Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon offered a wealth of cool sci-fi concepts: fluidity of consciousness enabled by the Cortical Stack, coupled with Digitized Human Freight, Experia flicks, and first-person POV mindbites. A character can be in one sleeve in one paragraph, then slip into VR to be entertained or, conversely, tortured endlessly.
"If you're good, like she was, and you've got the equipment, you can sample those signals. They call them mindbites. Moments in the head of a fashion house princess, the ideas of a particle theorist, memories from a king's childhood. There's a market for this stuff. Oh, the society magazines run edited skullwalks of these sorts of people, but it's all authorized, sanitized. Cut for public consumption. No unguarded moments, nothing that could embarrass anybody or damage popularity, just great big plastic smiles on everything. That ain't what people really want."
Altered Carbon | Richard K. Morgan
When I read VOX's "The irresistible voyeurism of "day in my life" videos" article, my thoughts immediately went to Altered Carbon, and how the "day in the life" genera brings humanity that much closer to its mindbites.
Thanks to TikTok, there are "day in the life" videos about being in med school and "day in the life" videos about being a fifth grade teacher. There are "day in the life" videos about 23-year-olds with cushy consulting jobs and of high school dropouts-turned-lash technicians. You can watch women who work three jobs and men who seem to do nothing besides showing off their six-pack while getting dressed and tousling their hair (many of whom have extreme American Psychovibes). There are vlogs of blissfully childfree women and equally blissful tradwives, of unhoused people in addiction recovery and wealthy bankers in gray apartments with huge closets just for their shoes.
The Irresistible voyeurism of "day in my life" videos – Rebecca Jennings | VOX
After watching each video mentioned above, and snickering along with Rebecca Jennings, I have to agree with her assessment that the whole genera is incredibly multifaceted with some showing off, some trying to bring attention to aspects of their life/career, some advertising products, some satirizing the genera, but all of the videos have at their core, a person seeking connection and relevancy in a digital age where even a 1 min TikTok video or YouTube short needs a certain je ne sais quoi to keep users from swiping to the next video. When a genera gets this big, guides for how to make your own content enter the scene like FlexClip's article "How to Create a Compelling Day in the Life Video for TikTok and YouTube":
A day in the life video is a popular "behind-the-scenes" video that allows viewers to learn more about you through your daily rituals. For content creators, creating a day the life video helps you build trust with the audience, grow more followers, and even convert leads into sales.
So, in this tutorial, we will offer you real-world and actionable strategies to create a compelling a day in the life video that wows your viewers on TikTok and YouTube.
How to Create a Compelling Day in the Life Video for TikTok and YouTube | FlexClip
The "Day in the Life" genera is so big that I've decided to take the whole thing in with adaptive opinions about aspects of it here and there, but now that I see what people are trying to do with it while it's "modern", I'm looking forward to seeing where this takes us, and the eventual look back from the future where younger generations will shoot homages using the "Day in the Life" format, viewed through their fresh eyes because they can just enjoy the silliness of 2020s aesthetics for what they think it was.
