Once I Did This, My Life Changed:

I stopped watching “Once-I-Did-This-My-Life-Changed" Videos

Here is a hug for click-bait casualties like myself.

While not all click-bait content has a malevolent intent - it may even have valuable information - there is a palpable toxicity pervading the once-I-did-this phenomenon.

Before I go further, I must say that the hypocritical irony of using click-bait to discredit the very click-bait I have used, is not lost on me. At the same time, I believe there is a certain poetic justice in using poison to kill itself. The last good use of poison?

Ok. ‘Poison’ may seem like an extreme characterisation, but it is not a half-bad metaphor for once-I-did-this-ers (videos proclaiming life-altering fixes). Buying into the idea of ‘once-I-did-this’ is detrimental and poisonous for a multitude of reasons. These reasons, I reckon, are known to most of us, but are not readily accessible to awareness - given that we are fallible humans. I wonder, if you resonate with the following effects of once-I-did-this-ers:

1. They convey the erroneous notion that silver bullets exist for solving the “life problem”.

2. They generate the envy-inducing thought that this pretty girl/guy has it all figured out. They’ve cracked the code, sorted their *%£$. They are DONE. And here you are, 20 years older than them, still unsure of what to order for dinner let alone having stumbled upon the elixir of life.

3. They might make you feel idiotic, someone who has wasted years of his/her life. “Why didn’t I know that? All I had to do to kill anxiety was to look at the sun every day for 10 mins while rubbing avocado oil on my forehead. DOH! SO SIMPLE!”

4. They can have an instant negative impact on your evaluation of your competence in a specific area. (For instance, I work as a therapist, and to read/see something like “Once I Hung from a Bar 10 Minutes a Day With Garlic Under My Tongue, My Depression Disappeared Forever”, does make my distractible brain uncomfortable for a moment at the least).

If these effects are rather self-evident and quite obviously known to you, and if you still find yourself being negatively impacted by such concerns at some conscious or sub-concious level, what exactly is happening?

It might be a combination of a few things. Videos that sell the ‘once-I-did-this’ pipe dream, have a quality of insidiously penetrating through the rational defences of our minds through at least these three subtle ways:

“Looks Legit”

No matter how sophisticated we get, certain psychological shortcuts and rules-of-thumb operate at a subconscious level driving our behaviour - one such shortcut is an oft-deceptive trust in what appears to be an ‘authority’, just on the basis of context. Unverbalised beliefs such as “The guy is on YouTube/TV, that means there is something special about him” - a cultural legacy inherited from the pre-internet television days when being on TV had a much larger barrier to entry - draw us in, bypassing common sense.

“Wow, 10 Million Views!”

Another dose of pseudo-credibility seeps in from the enormous view count: a number partly driven by algorithms and partly by a self-propelling system where once a viewer clicks, it makes it more likely that the next one will (seeing that it has a high count). This leads to: “If 10 million people have watched this, it must be good”. This is a non-sequitur, the kind which was brought to people’s attention thousands of years ago by Socrates - and he was killed for it, that is how much we humans value the idea of Ad Populum, the Appeal to Popularity.

“Quick! Before You Miss Out!”

Finally, FOMO kicks in to seal the deal.

“Hassam, seriously, are you going to let go of the ONE THING THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR &&%^&$% LIFE IN 10 MINUTES just to go and eat food?”.

The promise is too enticing, so delicious in its sugar-sweet prophecy that we are drawn to believe in a world where we really have found the silver bullet, regardless of how ludicrous it “obviously” is at some level of our awareness.

Here’s a Hug for The Casualties

Perhaps you are not a casualty of click-bait. Perhaps, your defences are stronger than myself, and you experience these videos as a benign exploration of humans trying to over-sell a potentially useful insight. Even so, it is possible that the following ideas, which have kept my fascination with silver bullets in check, may add some value to your life:

1. Go ahead. Consume such content, but be mindful - take it all with an Everest of salt.

2. Ask yourself, what does it really mean to be on YouTube? Or to have 10 million views?

3. Have an entertainment mindset towards such content. There is no check and balance with respect to competence on places like YouTube. Michael Scott described this flaw artfully in ‘The Office’: “Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.” While he said that about Wikipedia, it’s much worse for YouTube and TikTok.

4. Be intentional in precisely WHAT you need help with when exploring self-help. It may make it easier for you to address the specific issue you are having communicating with your boss, while keeping fairy tales of eternal bliss at bay for a while.

Finally, a Hug for the Creators

Now, as I mentioned in the start, not all creators using these click-bait tactics are ill-intentioned or have a malicious agenda. They may truly believe they are telling the truth and nothing but the truth. Notwithstanding conscientiousness and a commitment to providing quality with integrity, they might still be unaware of the subtle and the grossly obvious forces shaping their behaviour.

The crushing pressure to earn through YouTube and appease the algorithmic daemons, can easily lead to rationalising ethical grey areas: “Well, everyone is doing it, it’s not like the other once-i-did-this-ers know any better!”. And these greys can turn pretty dark quickly, on this slippery slope towards “huh, people think I am an expert. I probably am? Who cares? Money money money!”

There are no good or bad people, just fallible humans. I am sure it is difficult to resist temptation when you command millions of views, when so much money is involved. And the stress of sticking to an uploading schedule further exacerbates the situation: cutting corners becomes routine even for well-meaning creators. All I can say is, I can not really begin to imagine how challenging it is to keep your head straight in the creator space when you have enormous reach, a brand to maintain, appearances to keep up, rent to pay, and mounting pressures from many directions. From a distance, I can only send a virtual hug for all of you creators out there with noble motives. I pray that the imp of click-baits does not infiltrate your fortress of integrity.

Before you go, please watch the following video on the TEN LIFE HACKS YOU MUST KNOW BEFORE YOU TURN 16!

Oh wait, all of my current subscribers are over 16. Never mind. You must’ve known them before you turned 16. Now everything is *$^&%@.

Thank you so much for reading. Would love to hear your thoughts! Are there more ways in which click-bait has been disruptive to your mental health? Do you feel they have a sneaky way of making you feel regretful and ashamed?