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Getting Personal about Getting Personal

2024-05-21 · letter vlog · John · 5:03 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook

Using a People article about his marriage, John explains how press interviews feed a 'content machine', tells the Human Stain book-club story he gave the reporter, and argues that, like his rule of not discussing his marriage in public, everyone now needs rules for how much of themselves to share.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The People article and the press-tour exchange of content machines

  • ★★★ John describes the basic press exchange: he uses a content machine that turns his life and stories into content to get people to see the movie, while the reporter turns life experiences and stories into content that generates subscriptions and ad revenue. — 00:00:13 · content machine, online advertising

  • ★★ John grants that writer and subject also hope to inspire or console readers, but says there is no getting around the content machine and their shared awareness of feeding it. — 00:00:38 · content machine

    “there's no getting around the existence of the content machine and our mutual awareness that we are feeding it”

  • ★★★ John says this can make him feel he is selling off little parts of himself for good publicity, and what you sell of yourself you cannot buy back. — 00:00:50

00:00:58 — Selling parts of yourself you can't buy back: OCD made public; the rule of not discussing the marriage in public

  • ★★ John says he cannot return to a world where his relationship with his OCD is private, having talked about it publicly so much in the context of Turtles All the Way Down. — 00:01:05 · Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★ John hopes the benefit of talking publicly about his OCD, for him and for others, outweighs the cost, but says there is a cost. (hedged) — 00:01:14

  • ★★★ John says one rule of his marriage to Sarah is that they do not talk about their marriage much in public, lest it cease to be theirs. — 00:01:20 · Sarah Urist Green

    “lest it cease to be ours”

00:01:27 — The premiere, the People reporter, and the Human Stain book-club story

  • ★★ John and Sarah attended the Turtles All the Way Down premiere together; there he met a People reporter who was great, super respectful and incredibly well prepared. — 00:01:27 · Sarah Urist Green, Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★ Asked the secret of his 18-year marriage, John said, as the article correctly quotes, that they just care about each other a lot: a deliberately innocuous, anti-juicy answer. — 00:01:40 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★★ John retells that before dating, he and Sarah had a two-person book club; reading Philip Roth's The Human Stain, they found they had both highlighted the same passage about having another contender in the room. — 00:02:14 · Sarah Urist Green · first in: 2019-09-10, Another Contender in the Room
  • ★★★ John says Sarah has always been another contender in the room with him; the rule is to take each other seriously, respect each other and acknowledge one another's complexity. — 00:02:38 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ John says he told the story because he had told it before, he likes it and hoped it would resonate, but he must have known he was feeding a content machine on a premiere red carpet. — 00:02:50 · content machine

00:02:55 — Why he told the story, the cost of sharing, Hank's cancer socks, and the need for rules on what to share

  • ★ John says the article came out with an inevitably click-baity headline and got a lot of readers. — 00:03:14
  • ★★★ Though nobody got hurt, John says he gave a tiny bit of himself, and of himself and Sarah together, away in exchange for good press. — 00:03:30 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★★ John says he really doesn't know how much such sharing is healthy or sustainable, does not judge how others navigate their core relationships, and is still figuring it out at 46. (unsure) — 00:03:40
  • ★★★ John wants a private life for his family but also wants to share his work widely, and the more you share of yourself, especially pain and secrets, the easier it is to interest people in the work. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ John says Hank's cancer socks could not have succeeded without Hank talking about his cancer, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for better cancer care in impoverished communities: a benefit worth the cost. — 00:04:15 · Hank's Cancer Socks, Hank Green
  • ★★★ John argues that what to share and what to save matters for everyone, since almost all of us feed the content machine; we need rules for sharing ourselves at least as much as rules for happy marriages. — 00:04:37 · content machine

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a channel comment, John says part of what is hard is that people who receive some information then seek or expect more, a function of how we all behave toward content machines. — creator comment · content machine

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: content machine · Marriage · People · People article on John Green and Sarah's 18-year marriage · privacy · Sarah Urist Green

Also: clickbait · Hank's Cancer Socks · obsessive-compulsive disorder · online advertising · The Human Stain · Turtles All the Way Down · Turtles All the Way Down (film)

Only in the description or credits: Philip Roth

Also centred on Marriage: Writing and Marriage Advice from Michelle Obama · A Very French Reunion

Also centred on privacy: MORTIFICATION · The Instagramification of Human Experience

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