I actually love how you function as a creator because you ignore us until you have something to say which in turn means i can ignore you until there is something to listen to
This is my favourite. I personally struggle with creators that are super active because I get a sense of fomo and weird obligation (entirely self generated and my own issue) that stresses me out.
@@forgotten1sbut now youre complimenting them for not creating a parasocial relationship with their fans, which makes your bond with them stronger, therefore creating a parasocial relationship, the cycle never ends!!
i had a dream two nights ago that you lived under my sink and would only come out to water my house plants. also despite my fear, i would leave un-toasted bread out for you to eat like the babadook.
"Un-toasted" may be my new favorite unnecessary necessary adjective. Functionally, it added nothing to describe the bread, but the comment is inherently weaker without it.
People always say, "don't read the comments" I'm glad I did. People always say, "don't tell people about your dreams(Sleepytimes) no one cares" I'm glad you did. Thanks.
Fr like I’m also super sad whenever something happens and I can’t go to it or I missed something nearby, but that’s life! It sucks! One human being cannot fix the reality that things just don’t work out, even if they make fun UA-cam videos
In a way appreciate you "ignoring your audience" for months at a time cause I can forget that you exist and than be pleasantly surprised when you upload. It's like finding money in your coat pocket from last year's winter.
I don't follow any of the people I watch unless it's been so long since their last upload that I get the morbid curiosity to check their twitter to see if they died
The algorithm fed me the Folgers Commercial video and then I subscribed and watched a lot of the back catalog, so it was like I got a $100 bill in a Christmas card from grandma and then I didn't see or hear from her again until my birthday.
It’s really nice! I’m never going to know about their side projects like live shows or podcasts, but it’s worth it to not be keeping up with creators as if they’re my friends or something. My involvement begins and ends at the UA-cam video 🤍
this is the energy i need to take with social media moving forward because god knows im not mentally healthy enough to deal with any of those platforms
@@Bleilock1you can, you just have to deal with the consequences of your action, enjoy the benefits of your job being stable and consistent, if you hate the repetitive process of it, change jobs, take a vacation, take yourself out of the groove and free float in the unknown if not having financial stability. You will quickly realize you can live that way for as long as you want, but that choice has consequences, you can do anything but you lack direction, stability of knowing what is what
as an artist, i actually really needed this video. it's so tiring to be exposed to people constantly throwing their demands at you under the guise of "oh you should be grateful, i'm giving you attention" like no, i'm grateful for the people that like my stuff for what it is, and not for the people who came expecting something completely different and making it my problem somehow.
As a software developer who specializes in cursed amulets & has released some of that code as open source, I cannot *tell* you how many times I've taken a long time to respond to entitled comments "because I was busy" when in fact I was talking myself down from hexing them & all their loved ones in the executable file.
Sir, madam, nonbinary comrade, you absolutely cannot just say "software developer who specializes in cursed amulets" and dip. That's against the law I'm pretty sure.
What I find fascinating is the "don't forget us we're real human beings" while not pausing for a second to consider the humanity of the person you are expecting to warp their entire life around satisfying you.
lol, is it weird that this felt more about me than any of the other stuff that wasn't about me, especially because this was explaining it not being about me, mostly?
Rich Hickey reference absolutely shook me, I was thinking about him as soon as Open Source was mentioned but didn't realized CJ the X was in my brainspace
It's refreshing to hear a creator make it blatantly clear that they do not know us on a personal level, neither do we know them. We weren't meant to be friends, or have any other relationship other than a performance to an audience. Best of luck with your Toronto show! Normalize the personal barriers between creators and watchers. They aren't obligated to get to know us!
@@tomiwaaina5499yeah but they’re always very far from this extent. Streamers that do it especially can’t seperate themselves in the same way because that particular kind of performance requires a level of interaction that you don’t get with UA-cam videos.
I stopped emotional stock into online creators and parasocial relationships years ago. It is wild to see people (usually teens) act so surprised that this online artist they follow and do not know was just putting on a face. And they still say shit like, "I sure am glad MY parasocial relationship with my artist is good unlike that OTHER stinky artist. Anyways follow [artist]." Last year a decently sized let's play channel got in some hot water. (Supermega) Sure I was little disappointed, but I wasn't like HEARTbroken.
the current (and mostly online) desire for honesty in creators keeps looping back in on itself. people like the content because it feels honest, they connect to the creator through the content, the creator responds to this connection in one of myriad ways and a solid 95% of that original audience stays connected even when the creator's response is outward hostility toward their audience or being told off. all that to say i ended this video going "wow, that was so real, I loved it, just a person talking to thousands of other people and telling them off, I bet CJ would kill in a blunt rotation" before i realized what my brain was doing to me. like a big fleshy ouroboros with pleading emoji eyes
“I did not post for a year because I made the foolish mistake of trying to take my job seriously, which caused me to stop enjoying it and then forget how to do it. This happened in phases. First, I read so many books I gave myself brain damage. Then, I started working on one very long project, and I set very high standards for myself intellectually. I thought, ‘This is going to be an actual philosophical piece of rigor, and I’m going to treat it like it’s art. I’m gonna take this job seriously, because I’m grateful that this job has given me so much-I should treat it like a real thing and make it as good as I possibly can.’ And I’m still not done.” I dunno if this is relatable or selection bias but wow hey literally same
sometimes i tell my friends that they should never trust public personalities to be who they appear to be and they almost always scoff at me like i have no idea what i'm talking about. it's like people forget that what you're watching/listening to/etc, as much as it can be someone baring their soul to the world, it's always some kind of performance - they know there's a camera, they can create a character, you're seeing a facade of some sort. once i put the art into the world it doesn't belong to me. it isn't me. i'm not my art, and my art is not me. our relationship as an audience is to the art, not the artist. until you meet them in the street and they agree to shake your hand, they do not exist in your life, you don't know who they are, they don't know you. ceci n'est pas une pipe, etc.
Yeah, I agree. If it's on the screen, it's an act. Even if the creator is presenting as a non-character to the camera, it's still a character. Thinking we know anything about CJ or other youtubers is just wishful thinking. Not using the sense of the word here, but I trust the content this channel puts out, I wouldn't expect to know anything about CJ if I met them in person, any more than I would expect Jarred Harris to actually be a Cassandra in real life
Yeah my quick way of saying this is always "Famous people aren't real" and people are like "WTF? Of course Taylor Swift is real?" and I'm like "Yes the individual known as Taylor Swift is a human who exists, and you do not know anything about her"
@@swagmundfreud666Omg wait till they hear about ghost-songwriters. For instance until recently I didn’t even know Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus wasn’t even hers. A couple other people’s songs too. Now I’m just assuming most music isn’t actually the singer’s, which makes sense like how many people can write music AND sing? That’s two entire different skills
Way back at the dawn of blogging, this must have been AT LEAST 15 years ago, I came across a blog that really got me, and I read the entire archive because there just weren't that many blogs yet, until I came across a post that made me feel a way. I had shit to say about it, because it was wrong, so I scrolled down to the comment section to voice my shit. And there wasn't a comment section. THERE WASN'T A COMMENT SECTION. I can't really describe how shook I was. That had never happened before. I had to sit with that for a good long while. And I'm so happy I had that experience (and it was an experience) so early in my internetting days because it really unlocked something in me. This proof that what this blogger was saying was true, that she wasn't interested in my opinion, not because it might be bad but because it was useless to her, because I don't know her and this wasn't a conversation, it all hit me on a soul deep level. I feel like it ripped a good 80% of the parasocial entitlement out of me while it was still developing and she must have yanked out the roots, because it never really grew back. Don't even remember her name now, but I remember being taught something that served me very well for the next many years and probably the rest of my life. I hope this video can do this for someone else because it was a defining moment in my life and I want everyone to have that.
As someone living in England who follows a lot of overseas content creators, I've just kinda' made my peace with knowing I'll never be able to see them. You do you, and do what you want to do for your career. You don't need my blessing, obviously, but there it is!
me moving from toronto literal days from the liveshow actually made me trust more in ur aesthetic steadfastness: namely that you will continue to create whatever art you want regardless of what i do or desire, sometimes to great comedic effect
I started publishing my fan fictions a few years ago and it is the most liberating thing and the most restrictive thing I have ever done. It's like I vacillate between writing because I have to get it out of me and thinking too much about my potential audience- but like, I ain't got nobody reading my shit. My numbers are puny and comments are few and far between. I can't even get MY REAL friends to touch my art without it being like pulling fucking teeth, but you know what? I may not have anyone engaging in conversation with me over it, but that also means there's no input to muddy the water. I'm two years into this and I'm still writing because I want to write. I need to. I have stories I need to get out of me, and I make them for me. I'm the audience. I'm the stakeholder. If anyone else happens upon my art and they get something from it, good for them- but this ain't about them. My art is for me first.
