 Little did you all know, but for the past few weeks I've been performing a little bit of an experiment about parasocial relationships and I think there's a lot we can learn from the content cop that iDubbs did on Tanemojo. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell, all right? And by the way, thank you all again for helping me get to 10,000 followers on Instagram. We have to swipe up. I would love to know in the comments. Has that made your life easier? Because it's made my life easier. I can just link you to stuff and you just swipe away. But anyways, I also get a lot of suggestions from all of you. I talk to a lot of you over on Twitter. So if you have Twitter, make sure you follow me over there at the Rewired Soul. Over there, I'm not looking for a swipe up feature, but if you want to get in touch with me, Twitter is a great place to do so because I don't have a huge following. So typically, I will see your tweets, all right? But anyways, like I mentioned in the intro, I've been doing a little experiment about parasocial relationships, all right? And I want to use what iDubb says in his content cop about Tanimojo right here. Either all of them are okay or none of them are okay. But if you try to come online and tell me that I can't say a particular word. No, no, I'm half black. So the context in which iDubb said this, I'm not going to dive into that. That's for another channel, all right? But anyways, I do appreciate the fact that he's bringing up some critical thinking, all right? A massive part of mental health for me, and I hope it is for others, is to question your thoughts, right? One of the biggest issues that we have is that we believe every single thought that we have. Something that, you know, mindfulness teaches us is that we need to get curious, okay? We need to get curious about the thoughts that come up in our heads. And we got to think, okay, why do I think this way and not that way? All right? So let me explain the little experiment that I've been doing. All right, so here's the experiment I've been doing. So as many of you rewired soldiers out there, no, I get a little bit of backlash for the type of content that I make, right? And it's really fascinating to me. So what I did was, because I wanted to see if I would get the same reaction if I talked about mainstream celebrities, okay? So recently in the past few weeks, I've made two videos about Millie Bobby Brown. I also included Drake. I also talked about the relationship between Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande, as well as Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. These are mainstream celebrities. So I want you to think about it. Now I'm not going to show all of the examples because I may get accused of cherry picking. So if you would like to validate my claims and see if I'm telling you the truth, I suggest that you go and do your own research. Check out the type of comments I get on videos like Tanimojo, Bobby Burns, Trisha Paytas, whoever it is. Check out those comments and then compare them to the comments that I get talking about mainstream celebrities. And you'll see two very different comments. For example, you'll see comments on YouTubers when I make videos using them as context to teach people lessons. You see comments saying, leave them alone. Quit making videos about them. Quit making videos for views. You're just trying to do this for views. But if you see me talking about the mainstream celebrities that I just mentioned, those comments are virtually non-existent. Now why is that? Why do you think that is? And I'm serious. Like I'm trying to figure this out, right? So parasocial relationships. What are those? Okay. These are the type of relationships that people have with celebrities. Okay? And as we're seeing in 2019 and for years now is that YouTubers are becoming the new celebrities. Don't believe me? You all saw what recently happened with James Charles in the UK. All right? 8,000 fans showed up to his meet and greet traffic throughout the city in England. Like what? What? And you also see people like James Charles, people like Keemstar, you know, and others out there wanting to be respected on the same level as celebrities. But at the same time, they don't want to be used in the same way that celebrities are. If you want an example, check out these headlines that I'm showing you on the screen right now. Why is it okay for us to discuss celebrities going to rehab, celebrities going to jail, abusive relationships, you know, in the news? Like why is that okay for us to talk about? But it's not okay for us to talk about YouTubers. Do you see what I mean? Like I want you to ask yourself that question. Why is that? And I have a theory. I have a theory. Okay? What I feel is happening. What I think is happening. And I want you guys to ask yourself this and leave me comments. What I feel is happening is when you're watching a YouTube video and you're watching it on your phone or you're watching it on your computer or you're watching it on your laptop and it's a person filming in their bedroom, right? Or they're vlogging or walking around town. You feel more of a personal relationship with them. You feel like this is your friend. Okay? Is this healthy or unhealthy? I don't know. I think there is an extent where it can get unhealthy. A prime example of this is what recently happened with the Dolan twins. Okay? You had fans trying to show up to these guys' father's funeral. Okay? So this is a parasocial relationship that can definitely get unhealthy. But when you see the defense that you get in with these YouTubers. So something that I also find interesting