 After watching Blair White's Trisha Paytas video, I finally subscribed. And some might ask, why is a cis man subscribing to a trans woman? But there might actually be a psychological explanation for this. And it might also explain why so many people start dating their co-workers. 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, what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community and try to see what we can learn from them. And I like to use a little blend of philosophy and psychology and kind of get our wheels turning a little bit. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And if you're not yet, follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. And so this video, we will be donating 20% of all of the ad revenue to the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is a great, great, great organization that is dedicated to helping the LGBTQ youth, all right? So please share this video. And if you would like to donate to the Trevor Project directly, you can find a link down in the description and in the pinned comment below. All right. So here's my history with Blair White. So obviously I've heard of Blair White over the years. My girlfriend, my beautiful girlfriend Tristan watches Blair White. And yeah, I've heard about some of Blair White's opinions and views and everything like that, but I never really watched her. And I don't know what it was. It was like a month, two months ago, something like that, where YouTube was just recommending the hell out of Blair White to me, all right? I'm a YouTube creator and I'm really nerdy about the algorithm and all that stuff works. And it was really confusing to me because I don't watch content really related to Blair White either, but she just kept popping up on my recommended. So finally, after a while, I'm like, OK, Blair White keeps popping up on my recommended. Let's see what's going on with Blair White. And I clicked on it and I watched. And yeah, she is a very, very smart young woman. I do enjoy how she's like intelligent, but she's also a little sassy and stuff. And I don't agree with all of her opinions, but I respect that she has those opinions. And it's interesting to me always getting a different perspective on things. But still, I didn't subscribe. And after that, YouTube's really just pushing Blair White on me like, yo, you want to watch some more Blair White? I'm like, all right, all right. So I watched some of her other videos. I watched some videos that she did on Jessica Yaniv. I think I did. I watched the yeah, I watched the interview that Blair White did with that young woman who was all mixed up with Onision and everything like that. And then finally, because of this tritipatus situation, obviously, I've been, you know, covering that from different angles and everything. I was recommended Blair White's video about tritipatus. And finally, I subscribed to Blair White. Now, why is that? So while many people might think, well, Chris, you just watched her. You, you know, enjoy her content, her opinions, which I do. But it might actually be a little bit more complicated than that. All right. So something that I don't think we take into consideration enough is why do we like the things that we like, right? We all have preferences, whether it's food, whether it's colors, all these different things, you know what I mean? And why does this happen? So it turns out this may have something to do with something called the mere exposure effect. All right. So we're going to turn to Professor Jonah Berger, who is a bestselling author of books such as Contagious and Invisible Influence. And Invisible Influence was the first book I read by Jonah Berger. I just finished his other book, Contagious, which actually came out first. But anyways, I cannot recommend Invisible Influence enough. Like when you read that book, it kind of just debunks this myth of free will that we all have in our mind just through all the different studies that he talks about, about why we have certain preferences and everything like that. But I do want to focus on one part of the book where he discusses the mere exposure effect. All right. So he discusses a study that they did where they showed people Chinese calligraphy. All right. And basically what they did was they said, OK, we're going to show you some shapes and on a scale of one to 100, how satisfying do you find these shapes? All right. This is stage one of the experiment. All right. Now here's the kicker. When they showed them these shapes, they showed them for five milliseconds. All right. If you don't know how long five milliseconds is, it's about how long it takes for a bee to flap its wings. All right. It's not even enough for you to really even comprehend it. OK. So that is how quick they flash these shapes in front of people. All right. So they would flash that shape and they would show them like a solid color, kind of cleanse their visual palette a little bit. And then they brought them over to stage two of the experiment. Same thing on a scale of one to 100, how satisfying do you find these shapes? And they showed them three different types of shapes. One of them was the Chinese calligraphy that they already showed them before. All right. In those five milliseconds where nobody can even comprehend them. All right. The second shapes they showed them was different types of Chinese calligraphy. All right. So Chinese calligraphy, but some they've never seen before. And then the third set of shapes they showed them was just random polygons. All right. So what they ended up finding out was even though they flashed those shapes in