Addictions in Storytelling and the Surprising Psychology of Engagement

Storytelling! You've heard this (buzz)word too many times, haven't you? So many, in fact, that it sometimes feels like you may have forgotten what it means, before you even fully understood it in the first place, assuming it's even possible.

A pocket of privilege

In the past, great storytelling was primarily the domain of mythologies, religions, literature, theatre, film and creative arts in general. Moreover, it actually took some effort to experience it first hand - the bigger your budget and expectations, the more effort (travelling to an opera house or a museum in another country, for example).

Today, your access to great storytelling is both instant and infinite in its diversity, with all of the ironies attached. Often, all it takes is touching the smartphone screen in your pocket and you're right inside a popular story of the day, hour, minute. It's making the "right" choices and understanding where all of the stories in your daily hunting-and-gathering routine are meant to take you that presents an ever more daunting challenge.

The peculiar characteristics of storytelling addictions

When thinking about the classic characteristics of great storytelling, we often see them through the prism of their emotional and/or motivational potential. But then, again, if every story we are exposed to was to result in an emotional response, we would probably have become extinct as a species by now, with emotional exhaustion replacing the usual suspects coming from outer space, uninvited.

Too much of a good thing

Take international news, for example. Watching too many "negative" stories triggers your brain's self-preservation mode making you care less (see skepticism/cynicism) and distance yourself from the emotional power of the story itself. Similarly, when you study to become a doctor, chances are you will (all too) soon develop some kind of immunity to experiencing human suffering right in front of your eyes, immunity to letting it in. Whether it's the right type of immunity or far from it depends on a lot of factors, your emotional intelligence included.

Beyond the obvious

Sometimes, all it takes for a story to become a huge number-of-views success is a bit of "subliminal magic", i.e. the story's intrinsic ability to tap into our subconscious needs, unsophisticated as they may sometimes seem in a world where we are constantly bombarded with an infinite diversity of stimuli. It should, therefore, be a little less surprising that every now and then we find ourselves hooked on watching something...remarkably unremarkable.

The Flying Carpet

Imagine there's a vlog on YouTube where all you're offered within a 35-minute video is a single person cleaning a single carpet. Not an ancient, Persian carpet, mind you, but a very, ordinary one, of the we-all-had-it-at-home-once kind.

I'm sure we'll all agree it's not exactly your recipe of choice for a YouTube success story, nor is it the most dynamic and engaging storytelling idea you can think of. And yet, the video boasts over 38 000 000 views! And it's hardly an exception on the Lubuskie Centrum Czysto?ci channel, with its half a million subscribers and 166?137?143 views since January 2014.

The likable cleaning enthusiast in the video doesn't see the need to talk much, about the process or otherwise. Quite to the contrary, in fact. He makes a point, however, of addressing you in English. Not that what he's about to do isn't self-explanatory enough ;)

Between passion, authenticity and feeling rewarded

These are his first (and just about the only) words in this addictive "beauty restoration tutorial": Hello my friends! Today, I'll show you another interesting video! Let's get started!

One almost wishes every major conference keynote started with this kind of simplicity, promise and appeal. The fact they don't is only one of the many reasons why so many conferences out there have been lagging so far behind the kind of content discipline and knowledge quality you can so easily find online these days, regardless of the complexity of your favourite discipline.

All of this is hardly surprising, perhaps, given that some of the world's most successful vloggers (a few hundred of them, at least) are infinitely better storytellers and "presentation content developers" than experienced conference speakers, for whom success is defined more on a transactional than content-quality basis, let alone feedback.

One last thing

So what makes this quaint little carpet-video win your patience and dedication beyond any intuitive assumptions or expectations? For one thing, it makes you slow down and relax with a near-hypnotic simplicity and consistency. In other words, it's kept simple in the best sense of the word. Secondly, it feels authentic from beginning to end: you feel the main protagonist in the story is perfectly at ease turning an otherwise mundane chore into a story of almost cathartic proportions :)

What's the key to such ease, you might ask? Some of it is in the man's overall attitude, while the rest resides in the clean-cut-ritual territory, starting from his pristine white rubber boots, all the way to the slow and methodical approach.

So yes, storytelling is not so easy to explain, even when you find yourself surprised by how simple, natural and easy it often feels.