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Results and Milestones

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The idea for this video was cooking up in my mind for a while. Let me know what you think!

Results. The outcomes of your actions. The products of a chemical reaction, the solution, the hidden X in a mathematical equation. Results can be so many things, but we tend to talk about results as the positive, tangible, visible product of our efforts. 

Recurring Dreams about Examinations

I have recurring dreams from time to time. One is me in an examination hall, writing a paper, or completing an assignment when the time runs out, and I either don’t finish what I was writing, or I do, and the examiner refuses to accept it. The other and by my estimation more universally experienced one is that I got the results of an examination and I did badly. 

Whenever I talk about these dreams, it seems to resonate with my peers, especially those who grew up in India or South Asia in particular. It tells you a lot about how the education system we were raised in just sticks in our minds and our psyche, never really leaving, but just fading slightly, like an old tattoo. 

As a kid who grew up in India, “Results” generally meant the results of examinations, the most important of which were Standards 10 and 12- secondary and higher secondary education. A lot depends on these results, and a lot doesn’t. Going through all these examinations has an effect on all of us, I guess- it occupies a corner of our mind, and the subconscious uses it to communicate – fear. 

The fear, of not measuring up to some invisible ideal. Of not having enough time to do the things we set out to do, within the time we were given to do it. An invisible plan laid out by some invisible man. The invisible examiner, pointing at an invisible watch, with his invisible hands, glaring at you with his invisible eyes. It’s all invisible, all in our heads, but all of us feel the icy glare all the same. 

This fear then morphs into insecurity and a deep dissatisfaction- in our childhood we’re so conditioned to see letter grades or numbers associated with whatever we do, and with whatever anyone else does, that we feel dissatisfied when we don’t see that tangible, visible product.

Working Out and seeing “Results”

I’ve been working out for over a year now. I started lifting these small weights, then I slowly trained enough to lift these heavier ones, and then I got these, which are even heavier than that. Two to three times a week, I lift these weights, above my head, or off to the side, and I put them back onto the ground. I FEEL better than how I used to a year ago. I eat better, I sleep better, I feel more limber, more lively, all great things. Despite all these things, the first question anyone ever asks is: “What about your results, though? Where are your results?”. Of course, they’re talking about the visible results- where are your biceps, your triceps, why do you still have a double chin, why don’t you have abs, and so on. 

Because, if you can’t see a change, a visible result, It’s all for nothing. I might as well have done nothing at all. Right?

Getting Older

I turned 28 this past November. I think all the time about how I’m going to hit the big three-o in a couple of years. I think about how unremarkable my 20s were. How there were so many things I wanted to do and didn’t. Either because they were withheld from me, or because I withheld myself. Just lists of to-dos left incomplete. One of those I remember I wrote as a joke on my 25th birthday. It was a list of things to learn, starting with “learn to talk to adults”, followed by learning to talk to children, infants, animals, and so on. The only thing checked off was the “talk to adults” part. But that’s just among a whole lot of different insecurities. 

I got to thinking about this and I realized I felt like I was going into my 30s feeling like I had a blank scrapbook. Just blank pages. No glitter, no sequins, no fancy pictures. Just an unremarkable man who had an unremarkable decade. And that filled me with dread. It was as if someone was going to hand me a report card on my 30th birthday, showing me how I’d failed to get a good grade in all these aspects of life. Or it’d be worse- they’d show me a report card that just said, “no remarks”. Because I’m an unremarkable man who lived unremarkably through his 20s. And that’s just it, isn’t it- the idea that if you didn’t live out all those fantasies, all those frivolities that they said you should have lived out in your 20s, then the time to do so has run out. 

And that’s because certain things have to get done by a certain age- right?

Don’t Believe the Hype

Of course not! My answer to those who clamor for visible results, and to those who think everything should be time-bound, is simple. The first thing is that sometimes you should just do things for their own sake. For the fun of it. You don’t need to turn everything into a test, a competition, or a hustle. You don’t need the imaginary examiner looking at everything that you do. The second is that you have more time than you think you do.

When I was a kid in school, people used to make fun of me for “being in my own world”. The more I grow older, the more clear it is to me that it’s the way to be. It’s kind of like the dude from the big Lebowski, and how he goes about his life. This quote by Gwen Ihnat really captures that character and that philosophy, and I’d like to leave you all with this. She says,

“We envy The Dude for knowing himself, for escaping the need to conform, and for rejecting mainstream society for the little one that grows around him.”

