A Gramme of Matt and Abby is Better than a Damn

The who, what, where, and how on one of YouTube's golden couples

Who are Matt and Abby?

Matt and Abby are YouTube celebrities with over 4.9million subscribers and 932 videos on their first channel alone. They’re also the hosts of The Unplanned Podcast which currently boasts 345K subscribers and 219 videos, the most recent of which features an interview with well-known Twilight actor Taylor Lautner and his wife.

Matt and Abby are quite young - early twenties, I take it - and they’re lucky enough to have fallen in love in high-school, gone off to college together, taken their wedding vows shortly thereafter, and to be expecting their second child together at the time of this writing.

They put the “obnoxious” and the “cute” in the phrase “obnoxiously cute” in equal proportion. One look at them and you’ll know why they’re cute: They are good looking and charismatic, they have a clean, spacious home with modern furnishings and dress in that laid-back style that makes them the quintessence of upper middle class casual. They look like the kind of people who would invite you to go tubing with them on Lake Havasu while their smiling parents babysit for them. They would host a barbecue at their stuccoed exterior suburban home just minutes up the street from “the good Costco” where they would purchase enough dip, chips, hotdogs, hamburgers, and Kroger brand tequila mix to overwhelm their kitchen countertops and spill on to the floor where their toddler would find a bag of brownie brittle to pilfer and entertain the guests by running through the house with a fist full of sweets, wearing only his diaper and a big chocolatey smile.

They share everything with their audience. After many hours spent watching their story unfold and witnessing everything from the awkward moment Matt chose to tell Abby’s mom he wanted to marry her, to the first photo of Matt taken after he lost his virginity, to the details on Abby’s IUD and permanent Brazilian style laser hair removal, to the time Matt cleaned Abby's vomit off their bedroom floor in the middle of the night, to the video of the first time they welcomed a child into the world, it’s easy to forget that these are not people you actually know. And it’s easy to understand how internalizing that you do kinda know them on some level would be a wistful experience; and that any rude awakening to the contrary would be a sad one not totally unlike the sadness many of us feel when a beloved book ends and it’s time to say goodbye to the characters we came to relate to so much.

But the distinctive contribution that Matt and Abby bring to the world is that the end of one installment of their story almost immediately gives way to yet another video for all to delight in and continue to bear witness to the most intimate aspects of their relationship. And then another video. And another. And another…

And between views, when you come up for air to consume material of a more sobering tone, the kind of worldly analysis Matt and Abby help people escape from, you might not ever ponder why some channels are suppressed because they fall out of line with The Narrative, but, for some reason, Matt and Abby's channel is permitted to flourish. The obvious takeaway is that it’s okay to be popular as long as you aren’t controversial. Perhaps a less obvious takeaway is that it’s okay to live vicariously through another family, as long as you aren’t silly enough to put down the soma and pursue having one yourself.

Matt and Abby look like the American Dream. But we all know the American Dream is on life support. So…

What are Matt and Abby?

Matt and Abby are today’s equivalent of a 2010s rap video staring a man stylized in designer fashion complete with gaudy gold chains and diamond grills, surrounded by his harem of voluptuous women, spitting clever rhymes about how they enthusiastically adore his enormous girth from their lucky perspective at his feet. All this happens poolside at his Beverly Hills mansion where he stores his expensive cars and stacks of cash. Men in these videos glamorize a specific kind of lifestyle that is completely out of reach to the average person. And today, Matt and Abby promote a different type of lifestyle which, despite having the appearance of being easily attainable, is effectively just as out of reach as the tacky estate filled to the attic with bimbos, bros, Lambos, and weed.

But the problem inherent to asking what Matt and Abby are goes beyond simply realizing that they are people who showcase a lifestyle that is practically unattainable to the bulk of their audience of voyeur-simps who are struggling to find any semblance of what Matt and Abby share because a multitude of cultural, institutional, economic, and political elements have turned marriages like theirs into a luxury product.

The bigger problem is what they represent.

They are an extension of the Globohomo vision: you will own nothing and you will be happy. Even if you can experience luxury, it won’t really be yours. There is nothing sacred, not even the most private, most intimate, details of your life.

Rules for thee, not for me.

Ownership for me, not for thee.

Technically, Matt and Abby are the proud owners of modernity’s luxury product of marriage. But is this marriage really theirs? They have branded and sold its most intimate moments to an increasingly lonely public eager to live vicariously through their content - a public that is meanwhile also selling data on their loneliness with every video link they click.

You will own nothing and you will be happy. Repeat: You will own nothing. Not even the sanctity of your own private life. And when all bonds of ownership have been dissolved, you will look where you are allowed to for a glimmer of second-hand meaning. After all, Globohomo cannot have all memory of meaning extinguished. If that happened, there would be no reason to go to work! This is esprit de corps from hell.