I love this! I feel it in my soul. Im a writer, too. Feel free to drop your writing in the comments, I'd love to read your work based on how you view it ❤
I've started to consciously adopt this approach with my own art. I mostly draw, my day job is drawing and I also run a page for my off-work art. Sometimes I get tempted to do the most recent art meme for the sake of getting more views but then get an unneeded sense of urgency and stress bc I also want to use my little free time to rest. And then I get guilty because i'm not taking enough sacrifices to further my art social media. Which is just, a lot to deal with? So I'm trying to tell myself that I should draw when I feel like it, to go back to my days as a teen when I drew for myself without any expectation for "likes" or a "rt", and those years were arguably the most artistically fulfilling of my life even though my skill back then was leagues below where I am at now. I also have started writing as well, 100% for myself and no one else, and the feeling was amazing
I feel this on such a deep level its impossible to articulate. My relationship to my art is very similar, I create pieces because they are fun or interesting to me, or as a therapeutic technique to process emotions. I finish an artwork and think it's cool or enjoy seeing my own technical abilities but I rarely wish to share it with anyone beyond friends and family. I'm like a greedy dragon with my hoard of artworks. Its made with me in mind and for my enjoyment alone. If other people like or connect to it, that's cool, but in no way my goal when creating. This is the main reason I have never wanted to pursue it as a career.
it’s cool to see a critique of parasocialism in modern internet culture that isn’t driven entirely by shame. these boundaries are critical to the health and safety of creators and audiences alike, but we’re all still humans with human brains, and that means we have to do difficult work to prevent our brains from forming these undesirable connections. i don’t see a lot of people being compelled to do that difficult work when the message is delivered in the form of shame. there’s much greater utility in taking this more empathetic and exploratory approach, asking why this happens, and addressing the root of the problem with conscious and explicit acknowledgement of the feelings and autonomy of the audience members who need to do the work. it’s just really great to see, and i hope more creators take this approach, because it’s gonna be a lot more effective.
The 'lol im not doing this seriously - oh fuck i created a lot fast and now its grown so i might need to take this seriously - fuck now im in my mind about it and my once joy is now stressful and i need to rewire my brain again' loop is real and very relatable haha.
I love how CJ is covering the complications of being so parasocially adored and having a big fan base. Every time I get too enamored with their patreon content, I have to tell myself "you're turning them into a Harry Styles poster on ur bedroom wall stop it" Like! We want to be seen and understood and make content that reaches a lot of people and makes impacts! I'm really grateful for the granular look at the "no not like that" of it all
This is why I find doing the book club and engaging with the other folks on the Patreon to be so helpful. I feel like the open source example is a good one; what if we see CJ’s ideas as open source software, except instead of tacking on a bunch of garbage to it and then sending it out for everyone else to use, we add to it and edit it for our own lives? And see how other people do that, and how we can all do that together? And then do that with everyone’s ideas instead of just CJ’s? I get the drive to find someone to follow; the world is fucking confusing, and I want someone to have it all figured out. But I’m 100% sure no one does, so let’s have the emotional and intellectual honesty, and the courage, to do that ourselves. But like, not alone…together, in community. I think CJ’s process of thinking and making sense of things is a good example of how to engage in that explanation, and they happened to create a cool place on Patreon where we can do that together (which will be cooler once there’s a way for Patrons to directly connect to other Patrons). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@vaporeonice3146 Taking the time to write lovely insight on a rando's comment is such a perfect example of the ideal you're talking about!! CJ's patreon feels so special because I think there is a genuine effort and reaching towards real community. Like we're not abolishing the pedestal entirely bc we're all still here to give CJ money and engage with their cool projects, BUT the attention the community gives to each other's words feels like it is at least doing something to transcend the bedroom-poster vibes
I’m so fucked by that slot machine function you describe, I keep walking away and then getting sucked back in within a month… I don’t know how to actually stop. Appreciate you discussing this stuff, sorry folks were shitty about your show announcement.
to actually stop, get a hobbit offline. like have something that you can and enjoy to do that takes up large chunks of your time, preferrably it being social. Social media is taking up a need in your life, mostly the social need that alot of people lack nowadays but also it combats the boredom you could experience. When these aspects of your life are filled, you will not have the pressing feeling of checking SM or being online in general.
i truly do believe age plays a role in parasocial expectations. kids are learning to socialize via online connections, and i think it impairs their ability to understand felt sense and slower-paced relation. obviously this isn’t always applicable, but i do think about this a lot
It's all a kind of interesting evolution on the transition away from community. Like 120 years ago people's lives went like this: Wake up, get breakfast at home or local diner, maybe read local newspaper, go work locally with local people, go to local pub or local events afterwards, go home with family. Your entire world was built by your experience within community. Now, every aspect of our life is either a corporate script or media, starting with radio, then tv, then the internet. Of course people are trying to replace their social relationships of community with the parasocial, but god what a depressing development. Fixing our zoning to allow local business, walkability, mixed use, etc could do a ton to help people "touch grass" or rather, reconnect with community and a world built out of people rather than abstract, distant media and parasocial fake relationships built in their heads.
Your open source code analogy is one of the dominant discourses around fan fiction. People create things, and release them for free, as a gift. As more people come into the community, more and more people think theyre entitled to "critique" fan fic, often with a load of rubbish. The analogy I use is if you pay for a cake from a bakery, and it sucks, you have the right to complain. But if a friend bakes you a cake and you start ripping it to shreds, you're an ass. People who pay for a concert ticket have the right to a good concert, but they're not entitled to dictate what a musician does with their career.
Right, if you buy a ticket for a stand turns out you like their music then that's on you. If an artist stops making content you like them you don't have to buy it or engage with it, but it's not their responsibility to pivot to your desires especially if there has been no promise to do so.
I don't even think fanfiction online is baking a cake for someone else. Wouldn't it be more like inviting someone over for cake? Since you also made the cake for yourself, and for others to take a slice and enjoy the flavours too, but you didn't make it specifically for someone else, tailored to their needs. If you make a vegan walnut cake and tell your guests what it is beforehand (content warning for explicit material, tags for ships etc) and one of your guests has an allergic reaction (triggered because of the content) and another thinks it's disgusting (doesn't like the ships, for instance) that's not your fault because told your guests what it is. And you didn't poison your guests either (no dangerous/illegal content). And I guess there'd be other cake by other people too, so maybe fanfiction sites are actually potlucks? I'm not american so that's unproven. Sorry, I don't know why I'm taking this metaphor so seriously lol. Yours gets the point across just fine xD
@@spiralghosts you may have elaborated a bit much on the metaphor but in doing so you improved the idea significantly, yes. One thing about fanfiction is that while the author does not have a responsibility to cater to an audience, it does have (especially in the age of ao3 and hyper specific tags and tropes, content warnings, triggers, and so on) a commitment to inform the audience of the contents of their works. If you write a fic and tag it as romance between two characters, but don't warn the audience about one of the characters ending up with an unknown, untagged third party, you're doing a disservice. If you don't tag for things like major character death, noncon, etc (all major warnings in ao3), then I can understand if you're upset if some comments call you out on it, but I can also understand the commenters being upset. Warn for allergies in the food you make. Tag your works accordingly. If you do those things and people get upset anyways? Then they're the idiots.
Of course there is a limit, but... the free market of ideas is not at all dependent on private property. You can say something about a cake you're not even buying. Finding reasonable, constructive things to say about anything is generally good, it's part of growth, for you and for the people you criticize.
@Nathouuuutheone you're doing the equivalent of seeing a peanut butter brownie recipe on tik tok and commenting "do this recipe without peanuts because I'm allergic." The recipe is not for you and you are welcome to scroll past. You're being ungrateful for what you're being shared with. Free content is something people create for themselves, and sharing it with others is a gift. People put a lot of time and effort into creating free content, they are creating art and contributing to a wider cultural conversation. If your attitude to that isn't utmost gratefulness you need to immediately humble yourself. By even commenting critically on a fan fic you're presuming that what you're saying adds value, is constructive/helpful and is socially acceptable. But you're not socially aware enough to understand the rules of the space you've been invited into, the significance of what's been shared with you, the feelings and motivations of the person behind the screen or the impact you're having on a wider community level. If you cannot understand the time and place to give feedback, your feedback is likely not going to help that person improve. Instead it makes you seem presumptuous and entitled. Producing free art is laborious, taking time, skill and effort. The way you create community that continues to do this work, for free, is by properly appreciating their efforts, not demanding better from them as if you are entitled to that. That's why it's rude to criticise a cake a friend makes you. The cake in the shop is made by a professional, paid for their time. They want your business so are incentivised to get feedback. When your friend bakes you a surprise cake, you are an ass if your response is "it would be better if it had more vanilla" because you're failing to appreciate something done out of love for you and meeting that with expectations of wanting more. If that's your relationship to art, always thinking about how it can cater more to you personally at the expense of the feelings and motivation of the artist who made it, then you don't deserve better. You are also going against decades of community etiquette and making everyone around you annoyed at you, especially the writer. People get better by writing and practicing, they won't continue writing if all they get back is ungrateful entitlement.
okay but the comparison of open source to artist/audience parasocial relationships is so insightful.. i will spend a long time now using this to analyze and deconstruct my own parasocial behaviour.. i am honoured to receive this gift from you CJ 😔🙏
There is something so grounding about your staunch adherence to maintaining hard boundaries in this increasingly boundaryless world we're living in. As much as I tell myself I shouldn't stress about appeasing people with artistic endeavors and just focus on making things that are honest expressions, it gets difficult to maintain that perspective when you're drowning in mass entitlement. You cut through all that bullshit. Thank you for that.
I love what was said about “electric boredom”. Every single time I sit down and try to write a novel that I’m passionate about I end up taking it seriously and then I put it down. I am in desperate need of electric boredom i fear
Distancing myself from creators and thinking that I should not associate them with me in my head has done wonders tbh. Not friends, Nor a part of me. I just like their content which I am aware they made. I'm also glad I'm not 14 anymore. There's a million and plus shows I have missed and will miss in my own city, let alone the world, from people I haven't met yet so I will never be upset to learn about an event and I can't go even if I like the person, because I have the distance.
