On the Friend zone

People have the weirdest reactions to romantic approaches.

One thing everyone dreads now is the friendzone. To the point that some even react to being asked out like, 'oh sweety, I'm sorry. I only see you as a friend'. First of all, why?. Why are you sorry? Is it that bad? Do you find me so hideous that the sole idea of going out with me is so inconceivable that you are sorry that it was even suggested? Secondly, only a friend? is it the quality of being a friend somehow mutually exclusive with romantic relationships? or less valuable?

The thing is, I have found out, that most of this is the result of a weird hierarchy that people have made up in their minds about how they think that human relations work. They have convinced themselves that this is the only way things work. And it goes something like this:

• At the bottom you have 'OMG! why are you looking at me?, go away you creep'
• Then there's 'Who even are you?'
• Then there's 'I'm obliged to hug you the rest of the subway ride so I'm gonna put up with it'
• Then there's 'That bitch that I hate but she is part of my social clique so I just try to ignore her'
• Then there's 'The teacher forced us to work together in a group project, so I guess you're okay', and it's funny because this is actually the neutral level. The positive categories only start from here on.
• There's the 'I see you everyday, I have no other choice but to talk to you'
• And then there's the friends. An unusual category. Because this is people you would normally won't care about. But you have seen them for long enough in your life as to develop a Stockholm Syndrome with their shitty sense of humor and their smelly apartment. This is the people you are stuck with but it's not longer worth it to try to get away from them.
• Then you have BFFs. Your best friends forever and ever. This is the people you actually like. You tolerate and really kind of like them.
• Then finally you have your actual friends. This are the actual persons that you love. This is the level of 'I would sleep on the hospital floor to take care of you if you ever got cancer or got in a horribly disfiguring accident'.
• Then there's your boyfriend.

And it's these categories that resume the whole friendzone problem. Because everyone puts the I would fuck the brains out of you category right after this last three. And since being a friend is kind of a obligation/random thing, everyone thinks that a friendship is less worth than a boyfriend or girlfriend. And also puts an inordinate amount of pressure in the people you fuck with because they are now somehow above an actual friendship. But it's all made up and artificial because you have only met him or her for like three months, yet people believe this shit. Like, I honest to god researched this with like double blind design and control groups and stuff. People expect strong meaningful friendships out of other folks just because they let them lick their face once in a while.

I think that to get rid of friendzone related problems we have to change this hierarchy. So I will share with you my revised version of it. The way I see the world and maybe that'll help you, I don't know.

• First, there's the people I don't care about. I just don't. I don't know who they are or what they do, I just don't care. Here there's a special mention, because this hierarchy has side steps. Like sub-categories. The first one is in this level, it's called 'charity'. This are the kids in Africa and cancer patients I don't personally know, etc. Who I care somewhat but are too socially separated for me to actually care, so they are just charity.
• Then there's the people I have to interact everyday. They are the drones in my life, the NPCs. The McDonalds servers, and waiters and bus drivers. They are the people that I will treat nice because they are making me food and I don't want to get Hepatitis.
• Then there's the people I found to be decent. The other human beings I would consider to have a conversation with. I know them, we trade phone numbers and we get drunk together once a year when we coincide by accident in another acquaintance birthday. It's a nice arrangement and it works. They are pals, I won't go out of my way to talk to you but if we bump at each other on the street I will have a nice conversation with you.
• Then there's my friends, I only have a handful of them. But this are the persons I care about and actually bother to reach out and call them and invite them to do things together.

And that's literally it. You see how it works? No more bullshit in between. And romantic relationships are not a part of any of it. I have a different hierarchy for those. And that's really how I have avoided the friendzone. My friend category is separate and independent from the fuck with category. By the way that one is very simple, it goes: I would fuck you, I want to fuck with you, and then it's I will make sandwiches for you everyday. That's how far my romantic scale go. But it is awesome because it prevents any form of miscommunication of my intentions with other people.

That's why my codes are different and sometimes confuse people. When I say 'I like you' and ask you out what I mean is. 'Do you find me sexually attractive enough to bother finding out whether we'll make sandwiches for each other?'. So when people say 'No', I don't get offended. You just don't find me attractive, and honestly that says more about you than about me. But when people says 'I see you just as a friend' I will immediately answer 'That's not what I was asking you'.

