XOXO Festival 2024: Envy

It's nice seeing this Raw-Dan character. Much better character than Hat-Dan, the Dan with a Hat.

I am someone who 'couldn't do that' when it comes to YouTube as I have zero skills in that area, so maybe my opinion doesn't count but I think your YouTube videos are the best ones out there. I bet there are people that you feel envious of, that also feel envious of you.

Wait no way was there comments saying your ape video wasn't good? Thats like my favourite one... I get the exact same feeling of envy when I watch your videos Dan cuz I do youtube under the name Cassidy Whiskey and wish I was half as articulate and analytical as you. I watch the ape video every time I get overstimulated and need to be comforted

There is envy in there, but fundamentally I see Grief. You are dealing with the grief of not being able to do everything that you wish you could do. It is clearly not about them, it is about you, dealing with that injustice that there is so much, probably an infinity of things, that you will never achieve because you just cannot achieve infinity. And then stages of grief appear: denial (not wanting to see those videos), anger (towards them, towards yourself), bargaining (proving to yourself that you could have done it), sadness of course. One way to get out of grief is through redefining your identity, finding a way to exist within that loss. And Dan you most definitely have value despite not being able to do every good thing that could be done. It is not your role to do that. Truly speaking it is not even your role to create perfectly perfect videos, you make the types of videos you make, and you make them expertly, and people relate to it. That is you, and that is inspiring in its own way. You cannot be Mozart and Jane Austen and Jennifer Kent, and it is fine. I wish you to work on that grief, so you can experience all the beauty in your art without being crushed by it.

Fascinating! As the viewers, we obviously have no idea, but this hits really close to some stuff I experience with my work, which is also a creative process, with huge external pressures on top. This inspires me to start my bimonthly rewatch of all my Folding Ideas favourites...

For what it's worth, I have found a lot of your work genuinely inspiring. Line Goes Up was the first work of yours I ever saw, and I fell utterly in love with it. I watched In Search of a Flat Earth and it was an arresting experience that forever altered the way I think. You have an ability to impart not just information, but understanding, in way that is both entertaining and artistically powerful. Besides being impressive and impactful in their own right, the things you've made could only have been made by you.

Weird cause I felt "In Search of a Flat Earth" was such as strong and inspiring take on achieving something truly awe-inspiring (the shot you finally were able to capture) whether or not it achieved its initial objective. That moment seeing the curvature of the Earth using a nice camera setup and the serenity of a long-ass lake. You are doing quite some cool things here.

It's honestly deeply reassuring to hear you kinda sound like a mess, because you come across as the most intimidatingly put together video essayist, the ceiling I couldn't hope to reach.

Really great talk. I started doing woodworking as a hobby some months ago and I have similar feelings. I subscribed to a bunch of woodworking channels but find myself actively avoid watching them because of the sheer envy of what they are able to do and how I struggle to cut a straight line, and watch in mental agony as starry-eyed projects devolve into bodged together reminders of my own failures. It seems like there is some overlap with this and the video about James Rolfe, which, by the way, made me really reflect on my criticisms of other people who I work with as a software developer. I realized that the things they did that "annoyed me" were really just things I know I'm guilty of but don't want to admit and rationalize/excuse away.

I actually have a bit of a problem with you calling the earlier draft of TIFA broken. It works really well for people with a background in the events which for your current audience I think makes it really interesting as an alternate returnwatch after the official TIFA

Genuinely, thank you for this, I spent my teens utterly tormented by creative jealousy that also made me feel very isolated, and seeing someone whose work I admire to the extent I admire your work talk about it was kind of revelatory. To echo what some of the other comments have said, I think "I don't know James Rolfe" really inspired me to try and create, though I haven't actually done anything yet with the scripts I've been attempting to write. I also don't know if you're fully aware of the amount of respect a lot of people have for you, but your work is constantly held up in my circles as good, cogent analysis that doesn't fall into many of the common traps of media criticism (your 50 shades videos are a triumph there, for example.)

Dan, it's painfully ironic that you think your work will never inspire people the way BELLE does you, but when I saw your video "I Don't Know James Rolphe", I knew you had done it. You had made something very extraordinarily close to what you might have been wanting to have made for a few years -- perhaps since your Contagion video. Honestly, it's so goddamn exceptional. Your choices of shots and framing, of what recording devices to use and when . . . it's not only a powerful showcase of your abilities, but it's so intensely complementary to the subject that it awed me. (edit to add an "e" to "Rolph")

The "I could do that... why am I not doing that" loop is so real. Great talk.

So weirdly, I think I know exactly the feeling of not being able to engage with other people's cool stuff because it sends your head into overdrive. So my strategy for years now has been to keep a list of stuff to check out and once I've wrapped up a project, I get to "binge excellence" for a weekend because otherwise, FOMO would end me

Great video. ... Is it sad I recognized Line Goes Up just from the hoodie? I may have watched it a few times...

Thanks for sharing, Dan! I really appreciated your point that these are aspects you can't quite get rid of. Maybe knowing them helps rip down that veil of terror they bring into the creative process; but then, I suppose you're stuck sitting on the couch with the horror that they are, trying to get them to stop hogging space like a bad roommate. Uhhh, anyway, great lecture and it's awesome to hear how you face these parts of creativity and the self!

This came straight for my goddamn SOUL, thank you so much for sharing

"This is never going to inspire people" huhhh fuck yeah it is

The joke at the end was amazing. Such a good way to wrap back around and tie everything together! Thanks for posting this

Oh this is so cool! Excited to watch 😄