This is a tangent but the craziest open-source story of the past 6 months is that the creator of a low-level tool (xz) got burned out for exactly the reasons you describe. Over the past 2 years he started relying increasingly on a new seemingly-enthusiastic contributor... who was actually a state actor building trust for years. They almost successfully managed to compromise billions of devices by introducing a sophisticated vulnerability
Jesus that poor guy. I can't imagine creating something, thinking it helps people, thinking you have created a successful business venture, and thinking there was someone who was really enthusiastic about it and loved what you created - only to shatter all of that.
“The trials and tribulations of not living in Toronto continue” was a really fucking funny reply though. Damn! I not only literally LOLed, I considered getting on the floor so I could honestly claim that I literally ROFLed. (However I did not in fact literally rofl.)
Except we don't owe them shit either. Take that "we *should* be grateful" and throw it in the garbage. If you like the video, great. If they post one you don't like, you don't have to continue to be grateful for it. It's transactional for us just as much as it is for them. And that's how it's supposed to be.
i think its easier for artists to not feel entitled to other artists’ work. when i make art, i always make it to somehow creatively express myself, and i take that knowledge and apply it to basically every other artist i see online. that insight is something only gained by going thru that process, so if you havent, its easy to misunderstand artists’ actions when they break your aesthetic trust
You have an interesting point there. Those who do not create don't understand the process and how personal it is to create, and therefore people think of creation as a product rather than an expression and don't understand why "consumer" feed back is not warranted or needed. Even art is often monetized so I think it's hard for some people to understand creating something just for the sake of it and not to sell it. Even if the thing is not for profit like fanfiction then it must be for clout or views.
Entitlement is one of the most passion killing processes for everyone involved. So if you’re someone who tends to feel that way, please take a look into your own emotional triggers and issues. And learn to express love without making it about how it fills up your own yawning sense of emptiness. You will enjoy things more and be reciprocated more if you look at what you receive (art, fic, videos, etc) as a gift. And express your feelings in regards to it that way.
I write poems (sort of, as in, I don't but I like to) and for a while I was really good at it, and I'd post my poems online and people would be like "wow great work, can't wait to read the next one" and it made me stop writing for a while, and now I don't post what I write. "can't wait to read the next one" like, i felt like saying, ok but you got this one, calm down man, literally just made it and your foaming at the mouth for more 😭😭 don't tell me what to do, 300 years grounded from reading my poems!! all this to say, I can kind of relate to this, can't imagine what it'd feel like on a global scale, but it's so much pressure even when it's my friends. do you, make videos and post them, we'll watch them, make the shittest video ever and we'll probably do the same thing, make a UA-cam masterpiece and don't even post it, we'll survive and so will you :)
As a writer who's trying to figure out how i want to show up in this Capitalist society of subscriptions, marketing secrets, tropes, markets, etc, i love this.
"That's 90% of why I talk the way I do, I think. It's 'cos I get bored while I'm saying normal sentences, and I gotta spice 'em up." I love this and I hope no else does this lest global communication breaks down even faster than the cruising speed it's already on
I am personally very happy to be a faceless blip in the unceasing mass of an audience gobbling up whatever you do put out for all of us. I’m very happy for you that you’re doing your local live show and enriching your hometown culturally. I think it’s amazing that through the interconnected pulsating mass of information and opinions allowed me to discover your contributions to our collective culture whether you were respectful of the medium or not, and your philosophy on art and creation has inspired me to continue to pursue my own creative aspirations. Thank you for making things and thank you for sharing them.
POV it's 3am on a thursday morning and CJ the X just posted a video raving mad over social media, despite needing to go into your work in approximately 5 hours realtime you instead decide to crawl out of bed and into the communal kitchen. You dig through the drinks, past the pilsners and ciders, to finally find exactly what you need for the long night ahead of you, a redbull. The human experience of sleep is just death taking over for a short temporary period of time, on the otherhand art is forever.
It's so funny because this conundrum is what scares me about content creation. Like, in life as a regular person just living, so many people around me have a me that lives in their heads. If I fail to act in the way that they've scripted with their tiny projection of me, what happens? Are they angry or disappointed? Inspired or upset? When my friends need emotional space and I need emotional closeness, have they failed me? Have we broken Trust? No one is entitled to me, I am not entitled to anyone else. The simultaneous exchange and absence are part of what makes life so fluid and salient. CJ once again, articulating thoughts I didn't know I had, in ways I didn't know I wanted. Thank you Chaos Art Goblin God! /gen Also, I truly lol'ed when CJ said "I could put my whole ***** into something-"!!!!
i completely relate, especially on the first point. i have so many ideas but it’s already so stressful living up to my own and other people’s projections and expectations, i can’t imagine having to deal with complete strangers’ ideas of me.
The comment about "ignoring your online audience" reminds me of when straight people get mad at queer people for forming their own spaces. ("But what about us? Straight people want a space too 🥺🥺") The problem is that there's already a space for the people being "ignored" by CJ the X. It's this channel. (Hopefully my comment doesn't come across as mean-spirited, it's hard to get tone across here)
As a straight dude, this is so hard to make other straight people understand; "why dont we get pride?" WE DO, literally EVERYDAY, the entirety of society is structured around being proud and confident in being straight, so much so its seen as a default. They miss the forest for the trees EVERYTIME
@@scottbuck1572 Thanks for trying. It's exhausting trying to argue this with people who then dismiss you for being "too emotional" about it (because it's my literal life that impacts me every day?) so I appreciate the in-house efforts.
I love how CJ videos always make me go off on my own random thought trains. Like as an artist, I had a visceral reaction to “the artist is above the audience” that was just a fun little journey for me to examine before resuming the video.
your love for your home city is so relatable and warming to me. the bond between an animal and its home is the strongest bond there is, the connection that anchors all other relationships, and we didn't lose that basic structure when we developed the capacity to reason and have anxiety. so when a human being fiercely loves their home and wants to make it better I'm like YES EMOTIONAL HEALTH WIN. community and cooperation is humanity's superpower. love for home begets love for neighbor begets love for self begets hope for the future
I thought cj “stopped” posting bc they just didn’t have any ideas or didn’t feel like making any videos for that amount of time. I think partially bc of their unique treatment of their audience I have generally become less concerned with whether my favorite UA-cam video essayists aren’t making things and just get excited when they do. I mean I also rewatch videos I’ve already seen on a daily basis so maybe that helps make me less hungry for new content from the machine
Hello, I am a person who practically never comments on the videos I watch, because I feel that maintaining arguments through comments is useless and not very entertaining. But I want to make the effort to let content creators know that I appreciate their art, so thank you for your work.
Woa part 4 really hit me in the artistic feels... something about us setting such insane high expectations for ourselves because we think the world is waiting on this ***MASTERPIECE*** to come out... just fucking drains the life out of you, like literaly, for me i feel the artistic desire to DO just fly away from my body because the piece i thought was finished and cool is now trash because i scrolled on instagram for like a couple of minutes and now i dont feel the pride i once had in it, i feel shame and dread because i fear it might not stack up. So it stays in the drafts. All this to say... i feel you on that one. Do your shit cj
In punishing creators for infrequent posting, I think UA-cam has also kind of trained the rest of us to expect regular posting. Like, my favorite author is two books into a series that will probably have at least two more books, and I'm looking forward to the next one, but I wouldn't ever just reach out in a random place online and make her aware that I'm waiting for it. But if I'm eagerly looking forward to a UA-camr's next video and they make a community post, I have been one of the commenters not-subtly indicating that I'm waiting. And unlike the authors I'm waiting on, they mostly do not end previous video essays with cliffhangers, so there's even less of an excuse for that behavior. I'm gonna try to stop doing that, these algorithms are insidious.
The agony of loathing social media as an artist with no eyes I don't wanna make algorithm optimised bullshit but EVERYONE BUT YOU TELLS ME TO thanks for being the one that doesn't
I can gauge how much I respect and admire the intellect and communication skills of a UA-cam creator based on how badly I want to write a clever, insightful, and perhaps also funny comment on their video. I have, here, accepted my inferiority and inability to write such a comment, but decided to write a comment anyway, because algorithm blah blah. CJ's videos always make me feel like a student who wants to raise their hand and ask a brilliant question to prove they were absorbing and processing the lecture and have a desire to contribute to the subject.
CJ, your video has been a breath of fresh air in a waft of shit I've been dealing with for the last few months. It's gotten me buzzing about wanting to understand people again in a way I haven't felt in a long time. So genuinely thank you for that.
If I ever generate any semblance of fame I'm gonna be following your philosophy of artist/audience divide like the fucking bible, it seems so healthy. The bowing and scraping I see creators feel like they have to do is so dystopian
Im going to eat this like a mouse might eat a cookie. Thanks for continually reminding your audience of the boundaries we might need/want to place on ourselves and the creators we do/want to support. You inspire your audience, but that is also not your job or duty it's just something you do, so thank you.
This really resonated with me. I’m transitioning rn and I posted a video on Instagram where I happen to be wearing a skirt. I only have like 200 followers but the video got hundreds of unhinged hate comments. I wanna live in a cabin in the ocean
I’m sorry this happened to you. Instagram comment moderation is nonexistent nowadays I’ve reported the most horrible shit and it just doesn’t get taken down
Remember the log4j vulnerability? A small bit of code made by 2 people in their free time with zero funding for years and years keeping it updated. It is used by so much of the world. Then a critical venerability got found - an oversight that can let any thing that uses it (so many things) have a spot where they can get hacked. The entire tech sector was flame for a couple weeks getting upset about how bad it was - much of the anger beinf directed at the 2 unpayes people who worked on it for years. Iirc even top level people from the Chinese government were on the developers were leaving persuasive comments. Log4J is far from the only Open source project that is exclusively a passion project of a few but supports the entire world. It's crazy.
