@coriander the study was on 3-to-6-year-old children and the argument was that the children who watch youtube did not engage in as much “creative play” because they instead copied what they saw on youtube

i am not saying this is a good study or people should pay attention to it lol which is why i'm not linking it

but i do think the larger question about play which mimics recorded media versus play which is improvised is interesting

@Lady Yeah I think that's a pretty spurious claim to make considering how much "creative play" I did as a kid was just copying Star Wars =P

Definitely an interesting thing to consider overall tho

@coriander oh yeah totally i definitely copied some pokémons and Spy Kids

i think the thing with youtube and streaming as a democratic media though is that like, star wars is clearly fake and there's complete freedom in how you interpret the thing. but when you watch someone stream you are literally watching them in the process of interpreting the thing for you, and there's maybe a compulsion to interpret it the same way…

obviously as someone who values literary criticism i am Not Against Watching People Interpret Things, but there maybe is a case that it becomes less (or differently) play-like, especially if you feel "i have to do this THIS way because youtuber did that and they're COOL"

@Lady That's fair, that's a good distinction to make, but then you have to consider, like, are they copying what they saw wholesale or are they using it as a jumping-off point?

@coriander exactly as a fanfiction author and someone who opposes the freeform vacuousness of liberal poetics i feel like working within the structure of an existing corpus or set of interpretations can produce really good and powerful and meaningful things

but i also think it's more responsive and less improvisational?? i haven't really figured out what my feelings are regarding improvisational art/play tbh

@Lady Yeah it probably is more responsive than improvisational to work in fanfic or something like that but also I think that's still fine, my gut reaction to that question is that most forms of art and play are going to be some mixture of both and that trying to figure out if one is "good" or "better than the other" is probably just an exercise in futility

But I also have to admit this isn't one I've spent a lot of time thinking about so