On the face of it, this should be relatively benign: a video about designing and making an accessory for his onewheel. I started typing up a comment about that, but then erased it all when I realized what was so skin crawling about it:
This video is not about a hobbyist making stuff. This video is content. And every decision made was made with content in mind. Everything from his weird design choices, to his unnerving personal affect, to the cheeky call for mass production partnerships, is an artificial construct designed to keep as many people as possible engaged with it as a piece of content. It’s a real person doing a real thing, but the artificiality of it makes it drop into the uncanny valley.
On the face of it, this should be relatively benign: a video about designing and making an accessory for his onewheel. I started typing up a comment about that, but then erased it all when I realized what was so skin crawling about it:
This video is not about a hobbyist making stuff. This video is content. And every decision made was made with content in mind. Everything from his weird design choices, to his unnerving personal affect, to the cheeky call for mass production partnerships, is an artificial construct designed to keep as many people as possible engaged with it as a piece of content. It’s a real person doing a real thing, but the artificiality of it makes it drop into the uncanny valley.