Very real. Your attitude towards ‘the audience’ and art and responsibility is something I highly respect and am inspired by as an artist and human being. Take as long as you need on the next project, or never post it, or do something entirely different. Do whatever’s right by you. No matter what I’m grateful and happy to have the videos you’ve made. You’re a breath of fresh air on this platform 🙏
I was halfway through watching the new video, had to start driving home from work and then had a fight with my boyfriend about and started crying. Was looking forward to finishing it as my comfort pick me up :(
There’s just something so refreshing and almost inspiring about the degree to which you establish and elaborate on your boundaries. Maybe it’s par for the course of being into philosophy, but again it’s just so amazingly refreshing. I’m in so many predominately younger fandoms and the degree of attachment and entitlement in them is Not Great and this video put it into words why exactly it’s like that. Thanks CJ 🙏 EDIT: BG3 outro. Nice 😎
I don't like to comment before I've watched the video because I feel like the discourse should be about the substance of the video, but HOLY CRAP I'M SO EXCITED TO SEE A NEW UPLOAD FROM YOU!
Cj you have been one of the biggest influences on my art philosophy and the way in which i approach my art and the way i create and how i feel about the way people interact with my art. Thank you so very much for everything you do and all your videos. I hope your show goes well.
Thank you for everything you have given us/me. I have missed your work, but that’s okay. Sometimes Kendrick just gotta go dark for years. That’s also part of the artistic social role. And for whatever my tiny voice is worth, I value your actual joy and life over my fucking enjoyment of your videos.
Just read your essay about analytics, and goddamn did it articulate exactly where I'm at right now. I'm coming out of a period of intense burnout after going hard chasing the UA-cam studio app. For a while there I was checking the thing *constantly*, it was real bad. Your essay reaffirmed that those stats, and growth in general, aren't what I'm chasing. I'm lucky enough to have a channel where I make videos I sincerely enjoy making, and a handful of people get a lot out of them. I've already arrived! There's no numbers I need to chase, I can just keep hanging out with a video niche I enjoy (cool indie games baybee), no brain-melting view graphs required. I hope you're able to get back to a place where you're actively enjoying the process of making videos again, I've found my way back to that place and it feels real good. UA-cam is so much goddamn fun when you don't have a UA-cam Creator Studio in your ear telling you to sell your soul for parts.
You and the other creators in this space completely made me rethink the sheer amount of social media i use. Instagram is one of the only social media platforms on my phone, and the once a month or so i go onto it, i just absolutely hate every comment i see
I really appreciate you holding your ground and stating that YOU are the one making rhe content and you want to make something for yourself. I enjoy that you make things from the heart. Unique in the quality of genuineness.
I love what you do and I love it when you upload new videos, and sometimes if it's been a while I'll look up your channel because I'm thinking "I haven't seen anything from CJ for a while, I wonder if I missed a video" but it strikes me as so odd when people let their lives revolve around ANYONE, but ESPECIALLY you, given that you're so explicit in your positionally and desire to avoid engaging yourself in a parasocial relationship with your viewers. Your perspectives in this video are incredibly valued. You always manage to add new ways of thinking, even to issues I'd already given a lot of thought.
there's a comment i see all the time on the channels of people whose videos veer wildly between unrelated topics: "i don't know why i'm watching a TK-minute video about TKTKTK." it has this implication of "i dunno anything about this topic but i will watch anything this person puts out." but i think the key thing with cj's videos is that i do know why i watch them: every single time i will learn at least 10 new things about art and beauty and transhumanism and other big topics that are larger than any of us. there's so much substance here that you just can't find on most of the rest of this website. i *do* know why i'm watching a 27-minute video about an instagram comment
You ignore us until you have something to say but I need to say that the video about the Folger's commercial was actually the best thing I had seen in a long time. It definitely counted for me
I honestly didn't know CJ was from Canada. I always just assumed they lived in a poem wrapped in a hurricane. I've always got the vibe that CJ has preferred being more ethereal when it comes to how the audience sees them and I'm totally down with that. I love you CJ, you're an inspiration, but I have no idea who you are and I'm a-okay with that lol. Keep being amazing 😁
My views on art have been radically changed by watching cj the x videos. I will also forever experience deeper and more complex engagements with art with people I actually know for the simple fact that they know me. CJ’s content is amazing but it is definitionally finite and to take in only the perspectives they present not only would limit me but limits them as if they are a series of takes on the internet instead of what they are, a stranger who makes good art I like. Please find friends who make art. I promise they care about it like you do. You just have to ask.
retracted my last comment because i realized that like… CJ didn’t owe us the vid. it’ll be back, surely, and we shouldn’t be complaining about not having it until it’s back as for me, i’ll be setting some money aside for the patreon. funny that this is what got me to finally commit to giving patronage, should’ve gotten to that point ages ago.
That failure of aesthetic steadfastness is something I've felt but never had words for. The number of artists i've followed, who create amazing art... but people want more access to them, so they start a discord and twitch streams... and now they don't have time for the art that I sought from them. There's something here that hits with an earlier video about sincerity, where an aim towards sincere genuine connection to an audience generates the opposite feeling. Seeking signifiers rather than seeking the art itself.
Appreciate what you put out and I look forward to your videos And yeah from the start you've put as much of a divide between you and the audience as possible and I've always appreciated that too. Looking forward to what's coming
I actually love how you function as a creator because you ignore us until you have something to say which in turn means i can ignore you until there is something to listen to
This is my favourite. I personally struggle with creators that are super active because I get a sense of fomo and weird obligation (entirely self generated and my own issue) that stresses me out.
100% !!!
A non parasocial relationship!!! Wow impressive online
@@forgotten1sbut now youre complimenting them for not creating a parasocial relationship with their fans, which makes your bond with them stronger, therefore creating a parasocial relationship, the cycle never ends!!
Tbh I forget CJ exists until they post a video, then I watch it immediately
i had a dream two nights ago that you lived under my sink and would only come out to water my house plants. also despite my fear, i would leave un-toasted bread out for you to eat like the babadook.
most normal cj the x commenter
You knew they was going to post that's crazy dude
"Un-toasted" may be my new favorite unnecessary necessary adjective. Functionally, it added nothing to describe the bread, but the comment is inherently weaker without it.
I read this as "under my skin" at first and hoo boy
People always say, "don't read the comments" I'm glad I did.
People always say, "don't tell people about your dreams(Sleepytimes) no one cares" I'm glad you did.
Thanks.
im the antagonist of this one. comment is protagonist
IM COMMENT HI HELLO
being the antagonist and trying to rectify is another attempt at being above it all, but it's a good action
@@kirbybie I'm the friend who sacrifices himself in the final battle against 𝕮𝕵 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖗𝖔𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝕺𝖓𝖊
im not comment (in the same vein as ceci n'est pas une pipe)
[watching the vid] oh..... i am not comment :(
oh cj you're such a torontomaxxed yapcel going disagreeablecore
shut up Jreg
This dude talks exactly like you lmfao
I love how this sounds so gibberish but actually makes sense
I hate that i understand this comment
oh cj!
it's always 'invest in local community!
insane!
right ?! the world cannot be your community. 8 billion people on earth.
Fr like I’m also super sad whenever something happens and I can’t go to it or I missed something nearby, but that’s life! It sucks! One human being cannot fix the reality that things just don’t work out, even if they make fun UA-cam videos
It's so funny that UA-camrs have done more for the city of Toronto than Drake
The "OOP" I just yupped....ur so right!!
gasped
I KNEW SOMEONE WOULD MAKE A COMMENT LIKE THIS, IT WAS RIGHT THERE LMFAO.
Insane take
@@benjemen7insanely brave
In a way appreciate you "ignoring your audience" for months at a time cause I can forget that you exist and than be pleasantly surprised when you upload. It's like finding money in your coat pocket from last year's winter.
I don't follow any of the people I watch unless it's been so long since their last upload that I get the morbid curiosity to check their twitter to see if they died
The algorithm fed me the Folgers Commercial video and then I subscribed and watched a lot of the back catalog, so it was like I got a $100 bill in a Christmas card from grandma and then I didn't see or hear from her again until my birthday.
It’s really nice! I’m never going to know about their side projects like live shows or podcasts, but it’s worth it to not be keeping up with creators as if they’re my friends or something. My involvement begins and ends at the UA-cam video 🤍
People who barely post are the best. It's much more exciting when they post than people who make things to be released weekly.
fr and if i’m craving the type of videos he makes i can just go back and rewatch my favourites
This is so real. Normalise youtubers taking unannounced long ass hiatuses without making a fucking apology post.
Nah, i think its part fo the job.
If only i could take a long hiatus from my job
this is the energy i need to take with social media moving forward because god knows im not mentally healthy enough to deal with any of those platforms
@@Bleilock1 or like... maybe CJ has another job we don't know about and makes youtube videos because they want to?
@@Bleilock1you can, you just have to deal with the consequences of your action, enjoy the benefits of your job being stable and consistent, if you hate the repetitive process of it, change jobs, take a vacation, take yourself out of the groove and free float in the unknown if not having financial stability. You will quickly realize you can live that way for as long as you want, but that choice has consequences, you can do anything but you lack direction, stability of knowing what is what
as an artist, i actually really needed this video. it's so tiring to be exposed to people constantly throwing their demands at you under the guise of "oh you should be grateful, i'm giving you attention"
like no, i'm grateful for the people that like my stuff for what it is, and not for the people who came expecting something completely different and making it my problem somehow.
