StudyTube and the fetishisation of productivity

Over the past year, I have probably watched a couple hundred of ‘StudyTuber’ Ruby Granger’s videos. Granger first rose to YouTube stardom with a series of ‘Hermione Granger Tutorials’ (hence the pseudonymous surname she uses on YouTube). These videos were effectively a form of fan fiction, using plot and character details from the Harry Potter books to speculate as to how Hermione might act in novel scenarios: hanging at the beach, packing her suitcase or entertaining herself when she’s bored. Granger is now in her second year of University, and since her 2016 Hermione tutorials, has been ‘sharing study tips, motivation and advice’ with her (at the time of writing) 440k subscribers. Her audience have followed her journey from private school - where prefects wore Harry Potter-style gowns - to the University of Exeter.

Ruby is just one of many ‘StudyTubers’ who, according to the BBC are helping to make ‘studying cool’.

Whilst it is entertaining to watch rich white girls in the home counties talk about their ‘hygge’ night time routines, there is something more sinister lurking beneath this dark corner of YouTube: the success of the StudyTuber lies, above all else, in the fetishisation of productivity.

Taking StudyTube seriously as a cultural artefact through which capitalist realism manifests itself, StudyTube, in the context of the marketisation of higher education and ‘communicative capitalism’, encourages its viewers to actively engage in a rugged individualism under the pretence of ‘productivity’. More over, with both its stars and audiences comprised predominantly of young women in education, the phenomenon implicitly reproduces ‘Girl Boss’ feminism in miniature; a training ground for pliable students as they prepare to enter a hyper-competitive labour market.

StudyTubers churn out a core repertoire of content on a cyclical basis. On a typical channel one might see, for example: ‘study with me’ videos (long videos of people writing things and not saying very much); routine videos (lots of getting up at 5am and teeth-brushing), stationery hauls, study tips and tricks, ‘100 books I read this year’, or ‘what I got for Christmas 2019'. Whilst individual StudyTubers bring their own spin to the format (a personal favourite being Ruby Granger’s seasonal ‘studious’ ‘look book’ videos), at their core most StudyTube channels are built around the same body of content: a formulaic product which can be reproduced over and over. There are always new Christmas presents to show off, new pens to buy at the beginning of each academic year, new books to read. This handful of core StudyTube videos - centred on the efficient organisation of one’s time, the accumulation of paraphernalia associated with studying and the quantification of learning - orbits around the notion of ‘studiousness’ and the performance of academic labour as foundational to one’s identity. To study successfully, studying must become one’s personality, one’s free time, and in the case of StudyTubers - one’s job.

StudyTube, then, primes its young viewers to perform the affective labour conditional to participation in the late-capitalist economy. As Mark Fisher writes:

‘Being exploited is no longer enough. The nature of labour now is such that almost anyone, no matter how menial their position, is required to be seen (over)investing in their work. What we are forced into is not merely work, in the old sense of undertaking an activity we don’t want to perform; no, now we are forced to act as if we want to work.’

Though there is often discussion of how to ‘enjoy’ studying in StudyTubers’ videos, this enjoyment is largely construed as instrumental, working in service of the ultimate goal: quantifiable results. Ruby Granger signs off every one of her videos with ‘have a productive week’, and, like other entrepreneurial StudyTubers, she has started her own company, ‘Pumpkin Productivity’. Its flagship product is a daily Study Planner which allows you to record exactly how much work you have completed. At the end of each day, you can give yourself a ‘productivity score’ out of 10. There is a space beneath your ‘productivity score’ to rate your ‘enjoyment’ out of 10, implying the existence of a positive correlation between the two. Not only should you be working all hours of the day, you should be enjoying yourself whilst you do it! This emphasis on ‘enjoyment’ is replicated in Granger’s content on YouTube, with videos dedicated to teaching her audience how to ‘actually enjoy the process of studying’. Here, the young audience of StudyTube find themselves introduced to one of the foundational myths of capitalist realism: there is no possibility beyond work. Not only is it entirely natural for them to spend most of their waking lives working, but what they do in those hours should - at least appear to - catalyse some form of self-actualisation.