front of the participants before they could even comprehend what they were saying when they showed them those same shapes for the second time, they found them more satisfying compared to the other shape. All right. So this is where they started to develop the idea of the mere exposure effect. The more you see something, the more satisfying it becomes. All right. So they took this a step further. All right. There this study is actually discussed in the book as well. But I found an article about this where I'll link it down in the description below. All right. So this article discusses another experiment where it says one of my favorite demonstrations of this effect comes from a 1992 study. The researchers arranged for four different women of similar appearance to attend a college class a certain number of times throughout the semester. One of these women didn't actually attend at all. One attended five times, one attended 10 times, and the last woman attended 15 times. These women didn't interact with the students at all. They just sat in on the lecture. At the end of the semester, the students in the class saw pictures of each of the women and rated them on several scales like physical attractiveness. Despite never having interacted with these women, the students showed a clear mere exposure effect. That is, they evaluated the woman who they had seen 15 times much more positively than the woman they hadn't seen at all. So this actually explains why so many relationships begin at the workplace or begin with people that you meet as school. What's interesting about this is it kind of screws up your whole idea of, you know, soulmates and everything like that. So am I in love with Blair White? No, but this is just a really fascinating subject to me. Like when I learned about this and something I'm really fascinated with is the parasocial relationships between the viewers and the YouTubers. And I think this kind of explains those parasocial relationships where you not only like this person even more because you keep watching their content, but this kind of like relationship. And then obviously on the severe end of the spectrum, there are people who developed obsessive relationships with, you know, celebrities and people in the public spotlight. Right. So the other thing that I find interesting is when it comes to YouTube as a whole, we have no control over the algorithm. There are certain things that we as creators can do. There are certain things, you know, that you, the viewer are doing. Like I'm a viewer as well. And I discussed how Blair White was recommended to me just constantly, even though I wasn't subscribed to her. Like this is something that I think is just really interesting when it comes to the psychology of YouTube, how subscribers work and everything like that, because the more something is recommended to you, the more you see somebody in the thumbnails, the more you see a channel, you're going to like it based on the mere exposure effect. Right. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want to make it seem like, oh, this is the only reason like this, this subliminal thing going on is the only reason I subscribe to Blair White. Like Blair White makes really awesome content. And obviously she knows a lot more about the trans community, the trans experience than I ever will. And I really, I really think it's important for all of us to watch other creators who are in different niches and everything like that. But also in our regular life, too, right, we need to learn from other people who have different experiences than us so we can broaden our mind. So many of us are just stuck in our own bubbles. And the mere exposure effect explains why, like why we stay in our bubbles, right, why we don't hang out with other groups, why we don't talk with other groups, you know what I mean? But just know the more you hang out with other people, the more you watch content from other people, the more you'll start to not only like their content, which you may never like their content, but it helps give us a different perspective. And like I said, like with my channel, I really try to just look at these from different angles and try to get our wheels turning. And I feel that maybe if we can start understanding how our minds work, you know, on a psychological level, like it might explain like why we're so close minded about certain things, but not others. Why we have biases towards certain things and not others. Why we don't have the well balanced opinions that we believe we do. Why we hold so tight onto our beliefs, even when we're presented with new evidence. There's so many reasons behind that. And I think part of just making this world a little bit better of a place is acknowledging what's going on and working towards, you know, just being more mindful that these things are actually going on. All right. But anyways, I will link Blair White's channel down below. Make sure you go check out her stuff. Go subscribe. And like I said, even if you I know she could be a little polarizing, but even if you don't agree with her, like you don't have to agree with everybody, like just get new perspectives. All right. And don't forget, share this video. Twenty percent of all the ad revenue will be going towards the Trevor Project. All right. But 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 and a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel or on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel in other ways like buying my books and merch and everything like that. You're awesome. All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.