The state of YouTube's content

At the beginning of YouTube, things were different because the purpose was to fill stream time. YouTube was advertised as a different site to what it is now. The thing is that video streaming does not conforms to traditional TV conventions. On TV broadcast you know roughly how many TV sets are sold, you know how many people more or less own a TV. And you know that almost all of them will have an open air antenna and you can know how many own a cable subscription with which channels. So it is easy to access this data of how much content and to which target. And since you control the broadcast you know that you only need to fill up to 24 hours at a time. And that was well understood but it doesn't apply to video on demand because your potential stream time to fill is always theoretically infinite. Your audience is the whole of mankind, well realistically, any person with access to a device with internet connection. Even if they don't have an account on your site you know anyone can watch. And then, since the user chooses the watching experience, you have an infinite amount of time to fulfill. Maybe every single person will want to watch just this one video. Maybe every person will watch a different video each. Maybe someone will want to watch the same video thousands of times in a loop.

Tv is supposed to be on it's way out anyway.

So the first hurdle for YouTube was to overcome the need to fill an infinite amount of stream time. This is what led to the surge of viral videos and video blogging. Because YouTube was a place for anyone to share their videos to the world. So people used it for that, and it gave us some amusing pieces of entertainment that everyone felt compelled to share with all of their friends. Then there were the people who uploaded their thoughts and opinions and their personal life's happenings which brought the vlogs scene with people with decent amounts of views and moderate followings.

Unfortunately this model was unsustainable, specially from a financial point of view. There is no way to monetize such a small viewing or such short burst of viral views. Much like what happened to justin.tv, it is just random people streaming variable quality and quantity of content that it's hard to sell to advertisers. This is why the gaming scene became such a huge success for YouTube. They realized that the site's original motto broadcast yourself really didn't fit. The people who came looking for a place to showcase their videos are the minority, everyone else is here to see what's new. Nobody uploads their vacation's slideshow anymore, the average user only wants to consume content, because making really good and consistent entertainment is hard, and complex.

This means that the new calling of YouTube is to compartmentalize their viewing. You have gaming, Vevo, song covers, funny short videos, news sections on multiple sub categories, vlogs, etc. And the people making this content had become YouTube celebrities as the popular channels hog the revenue and the small or too inconsistent channels fade away from memory having achieved a hundred views per video or so. Everything else disappears. so much that the original slogan is not even visible on YouTube's main page anymore.

It really isn't, go check yourself.

Such is the state of online video on demand content entertainment. It no longer suffices to fill the space, now you have to bring meaningful content with you or you'll get lost in the background noise. Today's struggle is to achieve a little niche with a stable amount of viewers. Take for instance Cinema Sins, Lindy Beige or Extra Credits. All three are successful channels, not because of their subscriber base but because their content feeds a particular interest on the viewers.

Yes, maybe not everyone in the planet wants to hear ramblings on medieval weaponry and ancient warcraft, but those 20 thousand people that do will consistently go over to Lindy Beige's channel to flavor every new video because there are only three or four channels with quality content on related topics.

Extra Credits is an interesting one. It is about gaming but since both it's format and focus is so different from let's plays it has a strong appeal. Its 300 thousand subscriber watch every one of their video because they function as a developer's digest for those who like to learn and discuss video game design. Something that other channels might do but in a diluted manner within their formats. So between the over saturated sea of gaming channels they manage to stand out, because they do something that others don't.

Then there is Cinema sins. Before 2012 it was hard to pinpoint some video in the same vein than this channel. Making fun of Hollywood blockbusters in interesting comedic sketches was done before but never before someone achieved their balance of detail and comedy. The fame of Cinema Sins brought the raise of 'How it should have ended' and Screen Junkie's 'Honest Trailers' which hadn't succeeded so massively before but found their bout of viral promotion when somehow the three channels synergized into a sort of category of their own. Every person I have talked about these videos has always watched them together in mini marathons without realizing that they are made by completely different creators and uploaded to different channels. And that's a good thing because collectively they manage to get each other massive amounts of views everyday.

So this is the state of a difficult scene. YouTube is today a widely different beast from what it was conceived back in 2005. Today's channels have to find an audience, entice them enough to have them return for every new video, and they also have to balance a certain flow of amount of content uploaded and consistent quality. Every YouTube channel now is more like their own TV channel but with none of the commodities that traditional TV marketers had 20 years ago.