Labor
Binging with Babish: The Ribwich
When it comes to labor, not many people would think of a YouTube channel as a form of labor. However, when it comes to creating ideas for these videos, putting the setting and content together, planning when it will happen, and how often these posts will come to the viewers these channels can become a huge creative source of labor for emotional and immaterial labor.
As Brooke Duffy describes in her article, “The Romance of Work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries”, the ideology of ‘doing what you love’ (DWYL) comes into play, showing how doing fun things such as starting a youtube channel for cooking seen on TV could turn into a “new” form of economy where people are paid to do labour that is free, yet brings in money in another way. By showing what you love to do, you are able to set a standard not only for yourself, but for other people who watch your content; therefore becoming a sort of “Pro” and “trend-maker” to your audiences. As Duffy explains, “Discourses of “authenticity” and “realness” have flourished over the last decade, set against the backdrop of newly emergent technologies that have ostensibly upended top-down media hierarchies and enabled consumer-audiences to be active participants in the cultural circuit (Baym and Burnett, 2009). At the same time, commercial media and advertising producers continue to deploy appeals to ordinariness in their promotional campaigns.” (Duffy, page 8). As described here, little companies, such as Binging with Babish, have the potential to overthrow huge hierarchies, such as the Food Network, because of the amount of views and followers they are receiving on social media, blurring the lines of what company has more credit than the others. Chef Andrew seems to know what he is doing most of the time, however he has stated in past videos that he searches for some recipes online, and starts from there, making the recipes he makes on here not so ‘authentic’ and more ‘put together with other sources.’
The Force that drives people to see what is delicious in Chef Andrews videos tend to be the fact that he has the ability to see something on TV, and recreate it using his ideas and other recipes to recreate what was shown. He tries his best to get the best ingredients for each recipe, even if he cant find it at all in New York. He risks his credibility, his image, and the recipes each time he airs, showing what he liked, loved, and disliked with certain interesting recipes we see. This can be seen in Lisa Nakamura’s article entitled, “The Unwanted Labour of Social Media: women of colour call out culture as venture community Management” where she mentions ,“The idea of ‘digital labour’ is often associated with more highly paid, white, and male workers in the global North. As Gina Neff writes, however, these digital jobs are defined by precarity: ‘YOYO’ (you’re on your own) economics, and the need for individuals to accept high levels of risk. ” Now, Im not trying to throw shade at Andrew here, but I tried to cook a couple things from his channel, and some things did not pan out as perfectly as they did for him. Luckily, I know for a fact that he also fails at certain things, and tries to restart the recipes to show how it should have been done the first time. He does his best to make the dish as perfect as can be, and each time it looks amazing and delicious. This is where I realized, free labor is ambivalent; it is freely given and desired. But, Andrew still gets rewards; his channel is part of immaterial labor, defined as “Activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and public opinion” (Cote and Pybus, page 2). His work creates a culture of people who like his taste in food and shows, showing what is good to eat, and what shows to watch. It’s a type of emotional work that allows people to see how fun, crazy, and desirable cooking truly is, and how working towards a goal can be satisfying and tasty.
