Think about some of your favorite content creators. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, doesn’t matter. Watch some of their content.

Notice anything?

It’s perfect.

And I don’t mean the set, the lighting, or the graphics. I mean the dialogue.

Don’t believe me? Pull up a short on YouTube, a TikTok video, or a reel on Instagram. Something quick, less than five minutes of video.

Close your eyes. Sounds fine, right? Nothing out of the ordinary.

Play it again and listen a little closer.

Any “umms”, long pauses, or other audible space fillers? Probably not many.

Okay, now open your eyes and watch once more. Pay close attention to the physical position of the person.

Do they jump around multiple times throughout the video? Is stuff suddenly juxtaposed where it wasn’t before?

I’m of course talking about cuts in the video. Those little jumps where something was either removed or replaced completely during the editing process.

Even the shortest content possible is being diced and edited in the majority of cases. You can imagine the person posting it hunched over their phone or laptop, examining every frame and word as it passes.

If one is a little rough or not quite right, gone from the video entirely. That or the whole video is reshot.

A Rich History

This isn’t novel either. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants given the long history of the film and TV industries.

The script drives everything. Plot readily pushes the conversation along like a subservient plow horse. Nobody has to keep it afloat. The dialogue is perfect.

Even awkward pauses serve a purpose and the character usually manages to stammer something out to revive things.

“You’re so awkward. It’s adorable,” our bubbly, feminine counterpart says to our sweating protagonist who just muttered something so ridiculous as to be nearly committable. He lets out a nervous laugh and smile before continuing.

Pause.

What about conversations that turn so awkward that people will literally walk away from them? Where’s the representation there?

Editing, splicing, cutting, multiple takes. All of these pile up in the facade of perfect dialogue that we watch and internalize.

The Hidden Cost

We stand and look in the bathroom mirror, worryingly running a hand down our faces. “Why can’t I be suave like Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club?”, we ask ourselves.

“Why are even my most basic conversations filled with awkward moments and clunky back and forth?”, we fret.

“How does this Instagram influencer always come across as so bubbly and downright charming?”

Here’s the secret. It’s all artificial. We build this dialogue in our media and then peddle it around like it’s the baseline.

We’ve built these mediums where a person can’t even talk to a camera for 90 seconds without making four cuts in the video. We micro-adjust the output to death. The viewer is left with a subconscious sense that the person on the screen is this porcelain object that’s been polished and set on display.

It’s textbook gold plating.

Then, people in the real world see this and convince themselves it’s the standard. The perfect dialogue disheartens us. Why bother when you’re competing against perfection.

It Doesn’t Stop Here

Artificial intelligence is the hot topic of the day. I think that can only make the problem worse.

Now, not only is our spoken dialogue artificially propped up, but our prose as well. Even as I write this, little red squigglies are ensuring that I don’t bungle anything. Grammar checkers fire in the background to ensure the same. My writing has to be perfect.

And all at no cost to myself. The machine is doing it.

We work and sweat and shave the edges off of everything to the point of sterilization.

All of a sudden everything is robotic (pun intended). Our scripts are perfection, our texts consummate.

Slowly, we take away what it means to be human. Through time, we build subtle doubts into our own minds. Us seeking idealized output introduces hairline fractures in our psyche.

Our flaws become our obsession. Our minor slipups become crimes. We Harrison Bergeron ourselves into an assembly line of cookie cutter lives and ideas.

What do we do?

I see a future in which flawed human output becomes a precious commodity. People will crave that authenticity.

We’ll beg for the typos and the awkward pauses. The half-baked ideas and the coloring outside the lines. We’ll praise the im-perfect dialogue.

Start now.

Get out and interact with people away from phones and computers.

Encourage others when they hit an uncomfortable silence.

Put your rough drafts out for the world to see.

Stamp your name on your work and display it with pride.

Connect.

Live.

In the end, we stuff ourselves into a box that wasn’t made for us and only realize after the lid has been sealed. It’s up to us to flex against this seal and climb back out. I’d encourage you to try everything you can and push against the pressure to be mint.

Remember, done is better than perfect. Thanks for reading.

-Two-Bit Stoic