Chapter 22: YouTube

Modern people are said to be drowning in a flood of excessive information.

The abundance of things to see prevents them from properly noticing what truly needs to be seen.

Take YouTube, for example.

As of 2017, approximately 576,000 hours of video content were uploaded daily.

Converted to years, that’s 66 years’ worth of content.

In other words, it would take 66 years to watch all the videos uploaded in a single day.

Thus, people have no choice but to rely on algorithms.

Who has the time to sift through all those videos?

Most YouTube users simply watch what the mysterious algorithm brings to their timeline and ignore the rest.

And before them, the algorithm delivered something new.

A song titled “Nothing Here.”

He was someone who dabbled in music as a hobby.

Only recently had he begun learning guitar, slowly savoring the joy of playing bit by bit.

“What should I watch today…?”

While searching for videos to help him learn guitar, he came across one.

It was a video of a young girl holding a black Fender guitar.

The video claimed to cover a song he liked and offer tips, so he clicked on it.

Watching the video, he was immediately struck.

“How can someone so young play like this?”

At a glance, she seemed like a middle or high school student.

Yet her guitar technique was so polished that even someone with just six months of experience could recognize it.

It was almost unbelievable—like someone else was playing on her behalf.

Then, he listened to an original composition uploaded to her channel and was struck again.

The song began with a slightly overdriven guitar tone.

The sound of bending and tremolo merged, creating an ever-fluctuating pitch.

That sound, steady like a metronome, seemed to draw the listener into a factory.

In that factory, he imagined himself as a child bound in chains.

The chains restricted his freedom and forced his actions.

The unbroken, repetitive sounds induced a trance-like state.

A life resembling that of a machine, following commands.

Come when called, go when told.

Move when directed, work when ordered.

Time passes.

While the pace of its flow is immeasurable, its passage is undeniable.

Yet the work remains unchanged.

For eternity, as time flows, he would live as directed and do as commanded.

Escaping such a life seemed impossible.

Then, at some moment, he raised his head and looked at the ceiling.

The fluorescent light that once shone brightly was now dimmed.

He looked around.

He realized that the things he remembered had grown smaller than expected.

Even the face of the supervisor who once instilled fear had aged noticeably.

He noticed that the chains that had bound his ankles were gone.

He realized that the things that had held him in this place were now “no longer there.”

And so, he moved forward.

To a place where nothing could hold him back anymore,

Where only freedom lay ahead.

The melody of freedom was rough but not clumsy.

A fiery performance led to the climactic finale.

“This is…!”

It was an instrumental piece over six minutes long, with no lyrics and everything but the guitar programmed via MIDI.

Yet not for a single moment did he feel bored listening to it.

Instead, he craved more.

What happens next?

Does the liberated individual continue the music?

What lies at the end?

Shivering with goosebumps, he clicked the next track button.

But it didn’t proceed.

The playlist ended there.

“Why?”

He wanted to hear more, but there was no next track.

He pressed the back button and looked again at the owner of the channel.

Though her face was hidden, she appeared to be a young girl with a slim and petite frame, wearing an Adidas jacket.

This girl had created such a song?

With trembling hands, he copied the video’s link.

Then, he sent it through KakaoTalk to close friends and acquaintances.

He told them they had to listen.

He said he might have found the song of his life.

While he shared it, he wasn’t the only one spreading the word.

Some tagged others:

[@Ji-Hyun Lee Check this out http://www.you~~~]

Some wrote posts:

[Recommendation > This song is amazing.]

The methods varied, but the motivation was the same.

They couldn’t keep it to themselves.

They wanted others to hear this song too.

He had thought the first song was good.

He had worked on it with a different sense than before.

As soon as the melody came to mind, he completed the recording in one go and finished programming the MIDI within a day.

He was curious about others’ reactions.

How would people respond to his first song?

Would they like it?

He thought it was pretty good.

But he hadn’t expected this.

There were quite a lot of comments, maybe around a hundred.

The video had already surpassed 20,000 views and continued to climb every time he refreshed the page.

[I’ve listened to this 10 times since yesterday 😭😭]

[Next song, please!]

[I don’t usually do this, but I recommended it to others.]

[Me too 😭😭😭]

If this was the reaction to his first song, it seemed like a pretty successful debut.

Running his hand through his hair, he looked up his previous songs on YouTube.

Though he hadn’t uploaded them himself, he hadn’t strictly enforced copyright, so someone might have shared them.

[Search results: None]

…They didn’t exist at all.

Well, it made sense.

Disappointed by critical reviews, he had never even signed a copyright contract.

His music was probably resting in the CDs bought by a few of his friends.

By that measure, going from zero views—no, let’s say one—to 20,000 was a 20,000-fold leap.

Thinking about it that way made him feel a sense of pride.

And there was another triumph.

[Session Inquiry]

I saw on the White Room YouTube channel that you do session work.

I loved your guitar tone and wanted to ask if you could do a session for one of my songs.

If you’re available, I’d like to discuss payment, whether it’s online/offline, and scheduling.

Please reply if interested.

Thank you.

It seemed likely that the person who sent the email was either a student unfamiliar with session work or someone trying to take advantage of what they assumed was his lack of knowledge to negotiate a low fee.

Regardless of their intentions, a request was a request.

It could be added to his portfolio, and he could make some money.

If it was an online session, he could charge around $20; for an offline one, about $30 per minute would be fair.

That would be a reasonable price.

[What are you doing?]

As he was fiddling with the computer, a KakaoTalk message popped up.

The sender was Choi Iseo.

Myeong-jeon hesitated briefly before replying with a short message.

[Managing my YouTube channel.]

[YouTube? You’re doing that too?]

[00]

Pleased with his adaptability in learning to use shorthand for teen chats, Myeong-jeon kept his gaze fixed on the screen.

When Iseo asked for the channel link out of curiosity, he sent it over.

For a while, there was no response, but after several minutes, another KakaoTalk message arrived.

[Did you make “Nothing Here”?]

[00]

[OMG wtf]

[What the heck is this???]

Her fingers trembled, causing repeated typos, but Iseo couldn’t help herself.

“The song is too good…!”

“This is a scam!”

Her scream was so loud that there was a thud from the next room.

It was probably her biological sibling throwing a pillow at the wall, annoyed by the noise.

Unbothered, Iseo continued typing furiously.

[This song is amazing.]

[Can we use it as a band piece?]

[I really want to play it.]

[The bassline is so simple.]

[Well, the bass is just playing root notes.]

[If you want to turn it into a band piece, we’d need to rearrange it completely and re-record everything.]

But Myeong-jeon was skeptical.

The song hadn’t been created with a band in mind.

In its current state, it would only make the band feel like background players.

If they rearranged it to emphasize the bass, keyboard, and drums, the guitar might lose its impact.

[Why not just write a new song for the band?]

[Then would it be a vocal track?]

[Not sure. I’m not good at writing lyrics.]

When he first composed the piece, he had considered adding vocals but quickly gave up.

Lyrics simply didn’t come to mind.

In hindsight, it wasn’t surprising.

The only books Myeong-jeon had ever read were guitar manuals or ones about bands, and he wasn’t particularly good at Korean in school.

[Then I’ll write the lyrics.]

[You?]

[Why?]

[Well, if you want to, I guess you can.]

He recalled telling Iseo not long ago to try studying composition, lyric-writing, or arrangement.

While he’d said that, handing over the task of writing lyrics felt a bit…

‘Well, she’s probably better at it than me.’

He decided to leave it at that.

[Is there no next song?]

[Not really. I’m focusing on practice right now.]

[The performance isn’t far off, after all.]