StudyTube is therefore less concerned with the use value of ‘productive’ studying - acquiring new skills and knowledge with which to better understand the world - than the exchange value: documenting, packaging and selling the feeling of productivity to audiences and advertisers. The mission statement for ‘Ink Outside the Box’, StudyTuber Jack Edwards’ rival brand of study planners, reads: ‘It’s a brand all about getting sh*t done. No excuses, no treading water, just hard work, determination, and imagination. Progress.’ Jack is insistent that his study planner is 'merch that isn’t merch’. This is no typical case of a YouTuber capitalising on their popularity to make money - oh no - but instead your mate Jack generously bestowing you with the gift (RRP £8.50) of a study planner that will make you feel just as productive as him. Jodi Dean argues that, under ‘communicative capitalism’, it is the exchange value of messages which overtakes their use value. (Communicative Capitalism, p.58). YouTube is a platform central to this communicative capitalism, with more ‘messages’ being circulated each day on the video-hosting service than could ever be watched. The emphasis placed on exchange value within the political economy of YouTube explains the homogeneous, formulaic nature of StudyTube videos. The unique content of an individual StudyTube video is less important than its potential captive audience, and the consequent capacity for its ‘message' to circulate with great velocity. StudyTube videos promoting ‘productivity’ produce a particular affect, especially in its younger audience - a feeling that one’s life could always be organised better, one’s time spent more efficiently. This in turn opens up an exchange value for advertisers peddling products purporting to address this sense of lack, a value which can develop beyond in-video advertisements to setting up one’s own ‘productivity brand’ and signing book deals (see Jack Edwards’ forthcoming book, ‘The Uni-verse’, published by Harper Collins). YouTube, whilst older than other staples of ‘platform capitalism’ like Uber, produces a similar relationship to the means of production for its ‘workers’. StudyTubers might own the cameras and computers they use to produce their content - just as Uber drivers own their cars - but it is Google that controls the means (its platform) to realise the exchange value of these videos.

Inextricably bound up with this commodification of ‘productivity’ is StudyTube’s reproduction of the marketisation of higher education. The University of Exeter have sponsored several of Ruby Granger’s videos, an implicit endorsement of the values that underpin her channel. Through sponsorship of StudyTubers, universities are able to subsume and co-opt a platform which, in theory, has the capacity to critique them. There has, of course, been little to no mention of the recent UCU strikes in StudyTube videos. StudyTubers would, I am sure, be more likely to cross picket lines than stand on them. Central to this reproduction of the neoliberal university is the myth of meritocracy. The majority of StudyTubers are white, went to private school and appear to live in huge houses in the countryside. Whilst peddling the gospel of hard work and productivity, they implicitly deny any systemic advantages that created the preconditions for their own accomplishments. Material security is a fundamental precondition for undertaking the amount of academic work StudyTubers encourage. In a ’15 hour study with me’, as a disclaimer Granger makes it clear that she doesn’t work for this long every day - a typical day is instead a mere 10-12 hours.

Material conditions and structural inequalities, however, have no place in the world of StudyTube, where hard work conquers all. StudyTubers are often keen to make their failures public, reading disappointing exam results live, or discussing their failed university applications with their audiences. These failures, however, are individualised, cast as part of the larger process of self-optimisation. Apparent ‘lapses’ become opportunities for productivity in themselves; fodder for click-bait video thumbnails and an opportunity to ‘grow’. StudyTuber’s own class positions are obfuscated as they construct themselves as ‘down to earth’ — just as vulnerable to failure as anyone else. This is functionally similar to the argument put forward by young Tories that they face 'oppression' for their political views, whilst their own class position — and the impact of Tory policies on actually oppressed minority groups — goes unacknowledged. Why would StudyTubers have any cause to understand their failures differently when their own class positions either make them less likely to fail in the first place, or mean their failures have few material consequences?

