needed. Jackpot!
Thats when I saw it.
The chat box on the YouTube live stream.
In it was the most unfiltered, downright abhorrent filth that I have ever seen. Racially charged terms, sexual talk, and overall profanity were strewn throughout the chat which scrolled lazily down the right side of the screen. But somewhere in between the dick jokes and the people saying F**K in all caps was conversation and normal interaction. People were talking to each other like they knew their lives, asking them about events that had happened the prior weeks. People were using first names, and exchanging social media handles. Excluding the lone weirdos that seem to be ever present in the discussion, there were hundreds of people, mainly young teens to children, being friendly with each other. This astounded me, all these people that have no connection to to the next person other than the channel that they subscribe to, had created a community that was home to thousands of interactions. Taking part in this group chat, and seeing heartwarming messages, and people saying “Hi” to me made me feel welcome to this experience, and I got to say, the overall environment matched the type of music that we all were consuming together.
YouTube was created in 2005, so I have seen most of my life with YouTube being a household name. Teenagers only 5 years younger than me; 14 year olds, in other words full-fledged teenagers, have never lived a day in which YouTube was not a platform. They have grown up every single day of their young lives with the ability to watch content creators entertain them. Of course through the years it evolved from Ray William Johnson and Annoying Orange to Pewdiepie and Ninja, but at the base, YouTube has provided a safe haven for Children and Teenagers to entertain themselves and express who they are through who they watch. This is why YouTubers with young Demographics like Jake Paul, Pewdiepie, and Ninja have such cult like followings — the children who watch them derive a part of their own personality from them, and follow them vehemently. This power puts a lot of social responsibility onto these content creators to not influence their young audience into growing xenophobic, homophobic or hateful views.
Bootleg Boy’s platform takes a totally different take on content creation by having a central theme, and consumer decides which of his multiple streaming music videos to click on and participate in. Interestingly, the overall theme of each descriptor (Study & Sleepy vs Chill & Relax) vary by video. It is unclear if this was something that was intended by the content creator or simply something that happened coincidentally. The original creator has never showed his face, his voice, or regulated his live chat. This has allowed the chat function to devolve into both sides of the spectrum: wholesome friendly chat, and intense hateful views.The question that arises however, is what does this mean to us as outsiders to this community, and is it positive or negative?
The racial slurs, and hate speech is always a negative to society, and this should never be accepted as normal. However, judging the “normal” aspect of the chat box also brings up a morbid reality.
These kids are highly isolated and lonely and turn to chats like these to make friends and “fit in”
Looking at the chat logs and seeing the beneficial interactions between multiple people made me smile at first, people were being friendly and no harm was done right? After combing through hundreds of messages from pre-teens that likely put me on a list, I saw increasing themes of “You guys are my only friends”, “see you guys tomorrow, I hate school”, “Y’all are the only good parts of my day”. I quickly realized that the reason that these kids acted like they knew each other was because they do. Many of them go onto the stream everyday, and rely on it for social interaction.
Now, I am not one to say what is the right way to interact with other people, hell, I am still figuring that one out myself. What I can say, is that many of these kids use words like “depressed” or even phrases like “Don’t know what I would do without y’all” that show dependancy. These being repeated over and over yields light on a growing mental health problem that is being overlooked in America and all over the world. Mental Health is not being “crazy” or weak in any way, it is a problem that faces millions of people everyday, and manifests in several different ways. Adolescents are especially at risk, and seeing so many children who felt like outcasts in society and turned to these chats for daily interaction broke my heart.
In this era of Social Media and globalization, seeing what others have can only push people who are insecure about themselves, or feel like they dont fit in, even further down. People are constantly being compared to each other, and this can manifest in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or just general insecurity. These kids constantly found companionship in one common theme — the kids at their schools did not like them, or they felt like they were trapped inside their own bodies. They had imagination past what they could express, and maturity beyond their ages, yet they were marginalized to expressing it on the internet in mindless chats that disappear as the next 100 get transmitted.
On one hand, this technology has allowed them to have people like them, people who they can call friends, but it can also further isolate them, and leave them vulnerable to losing people easily, as internet friends come and go. There is no one solution to help children like this other than to pay attention to the signs and take action when you notice something wrong. Mental health really can affect anyone, and making a change by doing something can mean all the difference. Even something as asking someone if they are “ok”, or sitting down with someone who is too shy to come up to you can make a lifetime of a difference. To give a personal anecdote, I have only started to become more outgoing as of late, and relied on forced interactions to meet friends in the past. At one point of my life, I found it really hard to meet people like me, and often felt confined in my own life. It was not till one day in math class, when a guy from across the classroom decided to sit next to me and started a conversation. It started a friendship that I still hold on to this day, even though it has been almost 6 years. That gesture came purely out of his heart, and allowed me to open up and become the person today. I challenge you to try to help someone else in the way that my friend helped me, because who knows, you might just get a life long friend.
Chat Boxes like the one on bootleg boy’s channel bring up new problems that we could never have anticipated before, and thus should be monitored in a way to protect people, not prevent them, and I’d like to see some change happen sometime soon. In the meantime, I’ll put on some lo-fi, and get supremely chillllll.
