DON‘T TELL ME TO SUBSCRIBE

Almost every YouTuber now who has reached a particular number of subscribers, feels compelled to humbly boast about it on their channel by making a separate video just to announce it to the very people who have already subscribed and couldn‘t possibly be affected by the message in any particular way anyway. The channel owner apparently then becomes obligated to verbally inveigle the viewer into “SUBSCRIBING!” to their sodden little two-bulb-lit channel. 

It might well be part of the mysterious YouTuber partnership contract, whose existence itself has been kept a loose secret over the years, especially the payment, although some youtubers have found ways to indirectly display the approximate sums they receive. One of these is the bro-spect accumulating YouTuber calling himself Cr1tcal to give away his internet coins to actual people in actual life via charity organizations. Noob! I mean, woot!

However, if perpetually egging your already promised fans and followers into committing to follow the stream of videos you hatch out loosely every Tuesday at 3 am, filmed with your contemporary not-really-meant-for-this smartphone a.k.a. a techno-potato, and quick-cut edited together on Windows Movie Maker, in the sheer chance some bored internet wanderer might stroll onto the one you just birthed and would already have their brains washed thoroughly enough to blindly follow your annoying command to subscribe at the end of all that dribbling bore -- you might as well do precisely that. Your last chance is just hoping the person will then forget to un-press that same button, or leave in haste before doing so, and will never find your channel anywhere again. 

 

Youtube 2011 more or less; and you didn't need to subscribe to be pelted, covered, and caressed by videos with both elements of this irritating illustration.

 

Is the point of all the video etudes on YouTube then, to force you into promising you’ve enjoyed a piece of entertainment by clicking on something they told you to click? If I watched a video that I thought was utterly enjoyable and the makers of which I might probably want to share DNA with to produce offspring in hypothetical sub-fantasies expressed by the occasional outburst of a… smile, I would definitely be looking for a way to express both my interest and appreciation of the joy and I experienced with that piece of work! And it might just be possible I will perhaps find my own way to the subscription button if I come to a realization I can no longer live without the prospect of seeing something similar ever again! 

Over the years since YouTube started though, you have to admit it’s been keeping its ‘talents’ on a loose lead, allowing for somewhat a varied content and a pretty fare market where every viewer adds to who is considered popular and which shows prevail by direct response. That being said it’s pretty clear that any unified impositions on videos of the more popular youtubers would only cause harm to the common one-on-one feel of the video as well as the integrity of its creator. 

So I say, sod off with the imposed commands because there’s enough advertising around already and asking the viewer to look around the video box after having just watched it not only jerks you right back into the boring reality of a silent and unfortunately reflecting laptop screen but is also so painfully condescending it leaves both the entertainer and the viewer in quiet unease like they had just been told by a parent to hold hands and kiss after a small row. Awkward, unnecessary, and we all would much prefer to just let things happen as they do. 

[Picture source: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/112/d/d/ray_the_nyan_cat_by_thx1085-d3elb60.png]

                                                                                                                

Back in the 2,5 World Country

They do say: home is where your WiFi connects automatically. So I guess this semi shabby hotel room in a little Lithuanian resort town is my home for a little while.

We just enjoyed our below minimum amount of red Frontera (a half-and-half of cheap wine and vinegar for the philistines of wine tasting). Some cheese with it. The imponderable pleasures that await us tomorrow are a 15 minute massage, and a two hour introduction to skiing on a meagre fake slope of snow. Add a lol, a hashtag fail slash almost Third World Country, post it on a First World Problems meme. Cue boredom.

All people really need is to be able to trust people and their environment, and to find and be able to pursue things or people that excite them. That's it. No mints on the pillows, huge LCD tv screens, Jacuzzi tubs or Godiva cakes will help with that.

Without that you really are wearing that dirty apron and not that sexy pencil skirt in that office where they never called you back from. Then you really are a poor-born spawn of a globally disregarded nationality, and gender. If your head's not up high where you'd love to be, then you're already dead and just spend your days decaying and falling apart.

These words are knives and often leave scars

The fear of falling apart

Don't Think of a Polar Bear

"They say it's really hard to concentrate if you start thinking about polar bears. So do not think of a polar bear, right now."

This charming, almost middle aged corporate mix between Derren Brown and Chandler from "Friends" of a head of HR was both encouraging and distracting me and 11 other aspiring somethings on a four hour "assessment" for a job at this large sales company. How very light-heartedly kind of him to be throwing a simple little psychology inspired joke like that into the midst of struggle and nervousness that was us twelve, all under 25-year-olds, dealing with a set of tasks that we were judged upon in competing with each other. The Office Games.

One ill-witted gentleman of the group nervously asked afterwards, why the mister kept mentioning the polar bears - presumably having completely swum under the stratum of the subtly amusing tease. We all had to sit through the guy explaining he was just bored and was saying "silly things" to keep himself occupied. What a diplomatic and respectfully polite answer.
Oh, stop it, me!


In my several hours of acquaintance with the men of this company I have learned several things:

• In London, or any financially sufficient capital, it doesn't really matter what your line of work is; you pretty much fall into a profession one way or another, but it becomes your duty to make it the thing you do best, to make it yours. 
• Hard but rewarded work makes you more focused, happier, and more attractive as a person.
• However rich, salesmen tend to have a noticeably stale sense of fashion. 

That's how I saw the guy—

—that's probably how you'd see him.

Kinda harsh, but I am fairly deluded.
But anyway, polar bears! Don't get distracted now.

Speaking about working hard and professional competence: an American journalist Simon Ostrovsky goes on ahead and tells us all about how almost two weeks ago now he got kidnapped, what happened during the several days and how he felt, and how he finally got released. There's even footage of how his colleagues and friends met him afterwards here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQGRJN4Radk

Having teased the idea of jumping head-first into journalism, I clung onto this guy as an idol and an inspiring professional in the field. Reporting on the Ukrainian-Russian clashes now - and getting kidnapped occasionally - a few years back he resided on the Russian-North Korean border, reporting everything from an eye level The most amusing aspect of his reports is the seemingly detached, almost aloof way of describing what's happening, as if he's only crossing some man-made imaginary three dimensional space of "news". To this guy, it seems, brutal reality is a freaking video walk-through tutorial on Youtube, of this game called "Life".

Professionalism? Or passion? Maybe it's having dug through enough tough dough (whoah) in one's life and/or career that makes you that much more impervious to, really, anything. Oddly enough, a similar kind of tenacity glimmered in the faces of the fellers at that sales company, and similarly dishevelled haircuts they were sporting too. That's the kind of citizen worth aspiring to: dedicated, focused, keeping to a set personal moral code and not letting yourself become a gloomy self-loathing and self-indulging asswit.

And polar bears.
Oh and by the way, don't get seduced by the chicken flavoured "Pringles" because it's literally like munching on a flattened out chicken flavoured soup spice cube.
And let's all hope I get that job, just for the termination of this blog.


[Pictures: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02533/Don-Draper_2533120b.jpg
http://envisionedentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sleazy-salesman.jpg
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/tQGRJN4Radk/0.jpg
Disclaimer: All the rights to the polar bear image that you inadvertently witnessed belong solely to Your Mind©®™]