A Youtube screenshot of a kitchen tour video. Image: Youtube.
I have a fascination with the mundane.
It started in my pre-teen years when I would accompany my parents on weekends to open homes.
My mother, the perennial nomad, would at regular intervals grow restless and unsettled in whatever house we lived in. She’d buy ramshackle houses, all the better to renovate, my dad the long-suffering architect to her creative vision. They’d be altered to perfection and then previously unnoticed problems with the neighbourhood would become unbearable—a dog barking, a whipper snipper in the yard across the road, a house that threw too many parties. And so, the search for a new house would begin, another abode with ‘character’ for my mum to make her mark on.
Why do I, and others like me, enjoy the monotony of others’ lives?
My favourite places were the ones in which people were still living. They were the whole reason for my coming along.
From the first step over the threshold, my eyes traced the ghosts of the residents’ routines in the angles of their households. If there was a couch in a corner near a window, did that mean they liked to read in the sun on lazy afternoons? Was the backyard a tangled snarl of unkempt bushes, or a lovingly tended curation of flowered beauty? I wanted to know how these people spent their days—not the adventurous ones, but the quiet ones with cups of tea and softly-voiced conversations.
I don’t attend inspections anymore, but my fascination with the inner workings of people’s lives and the structure of their day-to-day routines has not abated. In fact, it is now fuelled more than ever. Because something emerged in the last decade or more that was made for people just like me: social media. More specifically, the video-based platforms—Instagram, YouTube and TikTok—that have elevated my voyeuristic tendencies to the next level.
Beyond house tours, the category that most entrances me is the ‘with me’ genre—spend the day with me, study with me, get ready with me. In the Vice article ‘The Wholesome Appeal of Watching People Study on YouTube’, writer Koh Ewe sums up this kind of content as blurring the lines between ‘entertainment and the ultra-mundane’.
I can spend hours watching someone live out the routine activities of their lives—watch the curl of milk into their coffee, see them choose an outfit, sit in front of a laptop, run errands, make lunch, break for snacks. Given the popularity of these videos, I know I’m not the only one.
Why do I, and others like me, enjoy the monotony of others’ lives? Why are we drawn to the quiet, the small, the everyday?
When the ‘with me’ trend began in earnest across YouTube in 2010, creators would upload videos of their morning routines. ‘The idea,’ writes Julia Alexander for The Verge, ‘was that people at home could do their own morning routines while watching their favourite creators.’ It became a way of making lonely tasks ‘opportunities for connection’.
I can spend hours watching someone live out the routine activities of their lives.
It comes as no surprise that the trend’s popularity reached a peak during the COVID-19 lockdowns, as people retreated into their homes to isolate. In Australia, official reports revealed that far more people have felt more lonely since the start of the pandemic.
But, of course, this trend and its appeal began before the pandemic. There have always been those who live alone, work from home, are less mobile due to chronic illness, who suffer social anxiety or mental illness—and these factors can create a sense of disconnection to other humans. We look for ways of feeling like we are a part of something. This desire to connect might be what fuels the way we consume content from online influencers. Social media becomes our bridge to other people, and there is a unifying feeling to watching someone else potter aimlessly around their house knowing that you’re doing the same thing. There is comfort in realising that people go on existing, drinking their coffee, doing their at-home fitness routines. This awareness can do wonders to quell a rising panic about an uncertain moment.
But, alas—rarely does anything exist in this world that doesn’t have the sticky fingerprints of capitalism all over it.
As earnestly wholesome as the premise of ‘connection’ might seem, the fact that consumerism drives these videos is no big secret. The ways in which content creators earn are through advertisements and sponsorships. Thus, our gentle ‘connection-driven’ videos of mundane activities are, subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly, peppered with product placement. We think we are being soothed by these videos, that we are feeling connected to other humans, but somewhere in the back of our brains we’re also musing, maybe I do need one of those cute little pads that warms your coffee while you work?
For every moment of peace I get watching these videos, there is simultaneously a part of me that can’t help but notice that the beautifully aesthetic coffee mug they tip their curls of milk into looks markedly different from the chipped one that I sip on that was given to me by my parents when I first moved out at 18. (I’m 31 now and I still haven’t found the time or money to replace it.)