This is why Matt and Abby are obnoxious: although they seem innocent enough, their content is normalizing a form of soul-sucking voyeurism.

How are Matt and Abby Matt and Abby?

Billionaire Psycho

’s recent article helped deepen my appreciation for the bleak challenges of the present dating scene. If you haven’t read Pygmalion and the Anime Girl, I recommend budgeting a couple of hours to do so. Yes, it’s long. But its cathartic magnetism makes time stand still.

Of relevant note, Billionaire Psycho helped me consider the largely unattainable literal price of being married in the current age. It follows from this that Matt and Abby can only continue to taste this luxury many people their age presently cannot afford because it isn't really theirs. This is the self-referential nature of their marriage: They have it, because they do not have it. The only way for them to own it is to sell it.

See this factsheet on the financial fruits of their channel:

Link

If this is accurate, and I cannot say definitively that it is, most people their age are currently drooling over incomes equivalent to a fraction of this.

The thought of a young rapper rhyming about his riches resurfaces more completely now.

Besides the question of how Matt and Abby's lifestyle is made possible is the question of how the effect of their status as influencers manifests off-camera. Do they ever take a break from mining their relationship for evermore “authentic” material to edit and upload for the cheddar? Do they experience any cognitive dissonance over the inherently inauthentic nature of this practice?

How does their influence ricochet off of its target audience back into their own hearts and minds?

Why are Matt and Abby Matt and Abby?

Billionaire Psycho argues that the consumption of pornography men are shamed for is a symptom of a broader sexual dysfunction, not the cause of it. He also asserts that men and women build, love, and dream in different ways.

With Matt and Abby’s content and Billionaire Psycho's insights in mind, I have to ask: Does content like this constitute a form of pornography for women? A way to cope with a lack of a husband and children? The data indicate that fewer women consume hardcore pornography than men and although the current cultural environment smiles upon women much more favorably than men, there is still an abundance of loneliness among them which seeks a numbing agent. Women are challenged to cope with their own version of fallout mushrooming from the nuclear landscape that is the mainstream zeitgeist, and given that we dream, build, and love, in many ways, differently than men, it makes sense that perhaps our coping strategies in times of loneliness would also be distinctly feminine. Until now I had assumed that outside of their cushy positions at Boss Girl Inc., the female cope amongst lonely feral women mostly manifested as, “I love dogs! Dogs are like kids! They might be better than kids! Lolz, it’s a pic of me and my dog! DOGS! Here I am with my DOG! I’m not filling a void! I just LOVE MY DOG!!!!!”¹

So many Instagram feeds read like a less grown-up version of the children’s classic Go Dog Go…

I don’t remember the last chick-flick I saw that was crafted in that classic old Hollywood style. Today, most films give the impression of being lame and obvious propaganda. But there used to be good new movies out quite regularly. The kind that might fill the void on a dateless Friday night.

Or be an excuse to have a date…²

Billionaire Psycho mentions Pretty Woman, a classic of this variety. And I agree with his sentiments, it’s quite unrealistic. But for all that this movie can be argued to showcase the slippage of a once great culture, it was at least entertaining. It had character and style. To this day, dressing as Vivian Ward will get your costume recognized at most adult Halloween parties as “Julia Robert’s in Pretty Woman” because of the movie’s lasting relevance in pop culture. The song played at the end, Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, is very fitting and catchy and performed in the voice and tone of a man who is struck by the appeal of a heart-attack beautiful woman. That’s an energy I haven't felt as much of in the air lately, and it is missed.

Was the message of the movie great? Depends on how you frame it, I guess. Was the movie's charm actually one problematic aspect of it? Yes, that’s arguable. Did it capture virtue in its highest form? Not particularly, lol. It was a fantasy, and cope of its own kind. A way, perhaps, for an average girl coming into adulthood circa 1990 while feeling lost and ashamed for falling into fashion by sleeping with men before she was ready to in any meaningful sense to escape into the hopeful dream that someday a nice man would truly love her and rescue her, despite her sexual history. Should this idea be encouraged in the hearts and minds of young girls? To my mind, no. But the film is rated R - not intended for kids. These were the days when depictions of men with prostitutes were not met with openness in elementary schools, and pearl-clutching at Congress.

At the very least, this movie appealed to the idea (albeit a very basic idea) that a man is not a monster when painted in a charitable light; that he does not offend a woman by helping her into a better position than he found her. Now it’s a cultural given that the prostitute is empowered, doesn’t need saving; and any man who attempts to point out the dire state of her life is a misogynist.

What’s more is the simple fact that it only takes a sense of humor to enjoy the film. Or are we all out of that, too?