Ruby Granger, when dispelling ‘common assumptions’ made about her, skirts around difficult questions about her private school attendance, and whether she was ‘posh’ (‘well posh can mean many different things’). To her credit, she recently released a video in which she admitted that she felt guilty about being so ‘privileged’, and recognised that some students struggle to achieve much at school because of their 'socio-economic position’. However, when she elaborated on what she meant by her ‘privilege’, she focused on her ‘supportive family and friends’, rather than her own material circumstances. In a recent video, Holly Gabrielle recognised how lucky she is to be able to go travelling in Australia for three months - though she also reiterated her belief that anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough. It is considered a faux pas not to gesture towards one’s own privileged position, but one must do so in a manner which poses no threat to the notion that hard work is capable of overcoming tangible, material barriers to ‘success’. Once ‘privilege’ is acknowledged, it must immediately be let go; the structural subtext is captured in a ‘moment’ of the text, to once again recede into the background.  

As a consequence of this liberal belief in meritocracy, ‘politics’ is implicitly constructed as a distraction — an unimportant, irrational background noise. During the UK 2019 general election campaign, Jack Edwards made a video about why young people should vote and explained the process,  but would not tell people who to vote for. He bizarrely claimed that, even if you spoil your ballot, this will have a meaningful impact because the future government of whichever party will ‘know that young people want to be represented’. He identified tuition fee increases as an issue his audience should care about, but stopped short of identifying Labour as the only party committed to abolishing them. Ruby Granger recently launched a ‘Kindness Journal’ (RRP £16) to accompany her range of Study Planners. One of her suggested ‘daily acts of kindness’ is to give a homeless person a bottle of water - so you can give yourself a high kindness score for the day, without, of course, pausing to consider why homelessness is so rife in the first place. Compassion, care and human connection are not routes to the collective transformation of society, but instead a box-ticking exercise in pursuit of individual self-improvement. This fetishisation of ‘kindness’ operates in a similar way the ‘technological fetishism’ Jodi Dean identifies as central to communicative capitalism. Those in this stage of capitalism are given the false sense that they are taking meaningful political action by contributing to the online circulation of messages and ideas. In StudyTube’s fetishisation of ‘kindness’, one is given the false sense of alleviating suffering - here the thirst of a homeless person - without necessitating any engagement in structural critique.

A few months ago Ruby Granger announced that she would be buying a house - apparently she could afford a mortgage at the age of 18/19 based on the money she earned from YouTube alone (she claimed to have had no financial support from her parents). The video has since been been removed, and no further mention has been made about her venture into real estate. Whether she actually bought the house or not, her desire to jump on the property ladder as soon as possible is the natural end point of her ideology. Viewer, if you also study 15 hours a day, exclusively wear Victorian-era clothing and wash your face every morning in an ornate basin, you too can own a cottage in the countryside before you hit your twenties.

Ruby Granger’s channel, then, serves to replicate the world of ‘Lean in’ and ‘Girl Boss’ liberal feminism in miniature: you can start working your way to success and smashing those glass ceilings before you even leave education. In a recent video, Ruby shared yet another daily routine with her audience. This particular iteration of the ‘routine video’ was sponsored by Facebook Business’ campaign, #SheMeansBusiness, ‘a space for entrepreneurial women to make valuable connections, share advice and move forward, together’. While - up until now - explicit discussion of ‘feminism’ was all but absent from Granger’s videos (as part of the broader eschewal of ‘political’ discussions), in this latest partnership, the ideological matrix of liberal feminism undergirding Granger’s videos has bubbled to the surface.