~ Gwen Ihnat, avclub.com

Engaging an Audience: A Media Theory Perspective

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Video Script with some additions and sans some ad libbed parts:

Ever since I started making videos there’s one thing that has always bothered me. I’ve talked about this before, and that’s this graph of user retention. It shows that people tend to watch my videos till about 2-3 minutes in and there’s a steep decline in the number of people who watch my videos till the end.

I’ve been listening to the feedback that people have for me and I’ve been making changes in every video that I make, but there’s still that statistic, that low engagement with the video that sticks with me as something I need to improve on.

With that in mind, I began looking at the usual tips and tutorials online on how to be a more effective communicator, but that felt like I was just scratching the surface. So, I decided to read up about media theory. The first thing that came up was the well-known work of Marshall McLuhan who famously said “The medium is the message”.

What he meant was that the medium of communication shapes how the message is perceived, which in turn also shapes behaviors and has an effect on society as a whole. He divided history into four epochs: Oral, where information was communicated solely through the spoken word, then there was the literary epoch, with the invention of writing and the creation of manuscripts. The third was the print epoch which came to be after the invention of the printing press and movable type, and the fourth is the electronic epoch, which is today’s society.

As mankind moved through these epochs, the invention of new communication mediums changed how we thought and remembered things, and also changed how societies were structured.

I want to talk about an aspect of McLuhan’s theory, the concept of Hot versus Cool media. Contrary to what you’d expect, he described hot media as the one you passively accept, and cool media as the one you actively participate in. To explain further, hot media engages one sense in a high definition way and has a low level of audience participation. Radio or printed books are examples of this. Radio engages the auditory sense while books engage the visual. Cool media, on the other hand, involves the use of multiple senses at once and involves “filling in the gaps” with your own thinking and cognition. An example of cool media would be watching TV, where you have to absorb the visual as well as the auditory information at the same time, while also forming thoughts and opinions on what’s being talked about.

I looked at the two things I usually create- blog posts and videos- and tried looking at them through this lens of hot or cool media. I realized soon that this binary classification wasn’t quite enough to fully understand how people engage with these things. You could oversimplify and say that blogs are mainly text-based and more “hot” media and videos are more “cool” because of the audiovisual information. Here’s the thing though- blogs are not plain text like printed books, they are purely digital and you can add pictures and other forms of media into them. You can also allow people to comment and share them. Also, I make videos, but the platform I use for them is youtube, which has its own design features and caveats. When you think of a youtube video or a YouTuber, you think of a particular archetype of person, a particular style of delivery, and a particular set of calls to action (like share and subscribe!). Not to mention all sorts of other “tropes” that have emerged- making things appear organic and less “high production”, building a sense of community, and the often mentioned parasocial relationships… the list goes on. Link in the description for a playlist of the videos I watched, as well as some articles I read.

I remember when I started making youtube videos a lot of people told me I was softspoken- they sounded surprised about it like it was different from what they expected. It was as if there’s some unwritten rule about how you present yourself that says you have to be loud and boisterous and “always turned up to 11”. As if there are unwritten rules of how to engage with the audience on this platform. Again- youtube isn’t just a video viewing platform, it’s a video delivery platform: there’s an algorithm to suggest videos to you, a comments section, a whole bunch of communities and followings- it’s an ecosystem unto itself.

Another way the Hot/Cool dichotomy breaks down is to think about it from the perspective of a viewer. I watched a video where there’s a discussion of how what’s hot for one person may be cool for another person- just because of how they interact with or consume the media. For example, I may listen to a podcast attentively, or I may just have it on as some background ambient sound while I do something else. Also, people may “heat up” or “cool down” based on the media type, the platform they are on, and a whole bunch of other factors.

So when it comes to the original question of engagement, it looks like I’m back to square one. Not quite- I did learn a lot about media theory and this exploration got me thinking a lot about how people engage with media. The most important lesson was the true meaning behind the words “the medium is the message”.

This does raise a few questions though- should I start using these tropes? Should I start having a high energy boisterous presentation with the goal of forming a parasocial relationship with my currently unnamed “fanbase”? Or should I continue doing what I’m doing and hope that youtube’s algorithm decides to bless me one day? For now, it’s the latter. But I am open to suggestions and feedback, and who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon something that both engages the audience and gives me creative fulfillment.

This is the end of the video, so I’d like to thank you all for watching, I’m very close to 100 subscribers which is a milestone (for me at least) and I’m very grateful for all the support. Be sure to like this video, subscribe and hit the bell icon if you want more of this content, let me know what you think about this video in the comments, and remember:

“Anyone who claims to know all the answers has lied to you once already.”