Seeing the world through my “critical” glasses.

I have been experiencing an interesting side effect of my theory on free time, who has it and how they use it. You tube has opened up a new world of people with way to much free time and how they are manipulated by monetization and how that manipulates what we see. You can find all kinds of information about monetization of video platforms, algorithms and more out there. I’m going to focus on the who has free time aspect, right now.

This is not about the truly educational videos. The ones where the creators are making every effort to be factual and as objective as possible. They are what we need more of. It’s the opinion pieces that we are examining.

Let’s start with a non political example.

I’m into woodworking. One of the things I like most is staining repurposed wood. I did a search for “wood staining techniques”. A conservative estimate would be about 500 results. Hundreds of very passionate people, very passionately talking about things they feel very deeply about. All saying pretty much the same thing, passionately.

Despite what you are reading, I have never understood people’s overwhelming desire to put their life on the internet. I’m 47, when I was growing up the internet did not permiate our daily lives yet. But back to the story.

All this video production takes time and effort. Even the make up vloggers. Free time. Something that We the People have in short supply. Free time that is better spent sleeping or spending time with the three kids you work two jobs to put food in the mouths of and roofs over the heads of.

So what you are seeing is the opinions, thoughts, political views and lives of the people who have free time enough to do things like this.

I don’t know many We the People who have much free time till now. You all have phones. With cameras. All kinds of free video editing software out there. We need more We the People media out there on the internet besides just black folks filming Cops and Karens, people doing dumb shit or cat videos. Don’t get me twisted, the Cops and Karens videos are necessary and I love our four cats and yours but we need more content. The world being created for us by people who aren’t us, who have no clue about our world while we work two jobs is not one where We the People are anything but 3rd class citizens, who only reason to exist is vote and be a good little consumer.