Why art matters.
Or, at the very least, one reason why.
About a month ago, a video was uploaded to YouTube, titled I ran unethical social experiments on Twitch Chat. Hold on, this post is going to be interesting, I promise!
The video is a recording of a Twitch stream, and the premise is that host DougDoug randomly selects nine viewers of said stream to compete in various challenges until only one remains. Round one: Answer various questions and convince the others not to vote you out. Question one: What is the greatest video game of all time and why?
And, you know, DougDoug's videos are usually very light-hearted and fun – hell, I'd say his channel is among the most entertaining on the entirety of YouTube – but the response of viewer Alyssaromantic (in the center) made me pause:
These two messages take up maybe five seconds of an half-hour video, but I needed at least five minutes to fully process them.
Because I don't think that Alyssaromantic was exaggerating or making this up. Why do I think this? Allow me to quote one of my previous posts:
I want to make art that is as meaningful to others as it has been to me ever since, a few years ago, everything got too much and it saved my life.
Okay, enough beating around the bush. But yes, I've had a similar experience in the past. And these seven words let me know that I'm not alone.
I felt comfort in that – and an odd kind of connection to the person who wrote these messages.