As a software developer who specializes in cursed amulets & has released some of that code as open source, I cannot *tell* you how many times I've taken a long time to respond to entitled comments "because I was busy" when in fact I was talking myself down from hexing them & all their loved ones in the executable file.
i really want to know how software development is connected to cursed amulets this sounds so fucking cool
Sir, madam, nonbinary comrade, you absolutely cannot just say "software developer who specializes in cursed amulets" and dip. That's against the law I'm pretty sure.
What I find fascinating is the "don't forget us we're real human beings" while not pausing for a second to consider the humanity of the person you are expecting to warp their entire life around satisfying you.
To be fair, he _is_ Canadian; is that _really_ human?
THIIIIIIIS
@@williamchamberlain2263 for now.
Yes!
@@williamchamberlain2263 super human!!
The children yearn for wise, eclectic yet relatable mentor figures
It’s me. I’m children
We Yearn.
Yes.
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Much Love 😂
This is why I stalk my English teacher.
If anything they yearn for the mines and their mentors are the overseers🖤
YEARNSS
“Fools I have betrayed” with the patreon backers is such a killer end screen 😂
this is the first video that i've been in the credits for and I couldnt be more excited
A-N-D deactivating your instagram account on camera, quite iconic! 😂❤🌺
@@geenskeensame!
But is it really betrayal when I often ignore the patreon notifications when they do post? 🤔
For some reason the PlayStation home screen music in the background works with it too lol
This is the healthiest boundary I've seen in action
emotional intelligence in spades
Deleting instagram and immediately going to Baldur's Gate is such a mood
yes
i know the illness is going away when i close another tumblr sideblog. become literally physically un-followable forever.
I hope they played it while talking to themself using their Žižek impression
@@nairb2173 usually it’s hank green ngl right now
I wanted them to throw the phone after. And they did 😭😭 just one of those universal human things
cj mad as hell over social media we are SO back
As a programmer, I was not expecting for this to go the way it went.
Right? As a Torontonian _and_ a programmer I was like... I know they're not making content just for me but this content is just for me.
lol, is it weird that this felt more about me than any of the other stuff that wasn't about me, especially because this was explaining it not being about me, mostly?
The next vid is tabs vs. spaces.
@@NunSuperior lol, you trying to get half his programmer audience to hate him? Might as well throw Emacs vs VIM in there too.
Rich Hickey reference absolutely shook me, I was thinking about him as soon as Open Source was mentioned but didn't realized CJ the X was in my brainspace
It's refreshing to hear a creator make it blatantly clear that they do not know us on a personal level, neither do we know them. We weren't meant to be friends, or have any other relationship other than a performance to an audience. Best of luck with your Toronto show! Normalize the personal barriers between creators and watchers. They aren't obligated to get to know us!
Many creators do this
@@tomiwaaina5499not enough.
@@tomiwaaina5499Nowhere near enough though UA-camrs who have younger audiences do this and these are the people that desperately need too
@@tomiwaaina5499yeah but they’re always very far from this extent. Streamers that do it especially can’t seperate themselves in the same way because that particular kind of performance requires a level of interaction that you don’t get with UA-cam videos.
I stopped emotional stock into online creators and parasocial relationships years ago. It is wild to see people (usually teens) act so surprised that this online artist they follow and do not know was just putting on a face. And they still say shit like, "I sure am glad MY parasocial relationship with my artist is good unlike that OTHER stinky artist. Anyways follow [artist]."
Last year a decently sized let's play channel got in some hot water. (Supermega) Sure I was little disappointed, but I wasn't like HEARTbroken.
This is like that scene in adventure time where Jake throws his favorite mug out the window and explains why
My favorite window!!
the current (and mostly online) desire for honesty in creators keeps looping back in on itself. people like the content because it feels honest, they connect to the creator through the content, the creator responds to this connection in one of myriad ways and a solid 95% of that original audience stays connected even when the creator's response is outward hostility toward their audience or being told off. all that to say i ended this video going "wow, that was so real, I loved it, just a person talking to thousands of other people and telling them off, I bet CJ would kill in a blunt rotation" before i realized what my brain was doing to me. like a big fleshy ouroboros with pleading emoji eyes
“I did not post for a year because I made the foolish mistake of trying to take my job seriously, which caused me to stop enjoying it and then forget how to do it. This happened in phases. First, I read so many books I gave myself brain damage. Then, I started working on one very long project, and I set very high standards for myself intellectually. I thought, ‘This is going to be an actual philosophical piece of rigor, and I’m going to treat it like it’s art. I’m gonna take this job seriously, because I’m grateful that this job has given me so much-I should treat it like a real thing and make it as good as I possibly can.’ And I’m still not done.”
I dunno if this is relatable or selection bias but wow hey literally same
selection bias, id guess literally everyone who watches this channel makes art in some form or other
@@kylleaiden8005 I'm the 0.0000001% that doesn't... though man, I consume, and I do mean CONSUME, a lot of art.
@@kylleaiden8005 this applies to more than just art. Pretty much any field of work really
@@kylleaiden8005nah man, I‘m terrible at making anything, i like to be impressed and enlightened by artistic minds though
That part spoke to as a perfectionist. Like I relate to it so much. I take things way too seriously and end up never completely things
sometimes i tell my friends that they should never trust public personalities to be who they appear to be and they almost always scoff at me like i have no idea what i'm talking about. it's like people forget that what you're watching/listening to/etc, as much as it can be someone baring their soul to the world, it's always some kind of performance - they know there's a camera, they can create a character, you're seeing a facade of some sort. once i put the art into the world it doesn't belong to me. it isn't me. i'm not my art, and my art is not me. our relationship as an audience is to the art, not the artist. until you meet them in the street and they agree to shake your hand, they do not exist in your life, you don't know who they are, they don't know you. ceci n'est pas une pipe, etc.
Yes. Your friends should listen 😌
Yeah, I agree. If it's on the screen, it's an act. Even if the creator is presenting as a non-character to the camera, it's still a character. Thinking we know anything about CJ or other youtubers is just wishful thinking. Not using the sense of the word here, but I trust the content this channel puts out, I wouldn't expect to know anything about CJ if I met them in person, any more than I would expect Jarred Harris to actually be a Cassandra in real life
Yeah my quick way of saying this is always "Famous people aren't real" and people are like "WTF? Of course Taylor Swift is real?" and I'm like "Yes the individual known as Taylor Swift is a human who exists, and you do not know anything about her"
At some point people just forgot that the internet isn’t 1:1 with reality
@@swagmundfreud666Omg wait till they hear about ghost-songwriters. For instance until recently I didn’t even know Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus wasn’t even hers. A couple other people’s songs too. Now I’m just assuming most music isn’t actually the singer’s, which makes sense like how many people can write music AND sing? That’s two entire different skills
Way back at the dawn of blogging, this must have been AT LEAST 15 years ago, I came across a blog that really got me, and I read the entire archive because there just weren't that many blogs yet, until I came across a post that made me feel a way. I had shit to say about it, because it was wrong, so I scrolled down to the comment section to voice my shit. And there wasn't a comment section.
THERE WASN'T A COMMENT SECTION.
I can't really describe how shook I was. That had never happened before. I had to sit with that for a good long while. And I'm so happy I had that experience (and it was an experience) so early in my internetting days because it really unlocked something in me. This proof that what this blogger was saying was true, that she wasn't interested in my opinion, not because it might be bad but because it was useless to her, because I don't know her and this wasn't a conversation, it all hit me on a soul deep level. I feel like it ripped a good 80% of the parasocial entitlement out of me while it was still developing and she must have yanked out the roots, because it never really grew back. Don't even remember her name now, but I remember being taught something that served me very well for the next many years and probably the rest of my life.
I hope this video can do this for someone else because it was a defining moment in my life and I want everyone to have that.
this is why i love making websites
i love this so much! 👽
oh lord, the dawn of blogging was 2009? 10 years after blogger's launch? 😭
@@neosaneo2 AT LEAST
Web 2.0 > Web 3.0 😢
As someone living in England who follows a lot of overseas content creators, I've just kinda' made my peace with knowing I'll never be able to see them. You do you, and do what you want to do for your career. You don't need my blessing, obviously, but there it is!
me moving from toronto literal days from the liveshow actually made me trust more in ur aesthetic steadfastness: namely that you will continue to create whatever art you want regardless of what i do or desire, sometimes to great comedic effect
I started publishing my fan fictions a few years ago and it is the most liberating thing and the most restrictive thing I have ever done. It's like I vacillate between writing because I have to get it out of me and thinking too much about my potential audience- but like, I ain't got nobody reading my shit. My numbers are puny and comments are few and far between. I can't even get MY REAL friends to touch my art without it being like pulling fucking teeth, but you know what? I may not have anyone engaging in conversation with me over it, but that also means there's no input to muddy the water. I'm two years into this and I'm still writing because I want to write. I need to. I have stories I need to get out of me, and I make them for me. I'm the audience. I'm the stakeholder. If anyone else happens upon my art and they get something from it, good for them- but this ain't about them. My art is for me first.
I love this! I feel it in my soul. Im a writer, too. Feel free to drop your writing in the comments, I'd love to read your work based on how you view it ❤
@@Tea-uo7evseconded
I've started to consciously adopt this approach with my own art. I mostly draw, my day job is drawing and I also run a page for my off-work art. Sometimes I get tempted to do the most recent art meme for the sake of getting more views but then get an unneeded sense of urgency and stress bc I also want to use my little free time to rest. And then I get guilty because i'm not taking enough sacrifices to further my art social media. Which is just, a lot to deal with? So I'm trying to tell myself that I should draw when I feel like it, to go back to my days as a teen when I drew for myself without any expectation for "likes" or a "rt", and those years were arguably the most artistically fulfilling of my life even though my skill back then was leagues below where I am at now.
