Since the dawn of the internet, people have shared their lives online. But at the outset of the pandemic, in the months after February, 2020 – when all of us were pulled out of our usual routines and suddenly stuck in our homes – online creators began posting their routines, a glimpse into their lives under lockdown.istockphoto/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Pooja Verma wakes up at 7 a.m. She makes a two-egg omelette and sets off for work. She stops at a McDonald’s for a morning coffee – one sugar, one cream – and by 9 a.m., she’s at work. “Okay guys, I’ll see you later,” she says, signalling the end of the video.
Verma, a 32-year-old online influencer based in Oakville, Ont., is not, technically, a celebrity. Yet, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world log on to watch her perform her daily routines every day on YouTube, in videos titled, variously “A Day In The Life,” or “My Morning Routine.”
Every single day, thousands of men and women like Verma post their daily routines online – seemingly everyday, regular people, performing everyday mundanity for other everyday, regular people to see. It’s not just influencers posting about routines. In recent years, this content has become big business, with media brands such as Harper’s Bazaar, Bon Appetit and Vogue all jumping onboard, too – each of them with their own extremely popular online diaries, variations on “What I Eat/Spend/Do In A Morning/Day/Week.”
Pooja Verma is a 32-year-old online influencer based in Oakville, Ont.Supplied
To outsiders, this form of online sharing might seem tedious. Narcissistic, even. But routines have taken over the internet. And for the millions who consume them – scrolling endlessly to take in every detail – they can’t seem to get enough. But why?
Even Verma has wondered this. “When I started making these videos,” she said, “I was thinking, ‘These are just random things. Why would anyone watch this?’”
The influencer first started filming her daily routines when she moved to Canada, from New Delhi to Toronto, with her husband five years ago. “It was a completely new life. And I just wanted to document every single thing – even for myself,” she said.
Viewers quickly began following along, as she filmed her first days in Canada, looking for a SIM card at Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, and excitedly trying her first Tim Hortons coffee (“Not that expensive,” she declares after her first sip. “For your everyday coffee, it’s a very good option”).
What began as a hobby quickly morphed into a new career. Verma, who has a business background (having earned her MBA in marketing back in Delhi), was able to leverage her quick-rising popularity into a living. Her early videos provided a unique window into the life of a newcomer in Canada. But her content has broadened to capture all aspects of her day-to-day life.
These days, her videos might follow her along as she cleans her kitchen, or goes grocery shopping at Costco. Compared with the picture-perfect lives of most other influencers, Verma’s videos are exceptional only in how utterly normal her life appears.
Since the dawn of the internet, people have shared their lives online. But at the outset of the pandemic, in the months after February, 2020 – when all of us were pulled out of our usual routines and suddenly stuck in our homes – online creators began posting their routines, a glimpse into their lives under lockdown.
The joke behind many of these early posts was that there was no routine. On TikTok, creators posted #DayInTheLife videos, sitting for hours in sweats on the couch. They stared, unblinking, out the window, and ate chips and guacamole for dinner.
“We were stuck at home, and looking for some kind of routine, or pattern, to structure our lives around,” said Miranda Brady, a professor of media studies at Carleton University.
Gradually, these early videos gave way to actual routines. Creators posted videos of themselves at 8 a.m. wearing masks and standing in line to work out in their condo gyms. From 9 until 11, working at a desk at home. At night, filming a #GRWM video (short for “Get Ready With Me”) to head out to a grocery store, or, more often, to bed.
These routines served as a balm. It was soothing, predictable content to play in the background as we worked, or cooked, or grappled with our own fears around 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, with the pandemic behind us, said Jenna Jacobson, a Toronto Metropolitan University professor who specializes in social media, we’re still living with an enormous amount of uncertainty. There are housing and affordability challenges, questions around climate change and concerns about the overall economy.
“Routines and rituals have existed for all of time,” said Jacobson. “They help people make sense of something as well as create meaning. Rituals have meaning,” she said.
She cited another reason behind the popularity of these videos: loneliness.
Watching a GRWM video feels intimate, said Jacobson, addressing desire for social connection – another relic of the pandemic era. A bare-faced creator talking directly to the camera, dressed in sweats or pyjamas, like we’ve caught her lounging at home. She’s applying her makeup, and telling us a story.
Tarun Kaur, who has 17,000 followers on Instagram, posts her own routine videos, mostly about her workouts.Supplied
It feels, said Jacobson, as if we’re sitting with a friend. It’s what psychologists refer to as parasocial relationships, like the connection we might feel with a celebrity, or sports team, or influencer.
“It just feels like you’re talking to your girlfriend on the phone, and she’s just talking to you and trying to help you out,” said Tarun Kaur, a 29-year-old from Brampton, Ont., who often finds herself scrolling through such videos.
Kaur, who has 17,000 followers on Instagram, also posts her own routine videos, mostly about her workouts.
It’s the videos where she’s talking directly to the camera, and her followers – the ones that feel intimate – that elicit the most response.
“It’s a way for people who are online,” she said, “to just feel like it’s a bit more offline.”
But in the now-familiar trajectory of social media, these videos have evolved into their own kind of online performance. There’s the fact, of course, that routines are an especially convenient format for sponsored content.
“You’re able to incorporate a lot more of your day-to-day products, and it seems a little bit more natural,” said Kaur. “It’s more like, ‘This is my lifestyle,’ instead of going out of your way to bring products in.”
And what started as a format for documenting our lack of productivity has since evolved, in many cases, into the exact opposite.
“Influencers are always keeping two audiences in their heads,” said Alison Hearn, a professor who teaches media studies at Western University.
“Their followers – because they view them as money – and the brands or businesses who they might entice to hire them.” As such, she said, it makes sense for them to promote values such as consumption and productivity.
“They have to be perceived as aspirational,” she said.
For the audience, of course, we know that logically, the opposite is true. The more time we’re on our phones, the less time we’re out connecting with real friends. The more time we spend scrolling, the less time we’re spending actually being productive.
And that’s the big lie of social media, said Hearn.
It’s built to help connect us, to find community and like-minded people. “But it’s also built to make us continue using it,” she said, “with the logic of addiction in mind.”
So, she said, “it’s on us to set the boundaries” – in other words, to create our own routines.