Wish fulfillment
Karen of Karen Puzzles beholding the giant puzzle of her dreams.
Lately, I’ve been down the rabbit hole of what I’d call “wish fulfillment YouTube.” On wish fulfillment YouTube, you get to watch other people’s dreams come true. If they’re your dreams, too, you can get a hit of satisfaction from identifying with their ecstasy. But even if they’re not your dreams exactly, it can just be fun to see people get what they want.
Haul videos are the classic example: someone buys a bunch of stuff and then opens it on camera. I never really got into the genre until stumbling onto an offshoot of planner Youtube (AmandaRachLee is my favorite; 2 million subscribers to her bullet journaling channel!) filled with stationery haul videos. Those I could watch all day long. I mean, look at all this cool stationery from Japan! And don’t miss AmandaRachLee swatching every washi tape she owns. The appeal is pretty simple: I would like to own more stationery. But it makes no sense for me to own much stationery, because I do all my work on the internet. So, most of the time, I deny myself stationery. But by watching AmandaRachLee swatch washi tape for fourteen and a half minutes before I go to sleep, I get to drift off to dreamland with adorable rolls of washi tape bouncing around my brain.
Puzzle videos are also a thing. The other day, YouTube’s algorithm sent me to Karen Puzzles. Karen loves jigsaw puzzles. She gets puzzles, then does them on camera—with tremendous enthusiasm. That’s it. But it’s incredibly satisfying to watch. This video of Karen unboxing her “dream puzzle” (one she’s wanted since childhood), got me thinking about wish fulfillment YouTube in the first place. People who know me well know that I love hearing about people’s hopes and dreams; that’s a big part of why I trained as an executive coach. But wish fulfillment YouTube gives me a chance to watch yearnings come true. There’s absolutely a performative aspect to this (Karen knows what she’s doing), but I don’t think Karen would have a puzzling channel if she hated puzzling. She’s doing this because she likes it, and it’s nice to see people do things they enjoy and get the things they want.
Wish fulfillment YouTube is like a mashup of my friend Rick Webb’s idea of plotless scifi and all the makeover shows (home and otherwise) that I can’t stop watching. There’s not no plot, because there’s a problem to be solved (an unsolved puzzle, a pile of unswatched washi tape, an un-made-over home) and then you get to watch it get resolved. But there’s no tension. You know there’s going to be a happy ending, and you even know exactly how the person’s going to get there: by buckling down and enjoying the ride.
I wish I had a more nuanced take on wish fulfillment YouTube, but right now I’m just in the thick of it—it’s hard to get perspective. I imagine there’s a dark underbelly to this genre, like everything in life. Does Karen send bummed-out messages to a group text of fellow YouTubers about how she’s burned out on puzzles but has to muster some enthusiasm in order to survive another day? She might, and that’s her right. And I guess there’s probably a dark underbelly to wish fulfillment in general, especially the consumerist kind. When do I buy unnecessary highlighters but when I’m feeling a little sorry for myself, like I could use a boost? The beauty of wish fulfillment YouTube isn’t that it’s emotionally advanced, but that it’s remarkably effective. I can watch someone else enjoying something and get a hit of satisfaction that rivals experiencing it myself, without consigning myself to decluttering those piles of washi tape, highlighters, or puzzles one day.
Do you have a favorite corner of wish fulfillment YouTube?