Clinical psychologist Tom Guarriello uses the Rorschach inkblot test to show how people project their own attitudes onto ambiguous things. He applies this to YouTube: the platform is whatever you seek, whether creativity, cats, or suggestive content. Your YouTube is a mirror of your interests.
Hey guys, it's Tom Guarriello. You know, one of the things that is interesting, very interesting, when you begin training as a psychologist— I was trained as a clinical psychologist— one of the things that's really most interesting is when you start to learn about psychological tests. You know, it's one of the things that people think of the most when they think about being a psychologist is all the tests that help you to figure out all these deep dark secrets. And there are all kinds of tests that psychologists give, and a lot of them are just tests that you give with paper and pencil and multiple choice and so on. But then there's a whole other category of tests that are called projective techniques. And the projective technique is a a kind of an unstructured situation where you ask people questions about things that really don't have any set answers, no right or wrong answers of any kind, but that in fact you ask people to give you an answer that the theory is that when you give this answer, you are projecting something about yourself onto the stimulus that is being presented to you. So, for example, this image that I'm about to show you now is an image from the Rorschach inkblot test. Now, I wasn't really supposed to show you that image, but because you can go on Google and Google the word Rorschach and then look at images and find that image right there on the internet, which is how I found it. I didn't feel too bad showing you what is card 5 of the Rorschach test, and that's a perfect example of a projective element from a, from a projective technique. It's an inkblot, indiscriminate, indeterminate in form. Now a lot of people think that that inkblot looks like a bat, and if you think it looks like a bat, that puts you into a group of people, kind of in the majority of people, who will at some point or other say that that inkblot looks like a bat. Now, what got me thinking about this was a conversation that a couple of us, my wife and my business partner Peggy— hi, Peg— and Paul, her fiancé— come on, let's go— were having last weekend. And it was a conversation that we were having about YouTube. And they were saying, well, what do you find on YouTube? What kind of things do you really find on YouTube? And what occurred to me is that if we were to turn that question into a projective technique, This is what it would sound like. Now, one of the other projective techniques besides the Rorschach is a projective technique known as a sentence completion test. And so if I were to ask you to complete the following sentence, how would you do so? YouTube is fill in the blank. Now, as you fill in the blank, you're going to fill in the blank with your impressions of YouTube. And as I started to think about my impressions of YouTube, I realized that YouTube really, for me, is an echo chamber. What do I mean? I mean that if you say YouTube is a stupid, juvenile website where there's nothing but pirated material and pictures of cats. Well, you're going to be right because there's plenty of juvenile pirated material and pictures of cats on YouTube. And so you'd be correct if you were to say YouTube is— fill in the blank— filled with pornography and hate. You'd be right. There isn't really pornography on YouTube. I think it's very, as Blunty said in a video of his, YouTube is not the place to come for pornography. If you want pornography, there's plenty of places to go to find pornography. But there's plenty of suggestive pictures on YouTube, especially in those icon images of videos. You find plenty of quasi-suggestive images there. But yes, you will find that YouTube is those things for you. What I'm saying is that for me, YouTube really is a reflection of what we're looking for in it. If you're looking for creativity, you're gonna find creativity on YouTube. If you're looking for interesting, intelligent people, you're gonna find interesting, intelligent people on YouTube. If you're looking for pictures of cats, you're going to find pictures of cats. YouTube for me is an echo chamber of whatever we say we're interested in, we're going to find it here. And I know for me, what I'm interested in are the kind of creative things that people do on their own in an amateur and innovative way. Um, and I find plenty of that out here on YouTube. So, uh, be interested in your projective thoughts about what YouTube is. And, um, see you again real soon. So take it easy. Bye-bye.
