MEN (MAY 2024)

This is an experiment in the act of curation within the context of algorithmically driven content feeds.

I’ve noticed that I’ve become some kind of TikTok scout for my close circle of friends - I find the good ones, present it to them, and as such, they don’t feel they need to bother with the app.

That particular dynamic was one of interest in the early YouTube days. Ray William Johnson* essentially functioned as a curator of a particular brand of internet video, paired with a dash of host dynamics. He would upload three times a week, and would sweep up the weird/interesting/funny YouTube videos worth watching and present them (with his commentary) to his viewers. An earlier iteration of this was America’s Funniest Home Videos.

I have also found (and this is going to sound weird) that, to an appreciable extent, I can will my content algo feed to bring me content of a certain type or theme by deliberately over-engaging with those kinds of videos. When I land on one that strikes my interest, I’ll linger in the comments. I’ll like and favorite it and swipe right for more about the channel. This control over what I want to see is perhaps illusory but it gives me a feeling of agency. This video is the result of harvesting videos around my musings on “men” after noticing that I was saving a lot of those videos anyway.

I also think that by presenting these in a thematic compilation context, there’s a bit of assurance from the curator to the viewer to stick with the videos because, just wait, they’re worth watching. This is, of course, no different than TwisterNederland’s brief but remarkable run of “Fail” compilations that had tangible authorship* (you never saw someone straight up die, there was a good blend of actual cringe bodily harm and comical bodily harm, there was a clear sense of humor).

I wanted to encompass all levels of view counts. Some of the clips you might recognize, others you absolutely will not. The sheer scale of content now is enormous enough that we live in entire content universes apart from each other. A recent TikTok where a woman showed her boyfriends bizarre for you page* has become a shared point of reference for people like myself diving into the weirder, more niche fringes of TikTok. There are mentions in comments on specific kinds of videos that reference how we’re all on “that one guy’s fyp.” A phrase I see a lot now is to call a particular video a “mythic fyp pull,” “legendary fyp pull,” or even a “once in a lifetime fyp pull.” My favorite was a commentor saying something along the lines of “this belongs in my main deck what choice do I have?”

For me, there is something compelling about these videos, so I have compiled them together, trimming occasionally, but otherwise leaving them completely undisturbed. The result I hope is the kind of video that is a good late night zone out watch.