Over the past couple of years, the social algorithms have started feeding me “day in the life” videos and they sure are strange. More specifically, they are usually “Day in the life working at X company”. X is a variable here. Not Twitter. The URL still says Twitter…therefore it’s still Twitter. Anyway, if you haven’t seen these videos, they are usually a young person filming themselves throughout their day. They usually highlight the perks of their job behind some lo-fi music and…that’s about it. Here is an example from a YouTuber which I think is pretty well known for this stuff. I mean no disrespect to her, I’m just not in the loop on this kind of thing. To her credit, she actually shows more work here than most of these videos I’ve seen.
A couple of things probably jump out right away. The first is the the emphsis on “realistic”. This isn’t uncommon to see and it’s there because a lot of these videos highlight the perks of the job and not actually doing any work. This makes sense as most companies would not want you to post your work online where anyone (competitors) could find it. However, I have found a strange trend with these videos. I work in tech, so perhaps it’s simply because it’s my vertical but so many of these videos appear to be trying to flex a tech job. It makes working in tech look awesome, because it is, but it also never highlights the downsides. No one watches videos of people having a bad day I suppose.
This blog post hits a fork on the road here. On one end, I have thoughts about filming…everything. On the other side of the fork, I have thoughts about this highlighting of tech work and why I feel weird about it. Let’s start with the filming.
I’m no stranger to vlogs. Completely get it. That’s really what these are, very very well curated vlogs. However, daily vlogs at least show some of the mundane. They show some of the downside. These videos always show someone with a very clean home, eating very clean meals, and very smooth days (even if they claim it’s chaotic) and while it’s very possible that’s how these folks live day in and day out, I’d be hard pressed to believe it’s normal. We all know Instagram posts are folks life highlights. Why would this be any different? Now, you might think to yourself, “Andrew, the person you highlighted here has a video on the channel about them getting laid off” and you are right, they do. Not going to embed that here because I feel weird about that but it’s on their channel. I actually don’t feel very good about this either because I don’t love the idea that if you film good stuff you have to film bad stuff. I think any time you’re in front of the camera, you’re performing to some extent and if you’re like “I want to vlog” that’s great but you shouldn’t feel like you have to film some of the worst moments of your life.
All of this to say…I find it all very performative. I guess I’m old-man-yelling-at-clouds but when each of these videos begins with the camera rolling as the subject “wakes up”, it just seems odd. They’re not always popular with the employer’s either.
The other end of this blog post is about how this relates to tech and that is an easier thought to me. I love doing what I do because I love making things. I like making websites, emails, etc. I love writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL. I even like PHP, C#, and Swift (although my C# and Swift skills are still developing, to be honest). Before I ended up in a tech company, I worked for a hospital, and I worked for a manufacturing company. I did tech roles within this companies. I’d like to think no matter where life takes me, I will always enjoy building web sites and apps. I know it’s not healthy to think of yourself as your job, and I don’t but I do recognize my job very much aligns with things that are important to me. Therefore when I see these highlight reels of “working in tech” I can’t help but get this feeling of what matters to folks. Making a cool YouTube video? It doesn’t have to be one thing. You can love your job, and want to show it off, and make a cool video. I see the fault in my logic. However, it’s just this flick of a thought that kicks in any time I see something like this. It feels like “influencer” is somehow everyone’s second job.
There is a very real chance I just don’t get it. Perhaps I’m not the target audience for these videos so why would I get it? However, I also think there is a chance I’m onto something.