Context: This Person Literally Set Up a Phone to Film This

All online video content needs to be viewed with important context: the creator wanted you to see it.

I remember seeing a video a while ago on Facebook Reels, where a mother effectively consoled her screaming toddler by helping him “emotionally regulate” with deep breathing exercises (it turns out he just wanted water, so I’m less impressed with her conflict resolution techniques. Come back to me when the request is for an antique porcelain egg that they will definitely break- that was an actual tantrum I diffused last night.)

Anyway, it occurred to me halfway through the video that I was missing some context—this woman wasn’t just a good mom who successfully gave her toddler water to end a tantrum. She was a mom who filmed her toddler’s meltdown, while he was wearing nothing but a pull-up, and posted it online to show everyone how good of a mom she was. Nothing in the video itself was reprehensible—if I were a secret bystander in that room, I’d have thought she was a good mom, showing commendable patience with a screaming kid. But I wasn’t seeing this scene by accident. She literally filmed it and posted it to show everyone how great of a mother she was, while she humiliated her toddler and filmed him in a vulnerable state. The inclusion of the iPhone camera—once recognized—changes the entire context of the video.

This happened again this week, when a video of influencer Paige Connell took Twitter by storm. In the video, she talks about how she almost divorced her husband, who was “great on paper,” and a “great father,” but who she felt wasn’t helpful enough around the house, leaving her with the role of “project manager” for the household. According to the short snippet, after telling him to unload the dishes and take out the trash every morning (which he did, for the most part, after she asked) she felt deeply disrespected and “unseen” when one morning, he forgot to do it. But she didn’t divorce him—they worked on their issues, and now they’re happier than ever.

Now, if Paige were a friend of mine, I’d be very sympathetic. I might not be 100% on her side (I’d be curious to know, for example, how the intensity and hours of his job compared to hers, but I might not ask since that would be rude.) Generally speaking though, I’d feel for her, and I’d be really happy to hear they patched things up.

But Paige isn’t my friend in real life—she’s an influencer whose entire brand is built around this specific relationship problem, who sells e-courses about sharing the “mental load.” Domestic labor disproportionately falling on women is obviously a real problem, so her work resonates with many women. But at the end of the day, this is a woman who has chosen this particular problem as her whole schtick. She isn’t just a woman who was saddled with an unfair amount of work by a thoughtless husband—she’s a woman who made “dealing with husbands who don’t pull their weight” her career. And that kind of puts her video in a new light for me—and this should be context you add to any video you see online. This is a person who literally set up their phone to film this moment. That means you are dealing with a particular kind of person!