I’m addicted to DIY (short for Do It Yourself, “do it yourself”) things that don’t have a head or a tail. Before going to bed, I watch a random video offered by YouTube; For the most part, I don’t know why anyone would want to create something as ugly as a concrete cube with LED lights, or a plexiglass clipboard filled with tangerine peel. They are videos that challenge common sense and sense of storytelling.
At first I wondered why anyone would want these grotesque things and who would have a blowtorch and three kilos of Poxylin at home. Then I understood; The point of all this is that I’m stepping into the comments to ask who has a blowtorch at home. And that someone else asks to give back the lifetime lost in such a trick. These videos are for us to share and lament because the more useless the object, the more we share it, and so we find that a DIY video on how to clean a drain cap with toothpaste is more than 11 million views. No one will ever, under any circumstances, have to clean a manhole cover with toothpaste.
These videos are not only based on our need to share (amazing above all), but also on a very basic notion of suspense. This man has a bottle of Coca-Cola and a candle. What can you do with both? It’s a waste of time? Naturally; just like everything we consume through the small screen. But nothing happened. After all, DIY videos are a metaphor for so many audiovisual products: They promised me a miracle and gave me a pilonga chestnut. It seems magical to me.
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