Casey Neistat is a hypernormie
Maybe this title is a little bit insulting, but I don’t mean it this way. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videographers focused on videography itself. Casey Neistat is the most famous example, but there are many, many others. I’m talking about cinematic videos, with lots of editing, with lots of different angles, with a beautiful color grading. I’m talking about the type of YouTuber who calls themself a “film maker”, not a “YouTuber”. (There’s a distinct difference between that and someone speaking to a camera about what they ate, or what they bought - those are typical YouTubers.)
“Making movies” or “filmmaking” or “cinematic YouTube” is, at this point, its own genre. What I have noticed in all of these videos is that they are pretty devoid of substance. They’re really fun to watch, and their videography is absolutely amazing and impressive. But they have the effect of “wowing” you into thinking that they said something, when in fact they said almost nothing.
Casey Neistat is a good example of that¹, something which I would only call “hypernormie”. It’s just being normal, but it’s not normal normal, but cinematic normal. If you take a look at his videos that focus on a topic - videos that present themselves as a treatise - they are all extremely shallow in that regard. Again, that doesn’t mean I’m not thoroughly impressed with the storytelling, or overall videography. But if you take all of that, and just write down the point, you don’t get a thorough analysis of any subject matter. It might as well have been a typical podcast, and the substance would remain the same.
So normie thoughts, plus beautiful videography: hypernormie-ism.
This, in turn, leads me to preemptively distrust every beautifully edited video. Of course, some don’t purport to say something deep or insightful, or treat a topic, but just show a vibe. Those are fine. What I distrust is those that treat a subject, speak about something, make a documentary of sorts - and then you’re just left without any deeper insight, but with a vibe. It’s peak edutainment, and edutainment is almost always a waste of time.