Jan. 12, 2017: Satisfying Videos
I've noticed the popular (908,000 followers as of this writing) Instagram account @satisfyingvideo in my Instagram discover feed a lot lately. My initial reaction was that all of the videos are fairly boring and poorly-produced; then, I became puzzled. All of the videos are just close-ups of people squeezing, cutting, freezing, or melting brightly-colored objects that are squishy or slimey. They're set up such that you think the object will explode or emit something surprising, but in almost every case, the result is anticlimactic. The texture of the object depicted is interesting, sure, yet not interesting enough to make the video justifiably... "satisfying." I don't have anything substantive to say; I just wonder, is this what "satisfying" looks like in 2017? Is there some pleasurable abjection at play here that I don't understand? I'm lost, treading through the neon muck. But maybe something will click and I'll either: a) start feeling satisfied by these videos, or b) come up with a smart, articulate theory of what they say about "culture" and "society" at this very moment.
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