It’s also worth noting that the lives of the people we see on our screens are scrumptiously curated and, in some cases, wildly aspirational. Consider the TikTok creator Lydia Millen, who posts ‘Life & Style from the English Countryside’. To her credit, Millen has never tried to hide her privileged lifestyle, one of lavish decadence and $30,000 outfits. However, a recent ‘get ready with me’ struck a sour note when what Millen was ‘getting ready for’ was a stay at a luxury 5-star hotel because the heating in her house was broken. ‘I’m checking into the Savoy and I’m going to make full use of their wonderful hot water,’ Millen joyfully tells her viewers in the now-deleted video.
Rarely does anything exist in this world that doesn’t have the sticky fingerprints of capitalism all over it.
Her post did not go down well. The UK is suffering a cost-of-living crisis, with energy bills at an all-time high and many having to choose between going hungry and staying warm. ‘I haven’t been home to see my Dad since August because I can’t afford the train tickets back from uni without living off plain pasta and rice for two weeks, which I am doing,’ one commenter wrote.
‘Sorry,’ Millen wrote in a reply, ‘I was exactly the same at uni. But it’s also such a fun time. I wish I had enjoyed those years more.’
To say that she might have missed the point seems a big understatement.
Similarly, the ‘stay-at-home girlfriend’ trend went viral in 2022, with many mocking these videos for portraying a potentially ‘dangerous’ form of co-dependency. The reality of these idealised or— for the average person—wholly unattainable lifestyles, whether they be countryside living in the midst of economic upheaval or the promotion of potentially unhealthy relationship dynamics, can take the appeal out of the consumption of these videos.
@kendelkay fall is falling ☕️🍁🍂🥂
There are some creators who try to push against the highly aestheticised version of reality created online, who try to tap into that ever-elusive concept of ‘authenticity’. Watching their videos can be an antidote to the superficiality that often is promoting diet culture, elitism and consumerism. In a TikTok viewed more than 8 million times, Henna, a 27-year-old lawyer in Toronto, presented a ‘realistic morning routine of a lawyer who is depressed’. Henna articulates ‘waking up a half hour late’, admits to not brushing her teeth, shows Tupperware on the floor of her home and talks us through contouring her face due to it being ‘bloated from drinking’.
This particular ‘with me’ video struck a chord with viewers, who found in Henna’s brutal openness a connection to their own experiences with mental health. But while Henna’s frankness is commendable, it is worth considering who we accept ‘authenticity’ from. Anti-aesthetic content is on trend, led by Gen Z social media users. This year, we have even seen ‘the rise of the deinfluencer’ as an antidote to overconsumption. However, this kind of media is ‘also a carefully considered aesthetic in itself’, with aims to capture views, clicks and likes in an attention economy. A scroll through TikTok is still an appealing feast for our eyes, the platform designed to trigger our pleasure receptors. Are we only able to stomach ‘true authenticity’ if it’s packaged to be palatable, in short addictive bites?
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When I was child, wandering through other people’s homes, I think there was an innocence to my curiosity. Now, I have developed the true mark of adulthood—a constant, thrumming want that fuels my every day. A want for more, a want for difference, a want for just something else. These days, when I watch videos of mundane activities, I’m soothed, yes, delighted even. But I’m also wanting. I want a perfect before-work routine and not a chaotic morning when it takes six tries to get my eyeliner right, when I don’t have time for breakfast, when I get halfway to the car and realise my shirt is on inside out. I want the aesthetic, cosy world I see on my screen and not the realities of my real life.
Are we only able to stomach ‘true authenticity’ if it’s packaged to be palatable, in short addictive bites?
But, in that wanting, I do still find some points of inspiration. It’s not all comparison and longing. Sometimes it’s motivation. Sometimes it inspires me to get up a bit earlier so I can take my time before work, or it’s choosing to take time for myself to read on the couch like a cosy ‘spend a winter day with me’. And sometimes it’s even a ‘clean with me’ video sending me to my kitchen to finally do those dishes that have been languishing in my sink for two days. Sometimes it even helps me put down my phone.
And when life’s endless tasks seem overwhelming, or when life feels a little lonely, maybe that is not such a bad thing.
