In this short monologue, psychologist Tom Guarriello, Ph.D. reflects on two recurring themes he has observed on YouTube: the notion of community and the underlying question of why creators make videos. He frames the discussion using classic human‑motivation theory, focusing on David McClelland’s four motive categories—achievement, power, affiliation, and avoidance—highlighting how the first three drive most YouTubers. Guarriello then connects these motives to recent community debates (e.g., Renetto’s apology, Bohemian Rhapsody’s “Why Do YouTube?” video) and to problematic behaviors such as hate speech and “outlaw” identities. Drawing on Alfred Adler’s concept of social interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl or fellow‑feeling), he argues that a healthy community requires a balanced, high need for affiliation. When affiliation is low while achievement and power motives dominate, creators may act in harmful, anti‑social ways. He concludes that most creators have mixed motives, and recognizing these dynamics can help maintain a healthier YouTube community.
Chapters
Good morning guys, it's Tom. I wanted to make a quick video, hopefully quick, this morning about two themes and two threads that have been running through the, at least my viewing of the YouTube, of YouTube here in the last week or so. And those two themes are represented by this whole business of community, on one hand, that we've seen a lot of discussion and conversation about, uh, not the least in, um, recent videos by Renetto apologizing to the community and other people talking about the community and so on. And the other thread, uh, being represented, I think, most dramatically by Bohemian Rhapsody's "Why Do You Tube" video, but one that many of us have addressed in our videos about why are we here. So I just wanted to take a quick look at those two things and see maybe how those two things come together. First of all, you know, I'm a psychologist, so I've spent my career thinking about people and about why we do things and so on. I don't do that clinically anymore. I do the kind of psychology work that I do in organizations and with leaders and so on. And, um, but the issue of why we do things the way we do things is, um, a study— has been studied forever, right? And so, and it falls under that big headline of human motivation. And if you take a look at the history of the literature on human motivation, there's one figure who really stands out pretty dramatically, and he's a guy named David McClelland. And McClelland's work on human motivation really took an in-depth historical look at all the work, you know, going back to Plato, that's ever been done on human motivation. And what McClelland did was he sort of clustered all human motives around— into 4 basic groups, and I think 3 of those groups are very relevant for us here in making YouTube videos. The first is what he calls the need for achievement. The second, the need for power. The third, the need for affiliation. And the fourth, the need for avoidance. Now I'm gonna take need for avoidance and sort of put it over on the side for a second because I don't think there are too many of us here who are making videos out of a need for avoidance. We're mostly— some of our motives are sort of over in this other cluster of 3 sets of motives. So let's take a look at, at need for achievement. How is need for achievement relevant here in making YouTube videos? Well, a bunch of us have talked about how the the technical challenges of making these videos and creating things and, and expressing ourselves effectively is one of the keys to keeping us coming back and making videos. So, uh, that is clearly one sort of way of thinking about our need for achievement here in the YouTube world. Now there are also others of us who are looking to maybe make a few bucks, and so that's a form of achievement as well. So let's take— so that's kind of, you know, need for achievement shortlist of some of the motives. How about need for power? Well, need for power, you know, how is that relevant when you're making videos? Well, Uh, let's see, if you have 30,000 subscribers, if your videos are viewed hundreds of thousands of times, if you are beginning to become a celebrity in the YouTube world and beyond the YouTube world, there is there a certain amount of power involved in that. It's heady stuff, and I think some of the people who have achieved that kind of status here have talked a little bit about it. I think we've seen Geriatric1927, for example, talk about the sort of power that he has received in terms of fame as being an unintended consequence of what he was doing here. I don't think Peter ever expected that he was going to become what he's become in the YouTube world. So, so need for power is another sort of set of motives that are over here for us. And then finally, need for affiliation. Need for affiliation is this sense of wanting to meet other people, getting to know other people, becoming a community with other people. Now, if we take that then and overlay this whole set of, of debates and conversations that we've been having about hate. How does that relate to these motivations? Well, first of all, let's be clear about something. You know, Søren Kierkegaard, a great philosopher, said, you know, purity of heart is willing— is to will one thing. Pretty powerful if you think about, you know, his— that was written within a spiritual context of willing one thing. The good is actually what Kierkegaard was talking about. But most of us are not pure of heart. That's not a bad thing. We're normal human beings living normal human lives. And that means that our motives are probably some tangle and mixture of need for achievement, need for power, and need for affiliation. And that's the way we live our lives, most of us, with some need for avoidance kind of over here as well. Anxiety and other kinds of bad things that can happen to us we want to avoid. Now, I think the problem comes in for us here when one of those three sets of motives gets out of whack, either extraordinarily high or extraordinarily low. So, for example, when we see people, uh, going off on what look to be strong ego trip kind of directions, we kind of go, "Wow, that person is really sort of out there." When we see people who we think, you know, whose need for power seems to be overwhelming, we get very kind of, uh, hmm, we get worried about that. People whose need for achievement seems to be sort of very powerful, if they look like, you know, they're really on a strong commercially oriented paths, you know, we start to get a little concerned. When the need for affiliation seems to get very, very high, you know, people are trying to, you know, gather everyone together under one big community tent, we get a little worried. We know that we're not all kind of, you know, it's a community, it's an interesting mixture of people, but the big problem is when that need for affiliation really drops down to the point where people don't want to be engaged with one another in an affiliation way, but they do want to have a lot of power, and they have very strong needs for achievement. I think that cluster of motives is what we see happening often in people who have taken kind of an outlaw identity within the YouTube community. I made a video about YouTube as Deadwood a while ago. So the idea that we have an affiliation need and that affiliation need is for us to be together in a community and to enjoy those community aspects of what's here is not a general motivational foundation for us. Some of us have that in greater degrees than others, and when we see people who come at that need for affiliation from the other side, meaning that they aren't really really all that interested in being part of the community, then they are exhibiting something that another of my professional and personal inspirations, Alfred Adler, talked about when he talked about people having what he called social interest. Social interest was a word that translates from a German word. The German word is Gemeinschaftsgefühl, which is really fellow feeling. In Adler's thinking, fellow feeling, strong need for affiliation, uh, was really an indication of his definition of mental health, that those of us who had a strong sense of social interest, wanting to make our communal lives together, um, uh, positive for all of us, to raise the level of fellow feeling that existed within all of our relationships was for him the highest way of thinking about people, uh, in their highest state of mental health and their highest state of, um, uh, essentially actualizing themselves and their communities. So, um, so look, part of what we have to understand is purity of heart, it may be to will one thing. Very few of us, I think, are in a position to, to be pure of heart. We all have mixed motives, as we say in the vernacular. I think that when we see people acting in ways that are— that reflect very low levels of social interest with one another— vulgar, hurtful, illegal, on a continuum behavior with one another— it's troubling to us because most of us have levels of social interest that want us— that keep us wanting to stay connected with one another. And so, for me, those are the thoughts that the recent developments have triggered, and I hope some of that is meaningful to you as well. So thanks, see you again.