‘Girl Boss’ feminism such as this is concerned with the co-option of disenfranchised communities of women into the ideological framework of success (see the Mumtreprenuer). In the case of StudyTube, this disenfranchised ‘community’ is comprised of women who, as young students, are not (or only partially) economically active. Operating within the broader framework of the marketisation of higher education, StudyTube reinforces the idea - particularly for young women - that you are the product to be worked on and invested in. Through her Frankenstein-pastiche of different female CEO’s routines and ‘life lessons’, Granger lays out a framework for how to continually re-work oneself in preparation for fully-fledged entry into the marketplace. Though your high-flying career might be a few decades off, you can begin to mould yourself into a proto-Girl Boss by taking cold showers and making power poses when you wake up before 5am. As Jodi Dean argues, ‘the era of communicative capitalism is an era of commanded individuality’. (Crowds and Party, p.72). StudyTube both illuminates and reproduces the ways in which a viciously competitive job market leaves us with no choice but ‘to work on ourselves, constantly, just to keep up.’

This is not meant to be a personal attack on Ruby Granger or StudyTubers. I am hard-pressed to find a video of hers I haven’t watched (and consequently contributed to the monetary success of). There is an element of absurd theatricality to Granger’s work that keeps me wanting more. She recently staged a ten course Vegan Victorian Dinner Party  at which she had her sister act as a waitress, and ‘played’ a character in an anti-bullying video that required her to wear fake freckles. Fusing together Harry Potter fan fiction, the fetishisation of Victorian (read: imperialist) culture and a Cath-Kidston tweeness, Granger’s content is a spectacle it is difficult to look away from: a horror-cocktail of white middle-class culture.

StudyTubers are not evil-masterminds hell-bent on brainwashing the youth; they are as much the victims of the ideology they appear to have internalised. This is perhaps most evident with regards to mental health. One of Ruby Granger’s more recent ‘routine’ videos featured a trip to see her therapist, and she openly discussed her poor mental health throughout 2019; she had been trying to post three or more videos a week whilst also studying. Fisher’s identification of affective labour as a central tenet of work under capitalist realism goes hand in hand with the mental health crisis as a condition of late capitalism. The very same ideology that StudyTube reproduces is inflicting a mental health crisis on Ruby Granger and her fellow students. Jack Edwards, for example, posted a video at the end of January 2020 entitled ‘I burned myself out and this is what I’m doing about it’. Unsurprisingly, ‘burn out’ and poor mental health is framed by StudyTubers as a product of their own poor choices - not looking after oneself - as opposed to the pernicious neoliberal education system they exist within. In the video, Edwards claims that sometimes the ‘productivity’ and ‘organisation’ he promotes on the channel is overwhelming as he doesn’t always feel that way. His response: to record, edit and publish a thirteen minute long video of his ‘self-care’ day, which included a three hour stint in the library so he could ‘justify’ not working the rest of the day. Much like Ruby Granger’s rejection from Oxford, illness is a lapse which holds productive potential; a bump in the road to be transformed into monetisable content.

During the coronavirus pandemic - another ‘lapse’ - Granger has produced an ‘Ultimate Productivity guide during lockdown’. One of her tips is to avoid reading the news as it might cause anxiety, thereby rendering you less productive. She has also advised her viewers to write down their ‘lockdown goals’, so that they might remain ‘focused’ and use their time productively whilst indoors. Here, a global pandemic exposing the contradictions of global capitalism is instead re-framed as an opportunity to accelerate one’s own productive potential. Granger, it seems, is committed to going down with the ship of capitalist realism, even as its edifice begins to crumble around her.       

Whilst ‘left tube’ has expanded in the past few years, a counter-narrative to the fetishisation of productivity found in StudyTube is absent. What about LazyTubers, who teach kids to game the boss by doing as little work as possible, or StrikeTubers encouraging students to stand in solidarity with their over-worked and underpaid university lecturers? As communicative capitalism dominates the lives of young people always ‘plugged in’ to the internet, the cultural edifice of capitalist realism mutates and adapts. Watching StudyTube, you can almost see the horizons of possibility collapsing, the borders of capitalist realism being hermetically sealed for a generation of avid watchers one ‘study with me’ at a time.