I also have started writing as well, 100% for myself and no one else, and the feeling was amazing
This is why fanfiction is great. There's no chance of making money so it's just art for the sake of art.
I feel this on such a deep level its impossible to articulate. My relationship to my art is very similar, I create pieces because they are fun or interesting to me, or as a therapeutic technique to process emotions. I finish an artwork and think it's cool or enjoy seeing my own technical abilities but I rarely wish to share it with anyone beyond friends and family. I'm like a greedy dragon with my hoard of artworks. Its made with me in mind and for my enjoyment alone. If other people like or connect to it, that's cool, but in no way my goal when creating. This is the main reason I have never wanted to pursue it as a career.
Excellent, CJ The X has delivered to me exactly what I wanted which is what is mine by right
I JUST laid down to go to sleep. Truly you are a villain
SAME LMAO
Or u could just watch it after you had a good few hours of sleep and feel well rested btw
@@vilmoshamar9230fr this is such a non issue lmao
it’s cool to see a critique of parasocialism in modern internet culture that isn’t driven entirely by shame. these boundaries are critical to the health and safety of creators and audiences alike, but we’re all still humans with human brains, and that means we have to do difficult work to prevent our brains from forming these undesirable connections. i don’t see a lot of people being compelled to do that difficult work when the message is delivered in the form of shame. there’s much greater utility in taking this more empathetic and exploratory approach, asking why this happens, and addressing the root of the problem with conscious and explicit acknowledgement of the feelings and autonomy of the audience members who need to do the work. it’s just really great to see, and i hope more creators take this approach, because it’s gonna be a lot more effective.
The 'lol im not doing this seriously - oh fuck i created a lot fast and now its grown so i might need to take this seriously - fuck now im in my mind about it and my once joy is now stressful and i need to rewire my brain again' loop is real and very relatable haha.
I love how CJ is covering the complications of being so parasocially adored and having a big fan base. Every time I get too enamored with their patreon content, I have to tell myself "you're turning them into a Harry Styles poster on ur bedroom wall stop it" Like! We want to be seen and understood and make content that reaches a lot of people and makes impacts! I'm really grateful for the granular look at the "no not like that" of it all
This is why I find doing the book club and engaging with the other folks on the Patreon to be so helpful. I feel like the open source example is a good one; what if we see CJ’s ideas as open source software, except instead of tacking on a bunch of garbage to it and then sending it out for everyone else to use, we add to it and edit it for our own lives? And see how other people do that, and how we can all do that together? And then do that with everyone’s ideas instead of just CJ’s?
I get the drive to find someone to follow; the world is fucking confusing, and I want someone to have it all figured out. But I’m 100% sure no one does, so let’s have the emotional and intellectual honesty, and the courage, to do that ourselves. But like, not alone…together, in community. I think CJ’s process of thinking and making sense of things is a good example of how to engage in that explanation, and they happened to create a cool place on Patreon where we can do that together (which will be cooler once there’s a way for Patrons to directly connect to other Patrons).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
@@vaporeonice3146 Taking the time to write lovely insight on a rando's comment is such a perfect example of the ideal you're talking about!! CJ's patreon feels so special because I think there is a genuine effort and reaching towards real community. Like we're not abolishing the pedestal entirely bc we're all still here to give CJ money and engage with their cool projects, BUT the attention the community gives to each other's words feels like it is at least doing something to transcend the bedroom-poster vibes
Thank you to the random Instagram comment that got us another CJ the X video 😂❤
I’m so fucked by that slot machine function you describe, I keep walking away and then getting sucked back in within a month… I don’t know how to actually stop. Appreciate you discussing this stuff, sorry folks were shitty about your show announcement.
Want tips on how?
@@geenskeeni know i’m not them, but that would be greatly appreciated
to actually stop, get a hobbit offline. like have something that you can and enjoy to do that takes up large chunks of your time, preferrably it being social.
Social media is taking up a need in your life, mostly the social need that alot of people lack nowadays but also it combats the boredom you could experience. When these aspects of your life are filled, you will not have the pressing feeling of checking SM or being online in general.
@@peepeetrain8755hobbits are, famously, great and loyal companions
gets bored
closes app
gets bored
opens app
creators with boundaries - love to see it. great video as usual. good luck with the show!
i truly do believe age plays a role in parasocial expectations. kids are learning to socialize via online connections, and i think it impairs their ability to understand felt sense and slower-paced relation. obviously this isn’t always applicable, but i do think about this a lot
It's all a kind of interesting evolution on the transition away from community. Like 120 years ago people's lives went like this: Wake up, get breakfast at home or local diner, maybe read local newspaper, go work locally with local people, go to local pub or local events afterwards, go home with family. Your entire world was built by your experience within community.
Now, every aspect of our life is either a corporate script or media, starting with radio, then tv, then the internet. Of course people are trying to replace their social relationships of community with the parasocial, but god what a depressing development. Fixing our zoning to allow local business, walkability, mixed use, etc could do a ton to help people "touch grass" or rather, reconnect with community and a world built out of people rather than abstract, distant media and parasocial fake relationships built in their heads.
eerie and real
man strwam yr shit ppl have covid
Tbf even before radio, entertainment existed meaning fake personalities did too. It’s just now everyone can have one, we forgot how to be not that
CJ the X subtly raising the population of Toronto per second lived on this Earth
I TOLD YOU MAN
Your open source code analogy is one of the dominant discourses around fan fiction. People create things, and release them for free, as a gift. As more people come into the community, more and more people think theyre entitled to "critique" fan fic, often with a load of rubbish. The analogy I use is if you pay for a cake from a bakery, and it sucks, you have the right to complain. But if a friend bakes you a cake and you start ripping it to shreds, you're an ass. People who pay for a concert ticket have the right to a good concert, but they're not entitled to dictate what a musician does with their career.
Right, if you buy a ticket for a stand turns out you like their music then that's on you. If an artist stops making content you like them you don't have to buy it or engage with it, but it's not their responsibility to pivot to your desires especially if there has been no promise to do so.
I don't even think fanfiction online is baking a cake for someone else. Wouldn't it be more like inviting someone over for cake? Since you also made the cake for yourself, and for others to take a slice and enjoy the flavours too, but you didn't make it specifically for someone else, tailored to their needs. If you make a vegan walnut cake and tell your guests what it is beforehand (content warning for explicit material, tags for ships etc) and one of your guests has an allergic reaction (triggered because of the content) and another thinks it's disgusting (doesn't like the ships, for instance) that's not your fault because told your guests what it is. And you didn't poison your guests either (no dangerous/illegal content).
And I guess there'd be other cake by other people too, so maybe fanfiction sites are actually potlucks? I'm not american so that's unproven.
Sorry, I don't know why I'm taking this metaphor so seriously lol. Yours gets the point across just fine xD
@@spiralghosts you may have elaborated a bit much on the metaphor but in doing so you improved the idea significantly, yes. One thing about fanfiction is that while the author does not have a responsibility to cater to an audience, it does have (especially in the age of ao3 and hyper specific tags and tropes, content warnings, triggers, and so on) a commitment to inform the audience of the contents of their works. If you write a fic and tag it as romance between two characters, but don't warn the audience about one of the characters ending up with an unknown, untagged third party, you're doing a disservice. If you don't tag for things like major character death, noncon, etc (all major warnings in ao3), then I can understand if you're upset if some comments call you out on it, but I can also understand the commenters being upset.
Warn for allergies in the food you make. Tag your works accordingly. If you do those things and people get upset anyways? Then they're the idiots.
Of course there is a limit, but... the free market of ideas is not at all dependent on private property. You can say something about a cake you're not even buying. Finding reasonable, constructive things to say about anything is generally good, it's part of growth, for you and for the people you criticize.
@Nathouuuutheone you're doing the equivalent of seeing a peanut butter brownie recipe on tik tok and commenting "do this recipe without peanuts because I'm allergic." The recipe is not for you and you are welcome to scroll past. You're being ungrateful for what you're being shared with. Free content is something people create for themselves, and sharing it with others is a gift. People put a lot of time and effort into creating free content, they are creating art and contributing to a wider cultural conversation. If your attitude to that isn't utmost gratefulness you need to immediately humble yourself. By even commenting critically on a fan fic you're presuming that what you're saying adds value, is constructive/helpful and is socially acceptable. But you're not socially aware enough to understand the rules of the space you've been invited into, the significance of what's been shared with you, the feelings and motivations of the person behind the screen or the impact you're having on a wider community level. If you cannot understand the time and place to give feedback, your feedback is likely not going to help that person improve. Instead it makes you seem presumptuous and entitled. Producing free art is laborious, taking time, skill and effort. The way you create community that continues to do this work, for free, is by properly appreciating their efforts, not demanding better from them as if you are entitled to that. That's why it's rude to criticise a cake a friend makes you. The cake in the shop is made by a professional, paid for their time. They want your business so are incentivised to get feedback. When your friend bakes you a surprise cake, you are an ass if your response is "it would be better if it had more vanilla" because you're failing to appreciate something done out of love for you and meeting that with expectations of wanting more. If that's your relationship to art, always thinking about how it can cater more to you personally at the expense of the feelings and motivation of the artist who made it, then you don't deserve better.