Aspirational fantasy is an enjoyable and very worthwhile pastime from which we can draw insight and inspiration. For all its faults, second-rate fantasy, like Pretty Woman, can at least offer an opportunity for debate over the status of our culture a few levels above the trash movies of today that fail abysmally in both concept and execution of any redeemable qualities.

What's really regrettable is that such pastimes have morphed into deep-seated cope and escapism brought to you by oversharing YouTube celebrities, bottomless pornography, and endless algorithms tainted by the filthy lucer of oligopoly. In no small part, this is owed to the fact that old Hollywood and its ability to entertain, convey truth, display beauty, and inspire a wide range of thought and discussion, is barely breathing.

Good chick flicks are harder and harder to come by as yesterday's Hollywood fantasies give way to today’s Globohomo-approved forms of pornography for women, presented in rows of attractive little thumbnails at the end of a long, lonely day at the office.

Where are Matt and Abby?

They are in your living room.

Does this statement ring true? Of course not. Yet Matt and Abby's synthetic presence in the lives of their audience grows as the veneer between their private and public lives appears to shrink. And when the screen between them and their intangible presence within the living-rooms of millions of subscribers goes black, they leave behind the mark of their influence.

When millions of people ask what a ‘healthy’ or ‘affectionate’ relationship is ‘supposed to look like,’ many envision Matt and Abby's chemistry to be the answer. That’s especially easy to do without much lived experience in the romance department. They envision this despite not only the fact that they do not actually know these people, but that Matt and Abby's relationship taken at face value is branded; and as such, it has a recursive nexus to itself and their content.

For some, this influence results in a downward cascade when the thought of falling short of what Matt and Abby project is interpreted as a personal failure to obtain the ultimate in luxury. And so they move on, from swipe to swipe, from tryst to tryst, from girlfriend to girlfriend, and from husband to husband. Seldom do real interactions meet overblown expectations when one is under the influence of addictive coping mechanisms. And the reluctance to settle down even when things are good is only compounded by the characteristically youthful mistake of assuming there will always be another opportunity to start a family.

Where does the boundary between Matt and Abby's life and the lives of their viewers begin and end? If they started out aiming for gonzo style journalism, I suggest that they have now crossed into The Truman Show territory. In their case, however, they know they’re on camera, but their audience is nonetheless privy to information they have no access to: the caliber of their influence over individuals in their audience.

Some of the details Matt and Abby share are just as arbitrary and excessive as they are awkward without a working repository in which to file them all. Matt and Abby essentially exist within a random context. The bulk of their content falls outside the scope of any real discussion. They are not sitting across from you or me, answering questions in intimate detail for the sake of making a particular point, or expounding upon an observation, or even just to swap stories in an effort to sow the seeds of friendship. They are asked by their audience random things like, “Can we see what your face looked like moments after the first time you had sex?” And to this, Matt and Abby say, “Lol, okay!” And then it’s on to the next stupid question.

Why should this behavior be nonchalantly considered well-adjusted just because it is carried out on YouTube and not by a total stranger who happens to be in the same room as you?

Matt and Abby sit secluded within a doorless plexiglas container at the center of an artificial community garden where what they exchange with their admirers amounts to AstroTurf when compared to a fruit-bearing two-way exchange.

The Hope in the Cope

What are your memories worth to you?

As I said before, we cannot really know where the boundary between who Matt and Abby are in private and who they are in public begins and where it ends. I hope this means that there is a lot they are not willing to share with us. I hope there is a happy part of their lives which they safeguard from everyone else, and cherish just between the two of them. I hope they're as happy as they look.

Entertainment value is subjective, folks. Far be it from me to knock anyone down for enjoying the content Matt and Abby or the other YouTube couples like them create. But if your own life feels pale in comparison, this may clue you in on a few things. For one, you might be watching so much Matt and Abby porn that you’ve lost touch with what’s good and have started expecting what’s perfect.

Matt and Abby cannot show you what love is. But maybe they can help you realize that love is something you are willing to risk some comfort to pursue, or perhaps that your current relationship is really worth nurturing.

Finally, best of luck to Matt and Abby. For the time being, what they’re doing might actually support divergence from Globohomo's vision from one perspective. To paraphrase Abby, “The greatest gift this job has given me is that I can work with you [Matt], and that I can stay home with our kids.” I hope this does not come at a spiritual cost to any of them. And if it does, I hope they recover with ease.

I cannot say what is in the best interest of Matt and Abby or the many YouTubers like them or how they should make a living anymore than they could do so for me. In the words of David Cross in the classic Mr. Show sketch, “I don’t come down to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth.”

Thanks for rucking with me. Please enjoy the music as you exit.

1. Or, alternatively cats

2. Maybe that’s the problem. Ain't nobody gonna have any success using “Wanna come over and watch She Hulk?” as a euphemism for gettin’ busy.