ELSEWHERE

The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson
Two stars

Unfortunately my first read of 2024 was a miss! I checked this out from the library at the beginning of January and after a month of bouncing off it have decided to just return it. I don't even have any specific criticisms and it may just be that I'm not as interested in this side of botany as I thought I would be (I find a lot of plant and agriculture stuff very interesting otherwise) but I was forcing myself to read more than a few pages at a time and I ain't got time for that.

#books2024

good morning it's time for a highly specific complaint

So I follow a couple of YouTubers, mostly people who make content about cooking, history, chill lifestyle vlogs, etc. I follow a few crafty people (primarily Evan & Katelyn, who I think are my only Patreon subscription) and, years ago, I followed a creator @TheIcingArtist. She's got almost 5mil subs on YouTube and I think built most of her following making specialty cakes, and a big part of her shtick was using icing instead of fondant (hence, icing artist, I suppose). I stopped following her a while ago because her content stopped being my jam (idk man I was really into watching people make cakes when I was in the Dark Times), but once in a while she pops up as a recommendation and like,,,,

I don't know how to phrase this but her "I am just a regular normal baker like you guys and I have so much anxiety and I'm clumsy!!!" persona is just out of control for me? If it's not a persona then bless her, but she definitely wasn't always that way. In her most recent video she failed so many times to separate egg yolks from whites that I stopped watching, because even if that was genuine and not a bit, goddamn, girl

Like just watch to 4:00, if that, because that's as far as I made it before I wanted to just crack the eggs myself

She also frustrated me because one of her recent videos I did find to have an interesting pitch i.e. "what happens when you bake cakes in various household appliances" but it was edited and filmed so fucking chaotically that I couldn't stand it, because (to me, and to my taste) that type of content needs a bit of order and structure so you can compare techniques and end results. Evan & Katelyn are really good at this, and it's part of the reason I like them as creators, but despite clearly having the funding for good filming equipment and I think an editor on payroll the video was just nonsense

anyways someone please watch those and be mad with me I need to share this moment

like why did your shtick have to become "lmfao woops I'm so bad at everything tee-hee" and not "I'm excitable and sometimes clumsily learning but still a competent baker" because she has been doing this for literal fucking years so I just am not into women acting like dipshits for the camera

compare that to the energy of her videos from several years ago, like this one where she makes an avocado cake

she still has a bit of YouTuber persona but it's so much more chill and the content is the creativity and craftsmanship, not her being too goddamned incompetent to mix ingredients together successfully

her content now feels more TikTok paced than YouTube paced and I have no idea if that makes sense but I hate it

I watched a video recently about how youtubers (and other content creators) have started signalling 'authenticity' in their productions (to differentiate themselves from 'outsiders' like, for example, the fiasco with Will Smith in the youtube rewind) by intentionally leaving in unproduced elements, like visible microphones, sound checks, out-of-focus shots. I feel like this person has pivoted into that, but in a way that ironically feels inauthentic

Also I hate Kevin. I've seen (heard) him for all of five minutes and he just seems so passive aggressive in a way I'm sure his fans find charming, but it goes with TheIcingArtist's clumsy schtick really badly.

Also like there are techniques for separating egg whites, just use one of those instead of wasting all those eggs

mek wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 5:36 pm

Also like there are techniques for separating egg whites, just use one of those instead of wasting all those eggs

and she's a seasoned baker!!! she can absolutely separate egg whites successfully!!! her acting like she is too tee-hee stupid to separate egg whites is fucking maddening to me. It's one thing to have an oopsie and leave it on camera to show authenticity but it's another thing to waste like five minutes on close-up shots of her wailing because she has ruined yet another giant bowl of egg whites with her clumsiness

tbh it has the same energy as like, you know how the trend for a while in YA protagonists was for the female lead's "flaw" to be clumsiness? But it was never really a legitimate flaw, it was just another way to make her seem adorable and huff and puff when the hero or whoever stops her from knocking over a bookshelf? Like everyone saw Rachel Weisz's character in The Mummy and failed at recreating it?

it's THAT energy but without the competence to balance it out

I also agree re: Kevin, I think they're going for him being the straight man to her chaos but all that comes across to me is "local white dude acts like his wife is too stupid to live without him" which she herself plays into and MAN I am not a fan

(she also used to not include Kevin at all and would just refer to him playfully as "Mr. Icing" but I think in doing exactly what you described they've tried to seem like more of a realistic chaos baking duo but the vibes are awful)

thank you for joining me on this journey of YouTuber rage aka why can't we just make cool stuff without acting like court fucking jesters about it

or if you DO act like a court fucking jester at least be actually funny