is like I've always looked at mental health and even when I was working at the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center, I always look at it as education, right? Teaching people. My mom and I have talked about opening up an outpatient treatment center sometime in the future. And when I envision it, I always think that I wouldn't like it to be like a classroom, right? I would like people to have homework. I used to always tell my clients, like, I love when you ask questions because it shows me that you're paying attention and you're engaged and you're wondering. Some of you out there who watch my videos, like you'll like tweet out my things that you learned from one of my videos. And I love that. It shows me that you're paying attention. You see what I mean? So it's important that we learn from these things. So I kind of look at, you know, what I'm trying to do is kind of like history, right? So if you've ever taken a history class, you've probably had to write essays or reports or whatever the, you know, whatever it is, maybe done a presentation. But one of the most famous sayings about history out there is if we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it. I'm probably screwing that quote up, but you know what I mean, right? Well, if we can't learn from what we're watching on YouTube or what we're watching on television or what we're seeing in movies, right, then maybe we're doomed to repeat it. If we're not taking these lessons and doing something with them and turning them into something of value, then we might be in trouble. All right? So the other thing that I want to talk about is, and maybe this, you know, is something more relevant to my age, but all of you around my age, I'm 33, you probably remember when the news was plastered every other week, it seemed like Lindsey Lohan was getting herself into some trouble. All right? She was a young child star and just spiraled out of control. All right? She was getting DUIs. And one of the most famous pictures of her was this one just being messed up. Now, if I made a YouTube video using this picture and explaining to people, you know, the dangers of becoming dependent on substances, how many people do you think would really leave a comment having an issue with me discussing Lindsey Lohan? But again, when I discuss a YouTuber, that's when the issue comes in. And again, like Idub said in his video about Tanimojo and his content cop, either all of them are okay or none of them are okay. The other theory that I have about this is that people think that it's not okay because the person might see it. All right? But where is that same empathy for mainstream celebrities? What if they see it? What if Millie Bobby Brown is on YouTube watching videos, right? What if Kanye West stumbled across my videos? I've seen YouTubers talk about being dehumanized, but do we dehumanize mainstream celebrities even more than we do YouTubers? All right? Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that there's anything wrong with discussing what mainstream celebrities are doing. I don't think there's anything wrong with that because we use those as lessons. There are many studies that have been conducted discussing how people, young people especially, are being influenced by the people that they idolized in media. Okay? Now that we live in the age of YouTube, we really need to take that into consideration. If any of you watched my video about Shane Dawson and his cartoon conspiracy theory, I talked about social cognitive theory, right? And this is a learning theory about how people, especially young people, will emulate what they see. So my other question is, why is it okay to promote clearly toxic behavior on YouTube, but it's not okay to discuss how it's unhealthy, right? Like, I want you guys to think about this. Like, you guys, like something that I think people get twisted all the time, and some of you have heard me say this many times before, is that people think that mental health is talking about a lack of a mental illness. All right? Like when you talk about physical health, are you only saying that a person is healthy if they don't have a disease? No. Physical health means a lot of things. A lot of things. Is it how much you weigh? Is it the amount of muscle you have? Is it how you look? Right? It's all these things. So a person like myself might be completely devoid of any type of disease, but if you look at this chub I got on me, would you say that I'm healthy? Not entirely, even though I've been working on it, all right? So again, like I really want you to think about what I've said. Either all of them are okay or none of them are okay. So it's either all okay or none of it's okay. I want you to start asking yourself that. Why is it all right to talk about mainstream celebrities? Why is it okay to talk about them and teach people using them as an examples, but not YouTubers? Especially when YouTubers want to be held at the same level as these mainstream celebrities. All right? I want to see your comments down below about this topic because it's really fascinating to me and I actually have a collab coming up really soon where we're going to be talking about this even more. I'm going to be collabing with a YouTuber that I think you all know and you all love. All right? If you want to have fun in the comments, take a guess of who it is. Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing and I will be posting soon for the February Patreon Q&A, all right? If you would like to ask me questions and have me answer them, sign up for Patreon right there, all right? Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.