Meet the Guy Who Reviews Ordinary Websites on YouTube

It’s nearly 8:30 AM. An unseen man opens his browser and enters the URL for what must be one of his favourite sites, since Chrome autocompletes the address. The man stutters and intones in a voice that sounds like he’s got gauze up his sinuses, “Alright, hi, my name’s Neal—Alright, hi, my name’s Neal. I guess today I’m going to show you how to use Pitchfork.com.”

Since starting his channel on December 2nd, YouTube user Neal Christman has uploaded several ​v​ideos “reviewing” sites like Pitchfork, the Huffington Post and, yes, even VICE. They’re strange, rambling attempts at explaining how to surf the web, delivered in a sniffling monotone.

I came across a link to Christman’s Pitchfork website review while surfing my message boards of choice late one night, and I was instantly hooked. The videos juxtapose his evident boredom as he navigates Millennial-centric culture standard-bearers one click at a time. The result is pretty hilarious.

Behind the ironic distance created by Christman’s mumbling, disjointed delivery lies a kernel of critique. Just what the hell are we doing with ourselves when we spend hours every day clicking through beautifully designed websites that deliver reams of flashy content straight to the dome?

I tracked Christman down to ask him myself. As it turns out, he’s a thoughtful 21-year-old art school kid living in Richmond, Virginia, and his videos actually have a concept. Which is great news for me, because it means I’m not completely insane for waxing philosophic about garbage I find on the web.

I wanted to express feelings of ambivalence that I often experience while using these sites

“I wanted to express feelings of ambivalence that I often experience while using these sites,” Christman wrote me in a Google+ message (yeah, I know, weird). “I think, and this is a common view, that disinterest is what most websites really fear. If a review was to vehemently criticize these sites, it would still be preferable, because it would draw attention to the sites in question.”

Christman’s pseudo-analysis of Pitchfork shares a common thread with his other reviews: the tension between finite attention spans and the loads of hot, steaming content being broadcast daily to the average internet user, who spends her time half-reading articles and skimming over eye-catching images on the net.

Of Pitchfork reviews, he says, in an unaffected tone as he clicks through page after page of reviews and features, “There’s these long articles, but you don’t necessarily have to read them. They might just be more for aesthetics.”

While scrolling the homepage of VICE, Christman says, “The problem is [the articles] can be sort of long, but there’s pictures and stuff, so it’s not that bad. Pretty self-explanatory. There’s videos.”

“The issues can be pretty extreme,” he continues, sounding bored as hell. “But it’s kind of necessary if you want to be up to date on what’s happening.”

It all seems a little masochistic; Christman doesn’t exactly sound like he’s having fun. He’s definitely not reading any of the articles he clicks through at high speed. Thus, his faux-reviews implicitly ask us to interrogate what we’re doing here on the ‘net, and why.

At the systemic level, we know the answer to this question: to circul​ate content, and, hence, circulate capital. Of course, this doesn’t mean that all online content is bad. Far from it. Christman says as much when he comments on VICE’s quality and importance. Even so, formally speaking, we are willing nodes in a vast online system of accumulation. Distant and bored, but never not clicking, like it’s the only thing we know.

“Sometimes interacting with advertisements can be more satisfactory than actually consuming a product,” Christman told me. “In a way, there’s the idea of absence or fulfillment being explored in the reviews.”

Christman’s delivery makes it feel as though he imagines that he must do this; like he’s performing some sort of needed service when its absurdity is so readily apparent. Aren’t we doing the same thing when we absentmindedly click our umpteenth link of the day, scan an article for 15 minutes while looking at GIFs on Tumblr and then navigate back to the feed, stone-faced and unaffected? Why do we feel the need to do this?

Often, we don’t know. And, even if we do, we do it anyway. Christman only makes the farcical nature of our situation apparent, like a mumbling apocalyptic sage of the modern web.