What's so appealing about watching a stranger's “fuck me” videos?

Pooja Verma gets up at 7 a.m. She makes a two-egg omelette and heads to work. She stops at McDonald's for a morning coffee – one with sugar, one with cream – and by 9 a.m. she's at work. “Okay guys, I'll see you later,” she says, signaling the end of the video.

Verma, a 32-year-old online influencer from Oakville, Ontario, isn't technically a celebrity, but hundreds of thousands of people from around the world log on to watch her go about her daily routines on YouTube, in videos titled “A Day in the Life” or “My Morning Routine.”

Every day, thousands of men and women like Verma post their daily routines online—seemingly ordinary people going about everyday mundanities for other ordinary people to see. It's not just influencers posting about routines. In recent years, this content has become big business, and media brands like Harper's Bazaar, Bon Appetit, and Vogue have jumped on the bandwagon, each with their own wildly popular online diaries, variations on “What I Eat/Spend/Do in a Morning/Day/Week.”

To outsiders, this kind of online sharing may seem boring. Narcissistic, even. But routines have taken over the internet. And the millions who use it – scrolling endlessly to take in every detail – can't seem to get enough of it. But why?

Even Verma wondered that. “When I started making these videos,” she said, “I thought, 'These are just random things. Why would anyone watch this?'”

The influencer began filming her daily life when she and her husband moved from New Delhi to Toronto, Canada five years ago. “It was a completely new life. And I just wanted to document everything – even for myself,” she said.

Viewers quickly followed her filming her first days in Canada, searching for a SIM card at downtown Toronto's Eaton Centre and excitedly trying her first coffee from Tim Hortons (“Not that expensive,” she explains after the first sip. “For everyday coffee, it's a very good option”).

What started as a hobby quickly evolved into a new career. Verma, who has a business background (she did her MBA in marketing in Delhi), has been able to leverage her rapidly growing popularity into a living. Her early videos offered a unique insight into the life of a newcomer to Canada, but her content has expanded to capture all aspects of her everyday life.

These days, her videos might follow her cleaning her kitchen or shopping at Costco. Compared to the picture-perfect lives of most other influencers, Verma's videos are extraordinary only because her life seems completely normal.

People have been sharing their lives online since the advent of the internet. But at the beginning of the pandemic, in the months following February 2020 – when we were all uprooted from our usual routines and suddenly stuck at home – online creators began posting their routines and providing insights into their lives during lockdown.

The joke behind many of these early posts was that there was no routine. On TikTok, creators posted #DayInTheLife videos of themselves sitting on the couch in sweatpants for hours, staring intently out the window and eating chips and guacamole for dinner.

“We were stuck at home looking for some kind of routine or pattern to guide our lives,” said Miranda Brady, a professor of media studies at Carleton University.

Gradually, those early videos turned into real routines. Creators posted videos of themselves wearing masks at 8 a.m. and waiting in line to work out at their apartment complex gyms. From 9 to 11, they worked at a desk at home. In the evening, they made a #GRWM (short for “Get Ready With Me”) video to head to the grocery store or, more commonly, to bed.

These routines were like a balm. They were soothing and predictable, running in the background while we worked, cooked, or grappled with our own anxieties about health and mortality.

Today, there are 4.7 million videos on Instagram with the hashtag #MorningRoutine. More than two million TikTok videos with the hashtag #DayInTheLife. The hashtag #GRWM has more than 12 million posts on TikTok.

Even now that the pandemic is behind us, we are still living in a state of enormous uncertainty, says Jenna Jacobson, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and social media specialist. There are challenges around housing and affordability, questions about climate change and concerns about the wider economy.

“Routines and rituals have been around forever,” says Jacobson. “They help people understand something and create meaning. Rituals have meaning,” she says.

She cited another reason for the popularity of these videos: loneliness.

Watching a GRWM video feels intimate, Jacobson said, appealing to a desire for social connection — another pandemic-era relic. A makeup-free creator speaks directly to the camera, dressed in sweatpants or pajamas, as if we caught her lounging at home. She applies her makeup and tells us a story.

It feels, says Jacobson, like we're sitting with a friend. Psychologists call these parasocial relationships, similar to the connection we feel with a celebrity, sports team or influencer.

“It feels like you're on the phone with your girlfriend and she's talking to you and trying to help you,” says Tarun Kaur, a 29-year-old from Brampton, Ontario, who often watches such videos.

Kaur, who has 17,000 followers on Instagram, also posts her own routine videos, mostly about her workouts.

It is the videos in which she speaks directly to the camera and to her followers – the ones that seem close to her – that generate the greatest response.

“For people who are online,” she said, “it’s a way to feel a little more offline.”

But with the now well-known evolution of social media, these videos have become their own kind of online performance. Of course, routines are a particularly convenient format for sponsored content.

“You can use a lot more of your everyday products and it feels a little more natural,” Kaur said. “It's more like, 'This is my lifestyle,' rather than having to make an extra effort to bring products.”

And what began as a format to document our lack of productivity has since developed into the exact opposite in many cases.

“Influencers always have two target groups in mind,” says Alison Hearn, professor of media studies at Western University.

“Their followers – because they see them as money – and the brands or companies that could entice them to hire them.” Therefore, it makes sense for them to promote values ​​​​such as consumption and productivity, she said.

“They must be perceived as desirable,” she said.

Of course, it's clear to the audience that logically the opposite is true. The more time we spend on our phones, the less time we spend with real friends. The more time we spend scrolling, the less time we spend actually being productive.

And that's the big lie of social media, Hearn said.

It's meant to help us socialize, find community and like-minded people. “But it's also meant to make us keep using it,” she said, “taking into account the logic of addiction.”

Therefore, she said, “it is up to us to set the boundaries” – in other words, to create our own routines.