You are also going against decades of community etiquette and making everyone around you annoyed at you, especially the writer. People get better by writing and practicing, they won't continue writing if all they get back is ungrateful entitlement.
okay but the comparison of open source to artist/audience parasocial relationships is so insightful.. i will spend a long time now using this to analyze and deconstruct my own parasocial behaviour.. i am honoured to receive this gift from you CJ 😔🙏
this is such a healthy creator mindset tho, love it and happy to be a consumer of your art and i can be patient for the youtube art u make
There is something so grounding about your staunch adherence to maintaining hard boundaries in this increasingly boundaryless world we're living in. As much as I tell myself I shouldn't stress about appeasing people with artistic endeavors and just focus on making things that are honest expressions, it gets difficult to maintain that perspective when you're drowning in mass entitlement. You cut through all that bullshit. Thank you for that.
I love what was said about “electric boredom”. Every single time I sit down and try to write a novel that I’m passionate about I end up taking it seriously and then I put it down. I am in desperate need of electric boredom i fear
I recommend The Artist's Way and Bird By Bird. Two excellent books
I have so much electric boredom but my perfectionism keeps smacking it with a stick. Send help
Distancing myself from creators and thinking that I should not associate them with me in my head has done wonders tbh. Not friends, Nor a part of me. I just like their content which I am aware they made. I'm also glad I'm not 14 anymore.
There's a million and plus shows I have missed and will miss in my own city, let alone the world, from people I haven't met yet so I will never be upset to learn about an event and I can't go even if I like the person, because I have the distance.
This is a tangent but the craziest open-source story of the past 6 months is that the creator of a low-level tool (xz) got burned out for exactly the reasons you describe. Over the past 2 years he started relying increasingly on a new seemingly-enthusiastic contributor... who was actually a state actor building trust for years. They almost successfully managed to compromise billions of devices by introducing a sophisticated vulnerability
Jesus that poor guy. I can't imagine creating something, thinking it helps people, thinking you have created a successful business venture, and thinking there was someone who was really enthusiastic about it and loved what you created - only to shatter all of that.
That’s scary
“The trials and tribulations of not living in Toronto continue” was a really fucking funny reply though. Damn! I not only literally LOLed, I considered getting on the floor so I could honestly claim that I literally ROFLed. (However I did not in fact literally rofl.)
thank you for the clarification, was getting worried there for a moment.
I love how you keep us at a good distance. Frankly, if you even read my comment I would be pissed
respect cj so much for being real af about not owing us shit. every video is a gift that we should be grateful for, period
Except we don't owe them shit either. Take that "we *should* be grateful" and throw it in the garbage. If you like the video, great. If they post one you don't like, you don't have to continue to be grateful for it. It's transactional for us just as much as it is for them. And that's how it's supposed to be.
this
The ultimate in wisdom: "This isn't about you" and "that's not my problem"
i think its easier for artists to not feel entitled to other artists’ work. when i make art, i always make it to somehow creatively express myself, and i take that knowledge and apply it to basically every other artist i see online. that insight is something only gained by going thru that process, so if you havent, its easy to misunderstand artists’ actions when they break your aesthetic trust
You have an interesting point there. Those who do not create don't understand the process and how personal it is to create, and therefore people think of creation as a product rather than an expression and don't understand why "consumer" feed back is not warranted or needed. Even art is often monetized so I think it's hard for some people to understand creating something just for the sake of it and not to sell it. Even if the thing is not for profit like fanfiction then it must be for clout or views.
Entitlement is one of the most passion killing processes for everyone involved.
So if you’re someone who tends to feel that way, please take a look into your own emotional triggers and issues. And learn to express love without making it about how it fills up your own yawning sense of emptiness.
You will enjoy things more and be reciprocated more if you look at what you receive (art, fic, videos, etc) as a gift. And express your feelings in regards to it that way.
I write poems (sort of, as in, I don't but I like to) and for a while I was really good at it, and I'd post my poems online and people would be like "wow great work, can't wait to read the next one" and it made me stop writing for a while, and now I don't post what I write. "can't wait to read the next one" like, i felt like saying, ok but you got this one, calm down man, literally just made it and your foaming at the mouth for more 😭😭 don't tell me what to do, 300 years grounded from reading my poems!!
all this to say, I can kind of relate to this, can't imagine what it'd feel like on a global scale, but it's so much pressure even when it's my friends.
do you, make videos and post them, we'll watch them, make the shittest video ever and we'll probably do the same thing, make a UA-cam masterpiece and don't even post it, we'll survive and so will you :)
As a writer who's trying to figure out how i want to show up in this Capitalist society of subscriptions, marketing secrets, tropes, markets, etc, i love this.
"That's 90% of why I talk the way I do, I think. It's 'cos I get bored while I'm saying normal sentences, and I gotta spice 'em up."
I love this and I hope no else does this lest global communication breaks down even faster than the cruising speed it's already on
"going forward I will make video essays like you've come to expect" me when I'm about to not post for another 6 months
they will do it and if they doesn't then intention matters 🫶🫰❤ one love
Lol did you watch the video? They're not obligated to
22:10 I feel your words in this section of the video deep down in the bones of my soul.
I am personally very happy to be a faceless blip in the unceasing mass of an audience gobbling up whatever you do put out for all of us. I’m very happy for you that you’re doing your local live show and enriching your hometown culturally. I think it’s amazing that through the interconnected pulsating mass of information and opinions allowed me to discover your contributions to our collective culture whether you were respectful of the medium or not, and your philosophy on art and creation has inspired me to continue to pursue my own creative aspirations. Thank you for making things and thank you for sharing them.
POV it's 3am on a thursday morning and CJ the X just posted a video raving mad over social media, despite needing to go into your work in approximately 5 hours realtime you instead decide to crawl out of bed and into the communal kitchen. You dig through the drinks, past the pilsners and ciders, to finally find exactly what you need for the long night ahead of you, a redbull. The human experience of sleep is just death taking over for a short temporary period of time, on the otherhand art is forever.
You are in a different place from me
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
It is 6pm in Nevada, usa
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Roughly, where are you in the world?
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Much Love to You!!
this reads like a homestuck page
It's so funny because this conundrum is what scares me about content creation. Like, in life as a regular person just living, so many people around me have a me that lives in their heads. If I fail to act in the way that they've scripted with their tiny projection of me, what happens? Are they angry or disappointed? Inspired or upset?
When my friends need emotional space and I need emotional closeness, have they failed me? Have we broken Trust?
No one is entitled to me, I am not entitled to anyone else. The simultaneous exchange and absence are part of what makes life so fluid and salient.
CJ once again, articulating thoughts I didn't know I had, in ways I didn't know I wanted. Thank you Chaos Art Goblin God! /gen
Also, I truly lol'ed when CJ said "I could put my whole ***** into something-"!!!!
i completely relate, especially on the first point. i have so many ideas but it’s already so stressful living up to my own and other people’s projections and expectations, i can’t imagine having to deal with complete strangers’ ideas of me.
The comment about "ignoring your online audience" reminds me of when straight people get mad at queer people for forming their own spaces. ("But what about us? Straight people want a space too 🥺🥺") The problem is that there's already a space for the people being "ignored" by CJ the X. It's this channel.
(Hopefully my comment doesn't come across as mean-spirited, it's hard to get tone across here)
𝙸 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝙸'𝚖 𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 /𝚕𝚑
As a straight dude, this is so hard to make other straight people understand; "why dont we get pride?" WE DO, literally EVERYDAY, the entirety of society is structured around being proud and confident in being straight, so much so its seen as a default. They miss the forest for the trees EVERYTIME
@@scottbuck1572 Thanks for trying. It's exhausting trying to argue this with people who then dismiss you for being "too emotional" about it (because it's my literal life that impacts me every day?) so I appreciate the in-house efforts.
I love how CJ videos always make me go off on my own random thought trains. Like as an artist, I had a visceral reaction to “the artist is above the audience” that was just a fun little journey for me to examine before resuming the video.
your love for your home city is so relatable and warming to me. the bond between an animal and its home is the strongest bond there is, the connection that anchors all other relationships, and we didn't lose that basic structure when we developed the capacity to reason and have anxiety.
so when a human being fiercely loves their home and wants to make it better I'm like YES EMOTIONAL HEALTH WIN. community and cooperation is humanity's superpower. love for home begets love for neighbor begets love for self begets hope for the future
I’ve never clicked a notification this fast let’s go internet gremlin 👹💕
Same I was in the middle of a different video and just went right for that notif
I thought cj “stopped” posting bc they just didn’t have any ideas or didn’t feel like making any videos for that amount of time. I think partially bc of their unique treatment of their audience I have generally become less concerned with whether my favorite UA-cam video essayists aren’t making things and just get excited when they do.
I mean I also rewatch videos I’ve already seen on a daily basis so maybe that helps make me less hungry for new content from the machine
Hello, I am a person who practically never comments on the videos I watch, because I feel that maintaining arguments through comments is useless and not very entertaining. But I want to make the effort to let content creators know that I appreciate their art, so thank you for your work.
Woa part 4 really hit me in the artistic feels... something about us setting such insane high expectations for ourselves because we think the world is waiting on this ***MASTERPIECE*** to come out... just fucking drains the life out of you, like literaly, for me i feel the artistic desire to DO just fly away from my body because the piece i thought was finished and cool is now trash because i scrolled on instagram for like a couple of minutes and now i dont feel the pride i once had in it, i feel shame and dread because i fear it might not stack up. So it stays in the drafts.
All this to say... i feel you on that one. Do your shit cj
Congrats on your show cj. I’m super excited for you! ❤️
In punishing creators for infrequent posting, I think UA-cam has also kind of trained the rest of us to expect regular posting. Like, my favorite author is two books into a series that will probably have at least two more books, and I'm looking forward to the next one, but I wouldn't ever just reach out in a random place online and make her aware that I'm waiting for it. But if I'm eagerly looking forward to a UA-camr's next video and they make a community post, I have been one of the commenters not-subtly indicating that I'm waiting. And unlike the authors I'm waiting on, they mostly do not end previous video essays with cliffhangers, so there's even less of an excuse for that behavior.
