I discovered this YouTube channel in the typical way that one, in the age of algorithmic content, discovers any channel: through a bored and incessant refreshing of the homepage in order to find something new. Doomscrolling keeps internet users in a damning cycle of their own creation, but as of late, analysts and researchers alike have seen YouTube’s algorithm shift in a significant way. It has begun to prioritise recency and fast-growth over verification, a decision that commentators have defined as a cause of YouTube’s “enshittification” over the past few years. Nevertheless, this is how I also came across a YouTube video ominously titled ‘there’s a monster outside my window’. The video follows an unidentified man struggling to complete the last leg of a drive through rural America. He is tethered only to gas stations and the open road, everything else left only to his unfiltered stream of consciousness which he shares unashamedly at camera. I was instantly drawn in. The video sparkled like a diamond among a rough wall of oversaturated thumbnails, all carefully attuned to algorithmic appeal. With its plain thumbnail and striking title, I had to explore this channel for myself. What I discovered was a style of video I had not seen in a long time.

First, you are fair to ask, what is the YouTube account ‘nor gather into barns’? Referred to by a reddit user as “an indefinable art project rather than a channel focused on travelling,” the channel follows a young man, an aspiring writer, drifting between states and continents in search for greater meaning. Along the way, he discovers friends, lovers and hardships in equal measure. The videos can be seen to mix methods of poetry, dynamic videography, storylines and narratives that subtly weave together to represent the curated desires of the focaliser. It seems to be the opposite of everything one comes to expect from a YouTube video in the modern world: it lacks any oversaturated flashing lights, vacuous challenges, and hyper-exaggerated reactions. However, I believe this is also why ‘nor gather into barns’ thrives. The unorthodox structure and casual formatting harken back to one specific form of media formatting that flourishes online: The Vlog.

“In the account, viewers see a Kerouacian figure pushing their way through the world”

However, there is a bigger case to be made for the Vlog; one that attributes its decentralised and DIY nature to a manifestation of writer and director Julio García Espinosa’s idea of an “imperfect cinema”. Espinosa’s definition of an imperfect cinema is one that “insists upon its own imperfection,” a kind of cinema that strives to go against the grains of its medium. Espinosa’s vision of imperfection can be seen to be strongly tied to the influence of American 1950s beat fiction. In these texts, the suffering and hardships of the protagonist is fuelled by a yearning to find new ways of looking at the world. In Espinosa’s eyes, this is yearning is represented through the “attitude of change with regard to life”: the feeling of political and personal motivation to do something about one’s place in the world around them. I believe that his vision also strongly related to ‘nor gather into barns’. In the account, viewers see a Kerouacian figure pushing their way through the world, striving to constantly understand beyond themselves self and create connections with the people around them. With all of this sewn delicately onto the backdrop of pixelated Mountains and gritty landscapes, it serves as a Beat reminder to the audience that they too can pick up their own lens and capture the world in any way they wish.

“We have always wanted to learn about other people’s lives”

This message of creation and dissemination that currently feels specific to ‘nor gather into barns’ works by recalling the original ethos of the platform. Take YouTubes first ever video: “Me at the zoo” – a short video where YouTube’s co-founder points out various animals on a zoo trip, ending the video with “that’s pretty much all there is to say.” Despite its mundanity, it remains an important cultural artifact to understand YouTube’s initial success and evidences why users continue to be drawn to personalised content. We have always wanted to learn about other people’s lives. We don’t care whether they are fictional or not- we just want a humble camera angle, and to feel as though the author in question can sit with us at our level and tell us something about the world we live in. Popular Vloggers like Casey Neistat, Zoella, and iJustine built the foundations for long lasting careers due to the very fact that the ways in which they share their lives with their communities is interesting enough to build a strong enough user-base – even before the influence of online marketing and monetary gain.

In recent years, when one hears the phrase content creation, a vague term for a booming industry, one thinks of phone cameras, cheap handheld digicams that represent a certain aesthetic of reclaimed “micro influencer” narratives, and those tiny clippable microphones wielded by street interviewers. This fashion both robs the “imperfect cinema” of the vlogging format and denudes YouTube of its original and more sincere purpose. We need more videographers like ‘Barns’ to help subtly shift the overtone window of “content creation” back to this original ethos of self-discovery and exploration, resisting against “enshittification” for creative flourishing.