I'm gonna try to stop doing that, these algorithms are insidious.
𝙸 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗𝚝 𝚖𝚎𝚊𝚗 𝚝𝚘 "𝚙𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚜𝚑" 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖 𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜 𝚖𝚢 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 🙏
The agony of loathing social media as an artist with no eyes I don't wanna make algorithm optimised bullshit but EVERYONE BUT YOU TELLS ME TO thanks for being the one that doesn't
we are so back🗣️🔊
I really enjoy your videos
Commenting to boost visibility
Cj for emperor 2024
I can gauge how much I respect and admire the intellect and communication skills of a UA-cam creator based on how badly I want to write a clever, insightful, and perhaps also funny comment on their video. I have, here, accepted my inferiority and inability to write such a comment, but decided to write a comment anyway, because algorithm blah blah. CJ's videos always make me feel like a student who wants to raise their hand and ask a brilliant question to prove they were absorbing and processing the lecture and have a desire to contribute to the subject.
CJ, your video has been a breath of fresh air in a waft of shit I've been dealing with for the last few months. It's gotten me buzzing about wanting to understand people again in a way I haven't felt in a long time.
So genuinely thank you for that.
If I ever generate any semblance of fame I'm gonna be following your philosophy of artist/audience divide like the fucking bible, it seems so healthy. The bowing and scraping I see creators feel like they have to do is so dystopian
very!
God. There is real euphoria to be found in being ignored, and people are sleeping on it
Your content is always immeasurably refreshing, glad to have you back!
Im going to eat this like a mouse might eat a cookie. Thanks for continually reminding your audience of the boundaries we might need/want to place on ourselves and the creators we do/want to support. You inspire your audience, but that is also not your job or duty it's just something you do, so thank you.
"like a mouse might eat a cookie"
delightful phrasing! i will try to remember it...
@@lilivanessi @earthjester i love that phrase so much!
This really resonated with me.
I’m transitioning rn and I posted a video on Instagram where I happen to be wearing a skirt. I only have like 200 followers but the video got hundreds of unhinged hate comments. I wanna live in a cabin in the ocean
Something is wrong with Instagram. The comments are always so hateful and disturbing in a way I don't see in other places, even reddit 😢
I’m sorry this happened to you. Instagram comment moderation is nonexistent nowadays I’ve reported the most horrible shit and it just doesn’t get taken down
As long as you felt beautiful in that skirt fuck all the haters.
Wish you all the best for the rest of your transition 🖤
they are all dumb and stupid and spiritually poor. you rock on
Really appreciated the bit about open source! I had no idea how hard that is to maintain
Remember the log4j vulnerability? A small bit of code made by 2 people in their free time with zero funding for years and years keeping it updated.
It is used by so much of the world. Then a critical venerability got found - an oversight that can let any thing that uses it (so many things) have a spot where they can get hacked.
The entire tech sector was flame for a couple weeks getting upset about how bad it was - much of the anger beinf directed at the 2 unpayes people who worked on it for years.
Iirc even top level people from the Chinese government were on the developers were leaving persuasive comments.
Log4J is far from the only Open source project that is exclusively a passion project of a few but supports the entire world. It's crazy.
Very real. Your attitude towards ‘the audience’ and art and responsibility is something I highly respect and am inspired by as an artist and human being.
Take as long as you need on the next project, or never post it, or do something entirely different. Do whatever’s right by you. No matter what I’m grateful and happy to have the videos you’ve made. You’re a breath of fresh air on this platform 🙏
I was halfway through watching the new video, had to start driving home from work and then had a fight with my boyfriend about and started crying. Was looking forward to finishing it as my comfort pick me up :(
There’s just something so refreshing and almost inspiring about the degree to which you establish and elaborate on your boundaries.
Maybe it’s par for the course of being into philosophy, but again it’s just so amazingly refreshing. I’m in so many predominately younger fandoms and the degree of attachment and entitlement in them is Not Great and this video put it into words why exactly it’s like that. Thanks CJ 🙏
EDIT: BG3 outro. Nice 😎
is the outro a refernce to somthing?
@@geenskeen The background music/SFX when they boot up the PS5 is from Baldur’s Gate 3 :)
a good game to go offline with imo
@@KomodoCondo ah thanks!
I don't like to comment before I've watched the video because I feel like the discourse should be about the substance of the video, but HOLY CRAP I'M SO EXCITED TO SEE A NEW UPLOAD FROM YOU!
Cj you have been one of the biggest influences on my art philosophy and the way in which i approach my art and the way i create and how i feel about the way people interact with my art. Thank you so very much for everything you do and all your videos. I hope your show goes well.
Thank you for everything you have given us/me. I have missed your work, but that’s okay. Sometimes Kendrick just gotta go dark for years. That’s also part of the artistic social role. And for whatever my tiny voice is worth, I value your actual joy and life over my fucking enjoyment of your videos.
Just read your essay about analytics, and goddamn did it articulate exactly where I'm at right now. I'm coming out of a period of intense burnout after going hard chasing the UA-cam studio app. For a while there I was checking the thing *constantly*, it was real bad. Your essay reaffirmed that those stats, and growth in general, aren't what I'm chasing. I'm lucky enough to have a channel where I make videos I sincerely enjoy making, and a handful of people get a lot out of them. I've already arrived! There's no numbers I need to chase, I can just keep hanging out with a video niche I enjoy (cool indie games baybee), no brain-melting view graphs required. I hope you're able to get back to a place where you're actively enjoying the process of making videos again, I've found my way back to that place and it feels real good. UA-cam is so much goddamn fun when you don't have a UA-cam Creator Studio in your ear telling you to sell your soul for parts.
You and the other creators in this space completely made me rethink the sheer amount of social media i use. Instagram is one of the only social media platforms on my phone, and the once a month or so i go onto it, i just absolutely hate every comment i see
I really appreciate you holding your ground and stating that YOU are the one making rhe content and you want to make something for yourself. I enjoy that you make things from the heart. Unique in the quality of genuineness.
I love what you do and I love it when you upload new videos, and sometimes if it's been a while I'll look up your channel because I'm thinking "I haven't seen anything from CJ for a while, I wonder if I missed a video" but it strikes me as so odd when people let their lives revolve around ANYONE, but ESPECIALLY you, given that you're so explicit in your positionally and desire to avoid engaging yourself in a parasocial relationship with your viewers.
Your perspectives in this video are incredibly valued. You always manage to add new ways of thinking, even to issues I'd already given a lot of thought.
i love that you and your youtube community are having fun and making friends and being happy xoxo
there's a comment i see all the time on the channels of people whose videos veer wildly between unrelated topics: "i don't know why i'm watching a TK-minute video about TKTKTK." it has this implication of "i dunno anything about this topic but i will watch anything this person puts out." but i think the key thing with cj's videos is that i do know why i watch them: every single time i will learn at least 10 new things about art and beauty and transhumanism and other big topics that are larger than any of us. there's so much substance here that you just can't find on most of the rest of this website. i *do* know why i'm watching a 27-minute video about an instagram comment
You ignore us until you have something to say but I need to say that the video about the Folger's commercial was actually the best thing I had seen in a long time. It definitely counted for me
Watching cjthex videos makes me feel like I'm using the internet in a way that actually enriches my life
love to see you posting again, now I'll go back and rewatch the Folgers video cause that was a banger
I honestly didn't know CJ was from Canada. I always just assumed they lived in a poem wrapped in a hurricane. I've always got the vibe that CJ has preferred being more ethereal when it comes to how the audience sees them and I'm totally down with that.
I love you CJ, you're an inspiration, but I have no idea who you are and I'm a-okay with that lol. Keep being amazing 😁
commenter is actually the hero of this story for making this video happen
thank you anonymous commenters for having a frankly delusional understanding of your parasocial relationships with a youtuber.
@@Jman0163 its a joke lmao do you think imissed the whole point of the video
@bloxrrey what? no, i was just riffing with you. take it ez
@@Jman0163 wait im literally illiterate m bad
Every time i tell someone about your videos i come back to find a new one has just been uploaded. I enjoy this
My views on art have been radically changed by watching cj the x videos. I will also forever experience deeper and more complex engagements with art with people I actually know for the simple fact that they know me. CJ’s content is amazing but it is definitionally finite and to take in only the perspectives they present not only would limit me but limits them as if they are a series of takes on the internet instead of what they are, a stranger who makes good art I like. Please find friends who make art. I promise they care about it like you do. You just have to ask.
Guess we weren’t ready for Jordan Petersons suits
retracted my last comment because i realized that like… CJ didn’t owe us the vid. it’ll be back, surely, and we shouldn’t be complaining about not having it until it’s back
as for me, i’ll be setting some money aside for the patreon.
funny that this is what got me to finally commit to giving patronage, should’ve gotten to that point ages ago.
@@meltingmug I completely agree, just found it funny how it was up, gone and up again so quickly
That failure of aesthetic steadfastness is something I've felt but never had words for.
The number of artists i've followed, who create amazing art... but people want more access to them, so they start a discord and twitch streams... and now they don't have time for the art that I sought from them.
There's something here that hits with an earlier video about sincerity, where an aim towards sincere genuine connection to an audience generates the opposite feeling.
Seeking signifiers rather than seeking the art itself.
first a new patricia taxxon essay yesterday, and now a new cj the x, this week is truly great
Appreciate what you put out and I look forward to your videos
And yeah from the start you've put as much of a divide between you and the audience as possible and I've always appreciated that too.
Looking forward to what's coming